Sponsored Links

EE Mobile BB - Browsing Issues

andyh747

Regular Member
Hi All,
I've been installing a lot of mobile broadband over the last six months or so. I've used a mixture of Three, EE and Vodafone. The EE and Vodafone connections have always been rock solid with few issues. Three caused a few problems as others have already reported with websites hanging during loading. I seemed to have solved this in all cases by lowering the MTU and changing the default DNS servers. I know this hasn't worked for everyone but it certainly has solved the problems on my installs.

I've now got a new problem reported very similar to the Three issue. This time it's affecting EE connections. Almost identical symptoms with good speeds reported but huge lag in loading web pages and often they won't load at all. Streaming is fine with no reported problems. Adjusting MTU and DNS servers has no effect on the problem. However using a VPN completely eliminates the problem and websites load without any delay. This is a recent issue with quite a few reporting the problem. All connected to EE but connected on different masts so it's not related to an isolated mast connection.

Anyone else experienced this and know why it's just a recent issue? I doubt there's any fix for this as it appears network related and, on this occasion, changing MTU and DNS doesn't help. Reported to EE who deny there's an issue - sounds familiar!

Thanks for any info.
 
Where have you seen others reporting it and do you know if it's specific to a particular region or part of the UK?
 
This is all in the Gloucestershire region. I have in excess of 50 installs. I have received these reports from several users. Some connected to masts in Gloucester itself, others connected to a mast in Tewkesbury. All reporting the same symptoms and all reporting same behaviour on phones connected to EE.
 
Sponsored Links
This is all in the Gloucestershire region. I have in excess of 50 installs. I have received these reports from several users. Some connected to masts in Gloucester itself, others connected to a mast in Tewkesbury. All reporting the same symptoms and all reporting same behaviour on phones connected to EE.
I use EE 4G for broadband and haven't seen any issues so certainly not affecting all areas (I'm in Kent).
 
Thanks for the replies. I've now changed one customer across to a different mast with a different set of DNS servers. I doubt it will have any effect but I wanted to experiment. I also got the customer to contact EE who confirmed there is an issue on their network and the behaviour described was one of the symptoms. They refunded the customer a full months payment and said they were working on the issue. This is obviously not country wide but it seems is a known issue.

I didn't know EE provided IPV4 and IPV6 APNs. I thought there was only one APN, "everywhere". Also if you switch to IPV6, doesn't your LAN also need to allocate IPV6 addresses?
 
EE APN's are IPV6 by default, other site related connectivity issues in the past have been cured by changing it to IPV4.
 
Sponsored Links
Well I've tried connecting using IPV6 on EE and it won't provide an IP address. Also asked another user to try it on his connection. Same result with EE not providing an IPV6 address.
 

This is a full and very interesting posting.

However, it does not mention the IPv4 / IPv6 question. Some websites that claim to be IPv6 compliant don't work on EE 4g unless you set the phone to run IPv4 only (in the APN settings). Examples of affected websites are www.tolkiensociety.org and www.qustodio.com and the qustodio app. There are many more.
 
Those settings listed are the ones I'm using. Have tried connecting with just IPV6 and using dual stack IPV4 & IPV6 but neither provides an IPV6 connection on EE, just IPV4. Maybe it's not enabled for the two accounts on EE I've tried or perhaps it's only enabled on some masts and not others.
 
Just had another customer now reporting the same behaviour on EE. Streaming works perfectly but websites are hanging when loaded. Particularly bad in the evening. This is again in Gloucestershire area. Same issue on phones. Using a VPN completely eliminates the problem. I hope EE fix this but after the experiences with Three I'm not confident.
 
Sponsored Links
Hi,

The behaviour you described points to MTU issue.

A VPN solves it because it does proper mtu discovery and then from your PC you can just send the normal 1500 MTU which then the vpn tunnel will deal with for you.

I see on my router the MTU is set to to 1440. Which values did you try?
 
@andyh747
Can you try the command "tracepath site"? It should detect local and other MTUs along the way.
Where "site" is one of the domains that hang in the browser.

There is also tracepath6 for IPv6, but there were issues with IPv6 on EE, it's best disabled for now to avoid other complications.
 
Thanks for the replies. I also believed it was MTU issues. I tried a number of different values starting at 1400 but it didn't seem to help the issue.
However having now switched one of the customers to a different mast and changed their DNS servers, the problem appears to have gone...... for now.

I will certainly try the tracepath command next time I'm at an affected site to see what the result is.

I had this problem with Three mobile internet and this was solved by setting the MTU to 1400. This has worked at a number of different installs with success at each.
 
Top
Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £24.00 - 26.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
NOW UK ISP Logo
NOW £24.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £25.99
145Mbps
Gift: £50 Reward Card
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £17.00
200Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £23.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Sponsored Links
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (6027)
  2. BT (3639)
  3. Politics (2721)
  4. Business (2440)
  5. Openreach (2405)
  6. Building Digital UK (2330)
  7. Mobile Broadband (2146)
  8. FTTC (2083)
  9. Statistics (1901)
  10. 4G (1816)
  11. Virgin Media (1764)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1582)
  13. Fibre Optic (1467)
  14. Wireless Internet (1462)
  15. 5G (1407)
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms  ,  Privacy and Cookie Policy  ,  Links  ,  Website Rules