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neavydev
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Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Wed Jun 29, 2022 8:08 pm

Having got the Chateau 5G to upgrade from a TP-Link Archer MR600, I am suffering from a much slower internet connection.
The Archer says it uses B3 and I get 43Mbps down 21 Mbps up on Three UK.

For the Chateau 5G it is showing B20 primary and B3 CA, presumably as B20 is a higher signal strength, however I am only getting 2.5Mbps down and 1 Mbps up.

Is there some setting I have missed or any way to swap the primary and CA bands around, as B3 has more bandwidth even if it has worse signal strength?

I tried just selecting B3 in the LTE bands, but no difference in performance.
I did the latest release RouterOS update and it says no updates are available for the modem firmware.
 
wgen
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Wed Jun 29, 2022 11:51 pm

You need to cell lock to B3. Find out the earfcn and cell id of the tower/band you want to connect to and then in the command line put the following (replacing<earfcn><cell_id>):
interface/lte/at-chat lte1 input="at+qnwlock=\"common/4g\",1,<earfcn>,<cell_id>"

P.S look on cell mapper for other towers in your area that have more bands for potentially more bandwidth. I lock to another tower 3.5km away which also allows me to get 5G resulting in 550 down and 80 up.
 
neavydev
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Thu Jun 30, 2022 8:28 am

Presumably this is the same as selecting a single band in the Webfig UI for lte1?
The problem I had with that is it seems to stop carrier aggregation so you get a single band B3 and what I actually need is B3 as the primary with B20 (well and B28) as CA.
Having said that, choosing a single band still only gave 1.5Mbps compared to the 40M+ with the MR600.
The Chateau just seems very slow.
Is it less tolerant of lower signal strength of B3 Vs B20?
We have an external antenna on the chimney, as cell reception in the house is poor, but the same cables were used for the Chateau and MR600 and the cell scan is showing all the available bands.
 
sindy
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Thu Jun 30, 2022 10:01 am

What are the rssi, rsrp, rsrq, sinr, cqi, ri values shown, both while locked to B3 and while all bands are permitted?
 
neavydev
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Thu Jun 30, 2022 10:14 am

I don't have the locked values, as I have switched back to the MR600, but these were from yesterday:
lte.png
lte2.png
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sindy
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Thu Jun 30, 2022 11:30 am

Well, with just 5 MHz channels in B20, the Carrier Aggregation may not be as beneficial as you'd wish anyway, so I'd first concentrate on making B3 really work.

You've mentioned the same cables to the external antenna to be used - can you please check the SMA connector types? I have seen people not noticing they were connecting SMA-R (also called RP-SMA) on a cable to a regular SMA on the equipment, so the middle conductor ended up air-gapped. The Archer seems to have regular SMA so it should not be the case, but there may still be subtle mechanical differences so the air gap may be there with Chateau and not be there with Archer with the same RP-SMA on the cable.

I don't say it is impossible that the Chateau has problems with weak signal, the difference in throughput just seems too high to me.

I'd also try to swap the cables.
 
wgen
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Thu Jun 30, 2022 11:57 am

Presumably this is the same as selecting a single band in the Webfig UI for lte1?
The problem I had with that is it seems to stop carrier aggregation so you get a single band B3 and what I actually need is B3 as the primary with B20 (well and B28) as CA.
Having said that, choosing a single band still only gave 1.5Mbps compared to the 40M+ with the MR600.
The Chateau just seems very slow.
Is it less tolerant of lower signal strength of B3 Vs B20?
We have an external antenna on the chimney, as cell reception in the house is poor, but the same cables were used for the Chateau and MR600 and the cell scan is showing all the available bands.
It's not the same. You are telling the Chateau to lock on to a specific cell on a tower. If you allow other bands in the webfig ui as you say, they will then be used for CA but locking onto a specific cell will make sure it uses only that one as the primary band.
So you'll lock on to B3 with the command I sent before and if you've allowed bands 1,3,20,28 for example in web fig, it will use 1,20,28 as CA bands.
 
neavydev
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Thu Jun 30, 2022 12:57 pm

OK, I tried locking it to B3 and I don't see any CA.
Chateau scan for today:
ChapScan.png
Here is what I did to lock:
AT+QNWLOCK="common/4g",1,1392,427

Then I got this for signal:
Chap_signal.png
With this massive speed:
Chap_speed.png
For reference here is the signal without the lock:
Chap_nolock.png
Which gave this speed:
Chap_nolock_speed.png
For reference this is what the MR600 reports for signal:
MR600_signal.png
which gave this speed just before the Chateau swap:
MR600_speed.png
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sindy
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Thu Jun 30, 2022 1:24 pm

When taking into account only the "unlimited" setup, it's not "Mikrotik performs worse on the same signal", it's "Mikrotik indicates a much weaker signal". So it looks like either an issue with the connectors I've suggested before, or some manufacturing error (internal cabling inside the Chateau). I can see no other reason why the Mikrotik should show 10 dB less RSRP on the same antenna and cables.
 
wgen
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA  [SOLVED]

Thu Jun 30, 2022 1:32 pm

Thanks for sharing that, just for info - the Chateau external antenna outputs are really focused on 5G so you'll have to change some of the connectors inside to be able to get better signal for the 4G bands you want. See this post https://confusedbird.com/thread-119.html
Having a quick look at this, you may want to swap ANT4 & ANT5 for ANT0 & ANT1.. do at your own risk as the connectors are quite fragile.
 
neavydev
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Thu Jun 30, 2022 1:54 pm

Thanks for sharing that, just for info - the Chateau external antenna outputs are really focused on 5G so you'll have to change some of the connectors inside to be able to get better signal for the 4G bands you want. See this post https://confusedbird.com/thread-119.html
Having a quick look at this, you may want to swap ANT4 & ANT5 for ANT0 & ANT1.. do at your own risk as the connectors are quite fragile.
Thanks for this, as it sounds like the problem.
I have reached to point of either it goes back, or I try this, so I'll try this first...
 
neavydev
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Thu Jun 30, 2022 2:37 pm

Success. Now it only sees B3, which is probably where the external antenna is pointing.
However the speed and signal strength is comparable to the MR600.
Screenshot 2022-06-30 12.27.15.png
Screenshot 2022-06-30 12.29.23.png
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hecatae
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Mon Jul 04, 2022 3:21 pm

What brand is the external antenna?
 
neavydev
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Mon Jul 04, 2022 3:23 pm

Sorry, but no idea, as it is on the chimney 30' above the ground and was fitted by an installer specialising in improving mobile access in poor signal areas.
 
hecatae
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Mon Jul 04, 2022 5:08 pm

Have you tried connecting to B28?
 
neavydev
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Mon Jul 04, 2022 5:36 pm

Well no, as the roof mounted antenna is pointing to the closest cell tower with the best signal strength.
Which is why the latest scans show only B3...
 
hecatae
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Mon Jul 04, 2022 11:25 pm

Well no, as the roof mounted antenna is pointing to the closest cell tower with the best signal strength.
Which is why the latest scans show only B3...
Ok, just looking at how you can benefit from your cat20 modem compared to the cat6 in your mr600.

Are you running stable or testing routeros7?

Have you seen b32 at all?
 
neavydev
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Re: Chateau 5G - slow LTE B20/B3 CA

Tue Jul 05, 2022 12:27 am

I got the MikroTik as they are talking about adding 5G support to the cell towers at some point. There are some to the South but I have to climb up the hill to actually get any reception, so at the moment I'm happy to have a working 4G signal with room for future improvement 😉
It also has better monitoring and hopefully will persuade Arlo that their base station has a problem with 4G...
It's the latest stable RouterOS.
Just B3 on the local tower at the moment. They did have B20 but seem to have removed it when Three were doing their network improvements.

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