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B818 vs CPE Pro 3

Timc168

Casual Member
Hello! I recently bought a VN007+ after realising how much faster my phone (Poco F3) was than my FTTC home broadband connection and finding this site when trying to find a 5g router. Unfortunately, I was unaware of the somewhat deceptive nature of 5g icons on phones as well as online map coverages as I cannot see any 5g bands I’m connected to on the cell mapper app. The speeds vary a lot, up to around 250mbs when held at an outstretched arms length outside my top window (phone at 350), to mostly 10mbs on the window sill, and 110mbs occassionally when bright and clear (phone 110 and 240 respectively). Having glimpsed at what is possible, I would now like to grasp for the heavens once more and reach close to or surpass those numbers again, albeit with more stability and without half hanging out the window when using the internet. I’m leading towards either the B818 or the CPE Pro 3 and am unable to decide which. How much do I lose out by not adding a single external antenna to both. Is it better to get B818 + antenna or CPE Pro 3 without. And how far off is the VN007+ from these 2 with an antenna attached also. If there’s a cheaper and more effective mod-able router + 2 antennae setup I would be willing to consider that too, though I’m slightly hesitant at the thought of potentially 2 expensive bits getting stolen at the same time as I live in somewhat of a roughish area. I have a pole outside my flat which I can mount on but its slightly bent at around a 15˚ angle which I don’t know if matters or not either.
 
The Huawei B818 router is not a 5g router. It is however a very good 4g one.
If you already have a Unicom VN007+ then you need to experiment to try and find a sweet spot to get the best possible signal. I'm not familiar with this router to know it's antenna configuration, I'll leave that to someone far more knowledgeable than myself!
 
But you have a vn007+?

B818 would be a downgrade, welcome by the way.

There's a couple of vn007+ owners here, they should be able to help you with this CAT20 router
 
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Hi. Thank you for the replies. Interesting, I was not aware of that. I guess I was surprised at how regularly it was performing around 10% as fast as my phone though I've managed to improve that quite a bit after moving it about. I will try adding an antenna to it and hopefully the speeds and stability will match even more. My concerns were that I might be being limited by it only being 2x2 mimo for 4g and potentially not having the right carrier aggregation for my bands.
 
The VN007+ is quite a capable device.
It is only 2x2 MIMO but you do need very specific conditions to get 4x4 anyway.

B818 would be a downgrade - the VN007+ may have 2x2 MIMO but the B818 doesn't have 5G. That being said, the B818 can aggregate 3CA in certain scenarios, more so than the VN007+.

Likewise, the VN007+ is very easy to get into the superuser admin pages allowing for far greater customisation than the B818, I personally use cell locking to lock the router on the band and cell I want else it'll keep switching between band 1 and 3.

I have modified mine with external antennas and it does make a difference. The only thing I would say is to be careful with the IPX connectors on the board as they're close together and the cables can pop off easily. I regret not hot gluing mine securely but it works.
 
Can you or anyone recommend me one or two good omnidirectional 4g antenna options to choose from please. And noted, thank you. I will try taping it. I'm guessing I can just ignore all the ports apart from the 2 4g ones? It does say 78 on "current band" but if my phone hasn't ever shown that, then I doubt my router is getting anything from it.
 
I would go for CPE Pro 3 model H138-380 . Modify it to external Antenna (SMA to IPX connectors) .

Thre wifi range of CPE Pro 3 is really better than CPE Pro and CPE Pro 2.
It supoorts almost every bands 4G/5G out there.

I am going to modify CPE Pro 3 in coming days.
 
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Can you or anyone recommend me one or two good omnidirectional 4g antenna options to choose from please. And noted, thank you. I will try taping it. I'm guessing I can just ignore all the ports apart from the 2 4g ones? It does say 78 on "current band" but if my phone hasn't ever shown that, then I doubt my router is getting anything from it.
Taoglas / Panorama.

With my VN007 i'm using two of this one, cross polarised and covers all frequencies in use in the UK.


Avoid Poynting they have limited frequencies, are huge, expensive and ugly. (My personal opinion btw, they performed very poorly for me).
 
Taoglas / Panorama.

With my VN007 i'm using two of this one, cross polarised and covers all frequencies in use in the UK.


Avoid Poynting they have limited frequencies, are huge, expensive and ugly. (My personal opinion btw, they performed very poorly for me).
I'm using these, https://mikrotik.com/product/hgo_lte_w
They cover 699MHz – 3,8GHz
 
Hi, I'm modifying my CPE Pro 3 H138-380 and would like to know which is the 4G antenna and which is the 5G antenna? So I can attach the patch leads for the external antenna?
 

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Hi, I'm modifying my CPE Pro 3 H138-380 and would like to know which is the 4G antenna and which is the 5G antenna? So I can attach the patch leads for the external antenna?
Are they labelled with anything ? Usually they print what they are or their frequency on them. Big square black one on the left ? is probably 5G main hard to read what's written on it. Hard to tell from the pics, is it cross polarised ? (do you see a pattern, and then an opposite of that pattern printed on the PCB? )

Edit: The one that says ANT361 looks like a good bet too. It has 3 cables. Probably means it's cross polarised, and it's also the 5.8GHz WiFi antenna (common for 5GHz-ish PCB antennas to use the same PCB for 5G and 5GHz wifi).
 
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Are they labelled with anything ? Usually they print what they are or their frequency on them. Big square black one on the left ? is probably 5G main hard to read what's written on it. Hard to tell from the pics, is it cross polarised ? (do you see a pattern, and then an opposite of that pattern printed on the PCB? )

Edit: The one that says ANT361 looks like a good bet too. It has 3 cables. Probably means it's cross polarised, and it's also the 5.8GHz WiFi antenna (common for 5GHz-ish PCB antennas to use the same PCB for 5G and 5GHz wifi).
Hi, I'm modifying my CPE Pro 3 H138-380 and would like to know which is the 4G antenna and which is the 5G antenna? So I can attach the patch leads for the external antenna?
So I've disassembled my H138-380 and here is what I figured out:
There are a total of 10 antennas!! + Wifi + ANT0

Antennae 4G / 5G
A2 & A9 (main / div)-> This seems to be a dedicated antenna for LB as it has the biggest footprint which I believe is synonym with low freq. (small footprint -> high freq and vice versa) and after plugging a 2x2 MIMO I can only get B20 / B28 with no carrier aggregation. So again my guess is that this is a dedicated antenna for LB, unusual compared with other routers out there.

A1 & A7 -> This pair connected to a 2x2 MIMO gives me 4G aggregation with B20 / B28 (from A2 & A9) and both A1 + A3 I believe, at least A1 for sure. This pair also get 5G for refarmed bands. My guess is A1 is TRX and A7 is DIV in 2x2MIMO. I think this antenna covers 1452MHz or 1710MHz to 2690MHz as if I don't connect A2/A9 I can't get B20 nor B28.

A4 -> A3 -> My guess this pair is dedicated to LTE 4x4 MIMO in conjunction with A1 & A7 for bands 1452MHz or 1710MHz to 2690MHz (so B1 - B3 and so on). Since I only have a 2x2 MIMO I haven't been able to validate my hypothesis.

For the last 4 (round shape antennas) my guess is they are dedicated 4x4 MIMO 5G for band N79 (4400 - 5000). I'm not sure if this would take a 2x2 MIMO as band N79 is not available in my area.
A6_A -> A8_B
A6_B -> A8_A

So I have my unit currently working with an external 2x2MIMO in 4G mode hooked up to A1 - A7 and is working fine , getting 150mb/30mb pretty solid (internal antennae gives me 30mb/5mb for reference). if you had a 4x4MIMO my guess would be to use A1-A7 and A3-A4. This should cover LTE bands and 5G refarmed bands. If you wanted to try a 5G 4x4 MIMO I'd try A6_A & A8_B and A6_B & A8_A

Let me know if you managed to make it work.
 
I have a 2x2 MIMO also so similar set up to you LTE on band 20
I've identified A7 (red) but not able to find A1 unless I remove the cover and pop more ufl connectors, I prefer not. What colour of antenna wire is going to A1, is it Red also?
 
Unfortunately to get access to ANT3 as well as A9 and others you need to remove the plastic cover.
So the antennas are all labelled, however labels are the other way around, i.e. ANT3&1 really means -> ANT3 is top (not bottom as the name may suggest) with RED cable and ANT1 bottom WHITE cable Same logic goes for ANT4&7 (A7 RED DIV / A4 WHITE TRX - MIMO). Picture attached.

Note that:
- A2 TX-> A9 800Mhz dedicated antenna (B20-B28)

LTE 2x2 and 4x4 MIMO

- A1 TRX &A7 seem to cover mid band (B1-B3 etc...) as well as 5G over refarmed -> 2x2 MIMO, these are the one you want to expose. If your carrier requires B20 then also A2 and A9 as 800 Mhz does seem to be covered by A1/A7 nor by A4/A3

- A4 TXR / A3 DIV -> 4x4 MIMO

In my case as my carrier needs B20 to register the SIM, this effectively means that all the above antennas (1 dedicated and 4x4 MIMO) need to point at the same mast if you want to fully maximise the router . To overcome this I just connected A2&A1 to one end of the 2x2 MIMO (600Mhz to 3.8Ghz) and A9&A7 to the other end of the 2x2 MIMO. I'm not particularly happy about having to ports connected to the same antenna but it seems to do the trick just fine and has been working for the last 48h after multiples manual reboots to check all was OK.

So if I connect the MIMO to A2/A9 only, the router is only able to connect to band B20 and it's not able to aggregate B1 nor B3 so this antenna has to be a fully dedicated 800Mhz antenna. Not sure how some companies that sell the router with the pigtails already installed are re-routing this ports to be honest...

The round shape antennas (A6_A / A8_B / A6_B / A8_A) seem to be dedicated to 5G - N79 (my guess) however none of the masts I can reach support this yet, so I can't validate my guess. 5G with refarmed bands seem to work only through A1/A7 & likely A4/A3 (in 4x4 MIMO conf. that I haven't been able to test yet) in MID bands (B1, B3 etc)

Overall this seems to be a great router with the latest features, however the A2/A9 antenna situation is rather peculiar and puts me down a bit, although for other providers that doesn't require B20 to register the SIM this may be just fine. Will try at some point with a Three & Vodafone sims.

Speeds are fluctuating from 120Mb to 220Mb download. Upload seems to be stuck at 20Mb. My antennas are 2 SISO spaced 60cm approx. I believe they should be spaced at least 1m apart. but I think the +200Mb indicates MIMO is working to a some degree. If anyone knows a way to see what bands are being aggregated please shout, that would be really helpful

1657625428005.png


Some pictures below
 
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Do you mind me asking how you identified the antenna ports, was it with a spectrum analyser or process of elimination?
I will try the A1 and A7 combination this evening as I have a Taoglas
TGX.45.A.BI.01 2x2 Mimo and will also try A2 and A9 to see how I fair out.
 
Do you mind me asking how you identified the antenna ports, was it with a spectrum analyser or process of elimination?
I will try the A1 and A7 combination this evening as I have a Taoglas
TGX.45.A.BI.01 2x2 Mimo and will also try A2 and A9 to see how I fair out.

I don't have equipment at home however I have a 2x2 MIMO 600Mhz to 3.8Ghz logaritmic.
Method -> By observing the antennas you can figure out that they come in pairs A2 and A9 / A1 and A7 / and so on.

disconnect all antennas ( A1 to A8_b)
Trial and error -> A2 & A9 registered my SIM on B20 however A9 only does not upload so I assumed a) A2& A9 covers 800Mhz and A9 has to be diversity not main so A2 has to be main.

Once this two were settled I continued with the pair A1 and A7 and so forth...

what I know is that B20 & B28 can only be achieved via A2&A9
and bands B1 & B3 can only be achieved by A1-A7 and A4-A3

the router specs sheet (unfortunately does not cover the antenna routing...) indicates the 5G is done by a 4x4 MIMO, that can only be the 4 round shape antennas as they are all pointing in the same direction (6AB 8AB) so those are not your target...

Also I've been using different tools to identify which band I was connected to... There is a javascript piece of code that make it handy for the web browser (pic 3 in previous post), in my case for whatever reason the router some times lock B1 as main band what screw things up, I have to manually set the main band to B20... but again this is carrier specific to EIR what is my provider. If this is your case you would need to get a splitter like this from amazon or whatever and tie A2 to A7 (one end of the MIMO) A9 to A1 (the other end of the antenna) after hundreds of trials this is the only thing that works out for me.
 
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