sberry25, I have an ltap lte 6 with a poynting external antenna and I am only 1.5 miles away from the nearest cell tower, my speeds are 3.5 mbps down, would you have a resource for properly configuring the router? Any help would be appreciated.
Installing a mt dish 6lte kit antenna and i notice i am gaining slightly emproved down/upload speeds without mounting dish with metal angle piece the mast is 1klm away however speeds are dissapointing only @9mbps down and 20mbps upload any info how to obtain more speed also cannot get the mt app to opperate when teying to lig in.
Your phone acheives much faster speeds because most phones these days are able to combine 5 or more bands and support 256QAM which can boost speeds and get more out of what few RBs you get assigned on a congested tower espically when signal conditions are good i.e. line of sight to the tower. The main reason for bad LTE performance especially in well populated areas is often just congestion. I remember back when not many people had unlimited plans and LTE was very new, speeds on even just a single band where really fast. Try the speedtests on the SXT LTE6 in the early hours of the moring when the cell has almost no load. Bands 1 and 3 and 20 are often the ones which are very congested in the evening and on weekends and now with the pandemic even during the day. Try to force your mikrotik on to band 7 as a secondary band, if a tower in your are broadcasts that. Even if its further away or the signal level is worse the lack of load on it will make it faster. Most phones have good modems but bad antennas, the SXT has a good antenna but a bad modem and is thus slow on congested towers but might pick up bands that phones just refuse to use because due to their high frequency they just don't have good enough of a signal on a phones bad antenna.
It's normal. In the protocol stack, the mme asks the device "what are you?" If the device says "I'm a modem" them the mme will throttle as programmed. If however the device says "I'm a test modem" that's a different story... Prepaid devices are also prioritized differently.
This was my suspicion, an opaque set of commercial decisions about who gets what size slice of the bandwidth cake when, and why. I'm always a bit suspicious of speed test results too; ISPs know what that traffic is coming from "speedtest.net" and could definitely alter how much priority that gets over real-world data. Though you'd expect them to make things look better rather than worse, so who knows what the deal is there! (Do you actually get those whopping speeds through your phone, or just on the speed test)
Try to enhance RSSI that might help. Some of the directional antennas have very narrow projection so alignment should be accurate enough in order to get a good RSSI. -70dBm ... -75dBm would be nice You could try readjusting the antenna little more and also try to project that little upward due to height of the tower and your home. Try the same SIM on on you mobile and check the speed near to the tower that will confirm whether .there is any speed related issue with the service provider.
Hi thanks for sharing your experience. In parallel to you I happened to have gone down exactly the same path, even down to picking up my SXT on eBay and using a Smarty SIM. I too have seen the same speeds you’ve getting. I think I’ve seen a comment here that you put the Smarty SIM in your phone and were able to get band aggregation speeds at that point, is that correct? I’ve since stopped using this setup, but shortly after I did, I read about how carriers identify categories of devices based on the TTL of the packets leaving devices and that some carriers shape traffic differently depending on this metadata. As I understand it, TTL detection is how they can tell a tethered connection from a direct one and that some carriers then penalise teathering users depending on their T&Cs. Again, as I understand it, Smarty is not such a carrier however I believe Three are. This did still make me wonder if I had altered the TTL of the packets leaving my SXT to match that of my iPhone (this is fairly easy in ROS) if they would have handled the traffic differently.
Though I agree it seems more likely the modem aggregation limitations are the real problem. I saw there’s a new modem in the recently released Mikrotik “Chateau 5G”, so it’s possible we’ll see new mPCI cards soon too: i.mt.lv/cdn/product_files/Chateau_distro_4b_210344.pdf
you could setup a nice hot standby configuration using recursive routing, works a charm. I use something similar. What would be interesting is to try using ur phone as a hotspot and try a speed test. See if in this configuration in limits the speed or have you already tried it?
Did you also perform an upgrade of the LTE modem firmware? It is a separate upgrade step. In the command line interface of the MiktroTik: type "/interface lte firmware-upgrade lte1" to show the installed and available firmware version. If the available version is newer, perform the upgrade with "interface lte firmware-upgrade lte1 upgrade=yes"
Great video! I'm also using LTE right now with a poyinting v2 antenna and a archer mr600. Really happy with the setup but this looks great too. I will probably get fiber next summer so then i will probably get a pfsense router and connect the antenna to it and use it as backup.
It would be interesting to try a Three branded sim in there. I do a lot of 2g and 4g IoT design, the lower cost sim providers can be hit and miss (as can the brand names). I’ve had numerous “unit doesn’t work in a certain location despite full signal” issues eventually traced to some back end network issue. The sim resellers have strange ways of dealing with the networks. One confessed to me that the whole mobile system is a rats nest of problems being fire managed daily.
Some things to note, be glad you're not in the US. INTL mikrotik hardware only works with a few american LTE bands. Also, you can always configure some form of NIC Team (LACP, Static LAG, balance-RR, ETC), to ail the bad performance of the 100Mb ports on the SXT.
I would suggest disabling GSM and 3G in the interface. This can certainly help. In my experience 3 speeds with Mikrotik can be pretty poor. EE have consistently high speeds with those devices.
I think the Speedtest results are possibly misleading. As a test I uploaded this video on the 4G connection and it was on average 22 Mbps for the 4 GB file or about 20 minutes. I might get an EE SIM to try, though their SIM only deals are pretty poor.
Highly recommend, to install it to the chimney.... Sadly the speed might be around 50 Mbit/sec due the hardware limitations.... If you do the relocation please ground your mast or at least install an ethernet protection.... Your MikroTik hardware including an LTE CAT6 modem... LTE CAT 7 or higher capable for lower ping response and higher speeds
The problem in comparing these devices with our mobile phones is that the cellular modem in our phone is superior in that is can aggregate more bands and combinations of bands. My IPhone X, for example, has a Cat 16 modem manufactured by Qualcomm. I try to get a Cat6 cellular as a minimum.
You should try the 2.XGhz bands (Band 40, 41 ... Etc) instead of Band 3 (1800Mhz) depending your country and carrier capabilities. Also the directional antenna may be causing the bottleneck in upload speeds.
Interesting. How lucky are you to get my answer to this 4 months later. I haven't seen the ACTUAL CORRECT answer to why this is going slow. Your carrier throttles hotspot devices. (They all do.) They detect this by looking at the TTL. (In other words, if you do a speed test from the Mikrotik's TCP/IP stack itself, you'll get fast speeds. But your desktop/laptop is likely behind a NAT, just like how a hotspot device looks.) Read the Mikrotik page on LTE. At the very bottom, they talk about this. Be careful that messing with your TTL to look like a mobile phone and get mobile phone speeds might be against your terms and conditions. (lol.) Also, it's very possible your carrier knows you have a Mikrotik LTE card hooked up and not a phone. (Because of the first few digits of your IMEI.) This can also be messed with, but legality of this depends on the country you're in. (European countries it's illegal. USA it's legal. According to Wikipedia anyway.)
Yes, same speeds on my phone with the SIM and no improvement in the 4G modem with my phone SIM. You're right though and I may do a tour of Peterborough with this strapped to my bike :D
What phone are you testing with? It sounds like your phone may have a higher category LTE modem compared to the CAT6 one in the Mikrotik. I tested one of these at work (which gets placed in IP pass-through, connected to another dual wan router to backup the main VDSL/FTTP/etc. at our sites) and got around 80Mbps out of it, however my phone (Nokia 8) which has a CAT9 LTE modem can often get around 120mbps at the same location with the same sim on Vodafone.
Are you also using the "Smarty" network on your mobile phone? Smarty may be using the same network and towers as the "big names", but most of the time they "Smarty" can sell at a lower price because they are buying a lower tier from the main carrier. If you were to put the SIM out of your phone in the Mikrotik, I suspect that you would be getting comparable speeds.
I did a SIM swap and both devices behaved as I did before, so I think it's the hardware or some throttling done by H3G because they can tell the Mikrotik is not a mobile phone.
I've installed quite a few 4g, 4g+ setups in various places , mainly using Huawei and ZyXEL modem-routers and sometimes separate roof mounted external antennas, Poynting (local ZA brand) have a range with a variety of gains. I get goods results , 50+ Mbps. Try a Huawei B618 Router if you can find one, it has the two ports for external LTE antenna, but might not even need that. Sometimes I stick the antenna on the top of a 6m Al pole (50mm, 2mm wall thickness) mounted on the chim chimney. I don't think LTE stuff is Mikrotik's focus so might well be limited. Not much you can do with 10 Mbps nowdaze.
Mobile providers do limit bandwidth for non-mobile devices. You can change IMEI and TTL to make it work significantly better I have chepo Huawei Cat4 LTE and getting over 100mbps on download.
I didn't manage to find a way to use the USB tethering option with pfSense. I can of course use tethering and portable hotspot for my work laptop though,. but I was after something more seamless.
I'm just looking at doing the exact same thing and am also in the UK on Three. Did you ever get anywhere with improving the speed? I typically get 40-60mbps on my phone or desktop and really wouldn't want to drop much.
@@sdgelectronics I believe Three aren't too happy with 'tethering' - it would be interesting to know what speeds you get if you tether your laptop to your mobile phone and run a speed test. If the result is similar to what you get on this Mikrotik then you may be getting throttled as a 'tethered' device. If this is the case then there may be a way to address this in RouterOS which I can elaborate on if useful.
I'm currently doing battle with a Teltonica RUT955 paired with a SIRO LMO6138-WB-SMSM - 5G/4G/LTE Multiband MIMO Outdoor Omni antenna from Connex, and a SIRO SMP-4G-MIMO 5M - LTE 4G MIMO Directional Panel Antenna. I'm getting similar results as I do from my phone. So perhaps 3 Mobile throttle non-phone devices?
well here in my country i get around 7000mbps on CAT19 modem in my Huawei P20 and it uses 4G+3G+2G bands 2+2+2+20+20+20 (and i don't remember 3G and 2G but 2g gives around10mbps on all CA but 3G gives around 100mbps wich CA on all 3 cell's on one tower and 2 frequencies so CA's) aggregation and at daytime i get around 400mbps and ping of 15ms and BTW i use huawei modem with cat19 4g modem and speeds are amazing and i use custom modified firmware do do this stuff and i did put external antennas and yet to have 5G in out little country so if 5G comes in them our speeds are over 2.5-3gbps
This device may be nice for a permanent connection, but for a backup connection why not use your phone? Many phones can be used as a internet gateway at whatever speed they connect and the USB can do.
I can indeed use my phone for tethering which works nicely, but I was hoping for something seamless that will continue service to the whole network. I also had no luck with pfSense and my phone set to tether over USB, but that may be a config error.
Mikrotik devices are pretty good. Happy to help, I install them for users in rural locations.
sberry25, I have an ltap lte 6 with a poynting external antenna and I am only 1.5 miles away from the nearest cell tower, my speeds are 3.5 mbps down, would you have a resource for properly configuring the router?
Any help would be appreciated.
Installing a mt dish 6lte kit antenna and i notice i am gaining slightly emproved down/upload speeds without mounting dish with metal angle piece the mast is 1klm away however speeds are dissapointing only @9mbps down and 20mbps upload any info how to obtain more speed also cannot get the mt app to opperate when teying to lig in.
Get your long ladder out Steve! Your chimney is where your receiver wants to be. That would eliminate one of your obstacles for good signal.
Your phone acheives much faster speeds because most phones these days are able to combine 5 or more bands and support 256QAM which can boost speeds and get more out of what few RBs you get assigned on a congested tower espically when signal conditions are good i.e. line of sight to the tower. The main reason for bad LTE performance especially in well populated areas is often just congestion. I remember back when not many people had unlimited plans and LTE was very new, speeds on even just a single band where really fast. Try the speedtests on the SXT LTE6 in the early hours of the moring when the cell has almost no load. Bands 1 and 3 and 20 are often the ones which are very congested in the evening and on weekends and now with the pandemic even during the day. Try to force your mikrotik on to band 7 as a secondary band, if a tower in your are broadcasts that. Even if its further away or the signal level is worse the lack of load on it will make it faster. Most phones have good modems but bad antennas, the SXT has a good antenna but a bad modem and is thus slow on congested towers but might pick up bands that phones just refuse to use because due to their high frequency they just don't have good enough of a signal on a phones bad antenna.
It's normal. In the protocol stack, the mme asks the device "what are you?" If the device says "I'm a modem" them the mme will throttle as programmed. If however the device says "I'm a test modem" that's a different story... Prepaid devices are also prioritized differently.
Interesting if that is the case, I'll see if I can find a way to test that
Also a reference point is I actually uploaded this video over 4G - the speed was on average 20 Mbps, but the peak was a flat line at 24 Mbps
This was my suspicion, an opaque set of commercial decisions about who gets what size slice of the bandwidth cake when, and why. I'm always a bit suspicious of speed test results too; ISPs know what that traffic is coming from "speedtest.net" and could definitely alter how much priority that gets over real-world data. Though you'd expect them to make things look better rather than worse, so who knows what the deal is there! (Do you actually get those whopping speeds through your phone, or just on the speed test)
That was very interesting... it would be nice to see you keep investigating and see where you end up.
Try to enhance RSSI that might help. Some of the directional antennas have very narrow projection so alignment should be accurate enough in order to get a good RSSI. -70dBm ... -75dBm would be nice You could try readjusting the antenna little more and also try to project that little upward due to height of the tower and your home. Try the same SIM on on you mobile and check the speed near to the tower that will confirm whether .there is any speed related issue with the service provider.
Oh man....your LTE connection is faster than my DSL connection...and cheaper, too! I hope they will eventually install fibre in my small village.
Hi thanks for sharing your experience.
In parallel to you I happened to have gone down exactly the same path, even down to picking up my SXT on eBay and using a Smarty SIM. I too have seen the same speeds you’ve getting. I think I’ve seen a comment here that you put the Smarty SIM in your phone and were able to get band aggregation speeds at that point, is that correct?
I’ve since stopped using this setup, but shortly after I did, I read about how carriers identify categories of devices based on the TTL of the packets leaving devices and that some carriers shape traffic differently depending on this metadata. As I understand it, TTL detection is how they can tell a tethered connection from a direct one and that some carriers then penalise teathering users depending on their T&Cs. Again, as I understand it, Smarty is not such a carrier however I believe Three are.
This did still make me wonder if I had altered the TTL of the packets leaving my SXT to match that of my iPhone (this is fairly easy in ROS) if they would have handled the traffic differently.
Though I agree it seems more likely the modem aggregation limitations are the real problem.
I saw there’s a new modem in the recently released Mikrotik “Chateau 5G”, so it’s possible we’ll see new mPCI cards soon too: i.mt.lv/cdn/product_files/Chateau_distro_4b_210344.pdf
you could setup a nice hot standby configuration using recursive routing, works a charm. I use something similar. What would be interesting is to try using ur phone as a hotspot and try a speed test. See if in this configuration in limits the speed or have you already tried it?
Did you also perform an upgrade of the LTE modem firmware? It is a separate upgrade step. In the command line interface of the MiktroTik: type "/interface lte firmware-upgrade lte1" to show the installed and available firmware version. If the available version is newer, perform the upgrade with "interface lte firmware-upgrade lte1 upgrade=yes"
I actually didn't know this. Thanks!
Great video! I'm also using LTE right now with a poyinting v2 antenna and a archer mr600. Really happy with the setup but this looks great too. I will probably get fiber next summer so then i will probably get a pfsense router and connect the antenna to it and use it as backup.
It would be interesting to try a Three branded sim in there. I do a lot of 2g and 4g IoT design, the lower cost sim providers can be hit and miss (as can the brand names). I’ve had numerous “unit doesn’t work in a certain location despite full signal” issues eventually traced to some back end network issue.
The sim resellers have strange ways of dealing with the networks. One confessed to me that the whole mobile system is a rats nest of problems being fire managed daily.
Some things to note, be glad you're not in the US. INTL mikrotik hardware only works with a few american LTE bands. Also, you can always configure some form of NIC Team (LACP, Static LAG, balance-RR, ETC), to ail the bad performance of the 100Mb ports on the SXT.
Cell phones always get priority over hotspots or data sim cards.
I would suggest disabling GSM and 3G in the interface. This can certainly help. In my experience 3 speeds with Mikrotik can be pretty poor. EE have consistently high speeds with those devices.
I think the Speedtest results are possibly misleading. As a test I uploaded this video on the 4G connection and it was on average 22 Mbps for the 4 GB file or about 20 minutes. I might get an EE SIM to try, though their SIM only deals are pretty poor.
@@sdgelectronics Make sure to use some specific server on speedtest. They all somewhat differ in bandwidth and routing across the Internet.
Highly recommend, to install it to the chimney.... Sadly the speed might be around 50 Mbit/sec due the hardware limitations....
If you do the relocation please ground your mast or at least install an ethernet protection....
Your MikroTik hardware including an LTE CAT6 modem... LTE CAT 7 or higher capable for lower ping response and higher speeds
The problem in comparing these devices with our mobile phones is that the cellular modem in our phone is superior in that is can aggregate more bands and combinations of bands. My IPhone X, for example, has a Cat 16 modem manufactured by Qualcomm. I try to get a Cat6 cellular as a minimum.
You should try the 2.XGhz bands (Band 40, 41 ... Etc) instead of Band 3 (1800Mhz) depending your country and carrier capabilities.
Also the directional antenna may be causing the bottleneck in upload speeds.
Thanks for this video. I Will think about this or the Better One.
Support
Interesting. How lucky are you to get my answer to this 4 months later.
I haven't seen the ACTUAL CORRECT answer to why this is going slow. Your carrier throttles hotspot devices. (They all do.) They detect this by looking at the TTL. (In other words, if you do a speed test from the Mikrotik's TCP/IP stack itself, you'll get fast speeds. But your desktop/laptop is likely behind a NAT, just like how a hotspot device looks.) Read the Mikrotik page on LTE. At the very bottom, they talk about this. Be careful that messing with your TTL to look like a mobile phone and get mobile phone speeds might be against your terms and conditions. (lol.)
Also, it's very possible your carrier knows you have a Mikrotik LTE card hooked up and not a phone. (Because of the first few digits of your IMEI.) This can also be messed with, but legality of this depends on the country you're in. (European countries it's illegal. USA it's legal. According to Wikipedia anyway.)
Hey I want to know more about that mikrotik that exact model
I'd take the 4g modem to a different location and test on another 4g mast. Did you test the smarty sim in your phone?
Yes, same speeds on my phone with the SIM and no improvement in the 4G modem with my phone SIM. You're right though and I may do a tour of Peterborough with this strapped to my bike :D
Very nice (useful information) ! Thanks a lot !
You can try for the next video Hakko fx 951vs 951 clone .
You are tested on LTE APN "IPv4/IPv6" mode? Any problems with this?
What phone are you testing with?
It sounds like your phone may have a higher category LTE modem compared to the CAT6 one in the Mikrotik.
I tested one of these at work (which gets placed in IP pass-through, connected to another dual wan router to backup the main VDSL/FTTP/etc. at our sites) and got around 80Mbps out of it, however my phone (Nokia 8) which has a CAT9 LTE modem can often get around 120mbps at the same location with the same sim on Vodafone.
Thanks for sharing
try your phone sim in the mikrotik. might be an operator thing.
I forgot to mention I tried with SIMs in all configurations, but the same result. It's actually the same operator, just under a different brand.
Are you also using the "Smarty" network on your mobile phone? Smarty may be using the same network and towers as the "big names", but most of the time they "Smarty" can sell at a lower price because they are buying a lower tier from the main carrier. If you were to put the SIM out of your phone in the Mikrotik, I suspect that you would be getting comparable speeds.
I did a SIM swap and both devices behaved as I did before, so I think it's the hardware or some throttling done by H3G because they can tell the Mikrotik is not a mobile phone.
I've installed quite a few 4g, 4g+ setups in various places , mainly using Huawei and ZyXEL modem-routers and sometimes separate roof mounted external antennas, Poynting (local ZA brand) have a range with a variety of gains. I get goods results , 50+ Mbps. Try a Huawei B618 Router if you can find one, it has the two ports for external LTE antenna, but might not even need that. Sometimes I stick the antenna on the top of a 6m Al pole (50mm, 2mm wall thickness) mounted on the chim chimney. I don't think LTE stuff is Mikrotik's focus so might well be limited. Not much you can do with 10 Mbps nowdaze.
Mobile providers do limit bandwidth for non-mobile devices. You can change IMEI and TTL to make it work significantly better
I have chepo Huawei Cat4 LTE and getting over 100mbps on download.
Paul how are you changing it on the cheap modem? Cheers
How to switch between service provider when dual sim option is given
That looks cool at the side of your house, but if it is just for a backup connection, why not simply use USB-tethering with your phone?
I didn't manage to find a way to use the USB tethering option with pfSense. I can of course use tethering and portable hotspot for my work laptop though,. but I was after something more seamless.
Why you have a good antenna on your house? For NTP?
Thank you for this wonderful video about this product. I am from India. Would you please let me know where can I get this product? Thank you.
You can buy from Multilink or Rectus India they are authorised distributors
I'm just looking at doing the exact same thing and am also in the UK on Three. Did you ever get anywhere with improving the speed? I typically get 40-60mbps on my phone or desktop and really wouldn't want to drop much.
I get a consistent 24 down 24 up with file transfer. Transient traffic is often higher, so I think the throttling is done by the carrier.
@@sdgelectronics I believe Three aren't too happy with 'tethering' - it would be interesting to know what speeds you get if you tether your laptop to your mobile phone and run a speed test. If the result is similar to what you get on this Mikrotik then you may be getting throttled as a 'tethered' device. If this is the case then there may be a way to address this in RouterOS which I can elaborate on if useful.
Where I buy this? Any link bro?
I'm currently doing battle with a Teltonica RUT955 paired with a SIRO LMO6138-WB-SMSM - 5G/4G/LTE Multiband MIMO Outdoor Omni antenna from Connex, and a SIRO SMP-4G-MIMO 5M - LTE 4G MIMO Directional Panel Antenna. I'm getting similar results as I do from my phone. So perhaps 3 Mobile throttle non-phone devices?
I'm starting to suspect there is some device-specific throttling. The question is whether there is a means to spoof the ID
How many bands can aggregate?
GPS on home? What it could be used for?
EDIT: Oh god, I just learned about this whole GPSDO :O
GPS for the 10 MHz reference
Nice
wtf how fiber gives problems?
Ensure you use the SMARTY apn "mob.asm.net"
Also set your MTU to "1396" as that is what most mobile devices use
well here in my country i get around 7000mbps on CAT19 modem in my Huawei P20 and it uses 4G+3G+2G bands 2+2+2+20+20+20 (and i don't remember 3G and 2G but 2g gives around10mbps on all CA but 3G gives around 100mbps wich CA on all 3 cell's on one tower and 2 frequencies so CA's) aggregation and at daytime i get around 400mbps and ping of 15ms and BTW i use huawei modem with cat19 4g modem and speeds are amazing and i use custom modified firmware do do this stuff and i did put external antennas and yet to have 5G in out little country so if 5G comes in them our speeds are over 2.5-3gbps
This device may be nice for a permanent connection, but for a backup connection why not use your phone?
Many phones can be used as a internet gateway at whatever speed they connect and the USB can do.
I can indeed use my phone for tethering which works nicely, but I was hoping for something seamless that will continue service to the whole network. I also had no luck with pfSense and my phone set to tether over USB, but that may be a config error.
Phones will always get better speed results.
very poor results , I don't like it