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Will Three address mast contention? Lets find out!

Mine does this on three all the time. In the mornings I can be hammering my connection seeing 80Mbps+ and then it'll drop to sub 1Mbps for no reason, rebooting cures it immediately and it'll return to full speed. During 11am-3pm if it starts this lark I can normally reboot the router and it'll return to around 20Mbps, but after 3pm most days the contention on my mast is so bad it makes no difference how many times I reboot the damn thing.

im wondering is that three doing some sort of rate limiting perhaps? You reboot, gain a new ip and you can get faster speeds until you hit the threshold again?
then again mine doesn’t do this in its old location on 4g not 4g+. Maybe I’ll test with my voda sim
 
Out of interest, do you guys use a 'mobile broadband' SIM (a data only SIM) or do you use a phone SIM which just happens to be in a router (and has inclusive minutes/texts)?
 
Also worth seeing if it's the reboot of the router, or the change of IP that's making things quick again - instead of rebooting the router, disable and re-enable the mobile data (or use HuaCtrl etc to swap/force bands - doing this drops the mobile connection each time and you should end up with a new IP too)
 
Three Home Broadband sim for me. Thinking about it changing the bands seems to make speed up again, I’m sure of it because I was messing with that last night so it’s not going to be the something based in/on router itself in my opinion. Going to chuck my voda sim in mine now to see what it does, won’t need it for my mobile tonight
 
Home broadband sim for me too. Also works swapping APN's, sometimes the 3internet one can be slow and i'll swap to three.co.uk and that'll be twice the bandwidth.
 
Home broadband sim for me too. Also works swapping APN's, sometimes the 3internet one can be slow and i'll swap to three.co.uk and that'll be twice the bandwidth.
And if you swap back to 3internet APN again - presumably it stays quick? Indicating it feels like some kind of time/volume based cap is being reached and then becomes throttled
 
If that is the case then it’s not a truly unlimited service is if they apply rate caps. I can probably test this as I can move all my traffic off this three connection and run speed tests less often. If they are generally higher with less data transfer then that points to it
 
Im doing a speedtest every half and hour for speed logging purposes, plus about 50% of my non latency dependant home traffic goes through this connection. Nothing is going out of this connection now and a speedtest every hour, lets see if these speed limits either dont kick in or kick in later
 
Results are so far inconclusive, speeds do seem to drop away though and if you switch bands or switch off mobile data speeds increase for a while. I’m not pushing anything through it but a speed test each hour and it does appear to still be doing it
 
Perhaps it’s something else. Maybe each of the IP ranges is in a specific data centre or just something that’s actually different. When you’re creating a new session via reboot etc it swaps you to the currently most available, but probably still highly congested route.
 
Perhaps it’s something else. Maybe each of the IP ranges is in a specific data centre or just something that’s actually different. When you’re creating a new session via reboot etc it swaps you to the currently most available, but probably still highly congested route.
This was a thought I had too, and perhaps over time that data center gets more congested, leading to the reduced speeds.

But saying this, I don't experience the issue - HManager reports that I've been connected (I assume with the same IP) for 32hrs and have used 52GB, speed.cloudflare.com reports my location to be just North o Winchester, which I think it shows where my internet exits (i.e. where the data center is) and my speeds are as fast as normal.
 
Speeds do seem to be generally higher I think if the connection is lightly loaded. Download Speeds would be in the teens for me usually but still with these results it’s hard to say
 

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What three is doing is beyond any human understanding, but whatever it is its extremely good value for money!
 
Well, zero for me every month, I'm struggling to disagree, but I'd rather it'd be a reliable better maintained and managed network, which I'm sure we all agree it isn't.

At only £72 a month more for a year with Virgin 100 I'll be leaving very soon.
 
I do have to admit I deeply regret cancelling my £5/month unlimited data SIM from Three. I’ll probably never get that again
They offered me unlimited calls texts and data for £3/mth when my contacts up!
 
I do have to admit I deeply regret cancelling my £5/month unlimited data SIM from Three. I’ll probably never get that again
It would not have lasted forever.. and if performance is bad.. it's just £5 thrown away.
 
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