Hello!
I recently purchased a RBSXTR&R11e-LTE router and encountered a problem: the device connects to a distant base station and because of this I get low Internet speed (up to 5 Mbps). And I can’t do anything about it: I point it in the direction of the near base station, and it still connects to the far one.
On the other hand, my old Redmi 5a smartphone and the Huawei E3372 USB modem give ten times the speed (around 50 Mbps). It looks like they are connecting to a nearby base station.
Same SIM card, same location, but different behavior. Why so?
I would like to add that at first I had the same problem with the Huawei E3372, then I changed the settings to LTE-Only and the problem was solved. I did the same on RBSXTR&R11e-LTE, but it only made things worse: the speed dropped to ~0.5Mbps. It seems that the device is still connecting to the distant base station. Help solve the problem. Does a cheap smartphone and a Chinese modem work better than a branded LTE router?
In LTE the ISP network defines which station will serve a client at any time. (In wifi the client decides to connect to a specific AP/SSID.)
LTE serving cell tower is difficult to handle without “Cell lock”.
Sometimes just playing with the band to be used is enough to force the SXT to use a specific cell. (After you figure out which cell tower “eNB ID” is using what bands)
If lucky the bands are specific to a tower.
Band 20 is low freq and used by many, indoors. Overcrowded and very slow even if tower is very closeby, in our case. SXT benefits from the higher freq bands, and the fact of being outdoor.
It reaches far away towers that the masses cannot use. While they get 5Mbps at most on band 20 , the SXT gets 86Mbps, cell tower at 6 km on band 7.
The LTE automatic band/cell selection manager in RoS is unfortunately pretty stupid compared to most smartphones.
As @bpwl explained try to avoid the lower frequency bands (ie 700-900 Mhz). Regarding the upper bands (> 1 600 Mhz) please be aware you need a clear line of sight to the cell tower which is especially important for longer distances. Use your smartphone to pick which bands and cell id’s to use in the SXT LTE.
Also keep in mind that Mikrotik0s LTE modems support only a small subset of LTE bands (compared to modern smart phones), it may happen that your MNO uses LTE bands not supported by your particular LTE modem.
Unfortunately, playing with bands did not help: it is enough to disable band 8, as the device stops connecting anywhere at all. Regarding cell ID: How to tell the SXT LTE to connect to a station with a specific cell ID?
Never done it, but should be “Using Cell lock” in https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/LTE
Maybe you can tell me how to determine Cell ID? I did not find such information in my smartphone.
On iPhone use “3001#12345#” and on Android use ##4636## (depends on version) to enter field test mode. For Android there are also several apps to get this info:
For SXT it is the LTE Interface Cellular TAB.
On Android I use : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wilysis.cellinfolite
And there is https://www.cellmapper.net
I concur “Network Cell Info Lite” is one of the better free of charge apps for Android. Check out this feature comparison chart if you need more extensive info: https://www.m2catalyst.com/features
I gave up using Mikrotik LTE hardware. I always got at least twice the bandwidth and speed using Carrier’s hardware. Just make sure you get something with bridge-mode support or an ODU like Huawei B2368 that works standalone and connect it to you mikrotik router.
I determined cell ID and EARFCN using “LTE Discovery” app.
Then I enter command:
/interface lte at-chat lte1 input=“AT*Cell=2,3,1500,183”
and get error:
output: +CME ERROR: 100
What am I doing wrong?
I made it! All that was needed was to update the modem firmware:
interface lte firmware-upgrade lte1 upgrade=yes