Community discussions

MikroTik App
 
User avatar
clorichel
just joined
Topic Author
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Aug 11, 2022 11:40 am

Chateau 5G and Cell ID

Thu Aug 11, 2022 12:56 pm

Hello Mikrotik fans ✌️

Happy Chateau 5G owner here (the D53G-5HacD2HnD) ! Having poor signal at some place, I'm lucky to have this antenna for which I'm trying to adjust the angle and orientation. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to map out fields from RouterOS like Current Cell ID, eNB ID, Sector ID, and PHY Cell ID with actual antennas outside 🙃

Here in France we have https://www.cartoradio.fr/ (and some up-to-date open data we can download) where we can type in an address and zoom out the map to find installed antennas, which we can filter by provider, 3g/4g/5g etc... Problem being : no ID from cartoradio matches any of those displayed on the MikroTik interface 🤦‍♂️

The MikroTik LTE documentation recommends using Cell Id Finder but it doesn't seem to work anymore. Had more luck with CellMapper where I finally could find the "antenna site" displayed on the map with the "eNB ID" MikroTik field. When clicking on the antenna site on CellMapper, on the details I can find the "Current Cell ID" my MikroTik is telling me it's connected on. Problems being:
- The "Current Cell ID" details on CellMapper does not seem accurate (or I'm so lucky I'm getting signal going in another direction than mine from an antenna at ~10km distance 😅).
- From time to time, my MikroTik is connecting to some other antenna which seems to bring me faster speed, so I'd love to adjust my external antenna but I cannot find the relevant "eNB ID" on CellMapper (probably a newer antenna site not registered there yet) so I don't know where it is on the map.

That said, here comes the questions (numbered to ease potential answers):

1. does anyone know of a tool that would accurately help me find the best direction from my place to a provider antenna? I've seen screenshots with elevation profiles and details like that, but cannot find the software that generated those. Such a software would be of great help to start with 😍

2. I'd be happy to try all antennas displayed on my MikroTik through the LTE Cell Monitor, but this tool only displays a 3 digits "PHY Cell ID" which I cannot map out to the "eNB ID"! Would someone know how to find the "eNB ID" from the "PHY Cell ID" so that I could find it the map and position my antenna accordingly? I've seen the Cell ID Calculator but it needs the "eNB ID" to give you the "PHY Cell ID" (and more), not the other way around...

3. can someone point me to some piece of documentation explaining what "Primary Band" and "CA Band" are ? From MikroTik doc, I know I could lock those, but I don't know what they are 🤓

Thank you ❤️
 
User avatar
clorichel
just joined
Topic Author
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Aug 11, 2022 11:40 am

Re: Chateau 5G and Cell ID

Sun Aug 14, 2022 11:01 am

Been digging 👷‍♂️

1. have not find a complete tool yet, but using https://www.cartoradio.fr/ to find the antennas, then with https://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/ (both in French...) one can use their GPS coordinates along with the ones from the targetted antenna and establish an elevation profile. Using your home and antenna height you can see if that will work or not.

2. ultimately found the RNC Mobile website where one can search both the "eNB ID" or the "Current Cell ID" displayed by the MikroTik interface, and the other ids used by cartoradio, which are all getting you the exact antenna in return along with tons of details about that antenna 😍

3. still have no idea what "Primary Band" and "CA Band" are 🙃
 
User avatar
mkx
Forum Guru
Forum Guru
Posts: 11381
Joined: Thu Mar 03, 2016 10:23 pm

Re: Chateau 5G and Cell ID

Sun Aug 14, 2022 11:22 pm

3. Primary band is most of times band with strongest signal. That's the band used by older modems which did not support CA. And that's the band which "draws signal bars" on mobile device. Sometimes it can be frequency band with signal strength not the highest if MNO knows better (or thinks it knows better) to provide better speed due to other properties of different bands (such as frequency band width, larger band width offers higher capacity and thus throughput).
CA band is secondary band (CA stands for Carrier Aggregation and combines throughputs from several bands if signal strength is usable and both device and network support band combination). Older CA devices only utilized CA in downlink (from internet towards user) while recent devices utilize CA in both directions.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Bing [Bot], Google [Bot] and 91 guests