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Extremely low internet speeds with 4g/5g Router

pandabird

Casual Member
Hello everyone,

I am a first time poster here so please let me know if I am doing something wrong.

I recently decided to give a try to mobile broadband because my appartment doesnt have fiber and it hit very low speeds ranging from 15-20mb download with Sky broadband. Didnt think it could get any worse with cellular internet but I guess it could. I was wondering if someone can help me figure out if there is anything at all I can do to better my speeds.

The details: My router is GL x3000 NR
Provider : I have tried a sim with Smarty and a sim with EE (via scancom)
Should be noted in my location I can only connect to 4g+
Ive run probably over 100 tests on ookla speedest so far, not much variance.
with the smarty sim, during very early morning and late night I hit good speeds with around 25-50 download , 30 upload
Any other time of day, I hit 0.5-5 download, and 20-30 upload.

Thats pretty much unusable for my needs, I cant tell if theres something wrong with the router, if its because im in a busy area, or something else that I could do? Connection to the poles seem good enough according to the router. Here is my stat right now as I am writing this:

Band 3
RSRP: -85
RSSI: -55
RSRQ: -9
SINR: -19

I am very happy to provide any info I can, hopefully someone can help guide me a bit as I am growing desperate, just need to know if I should give up on mobile broadband for my situation right now and go back to the line.
 
Hello everyone,

I am a first time poster here so please let me know if I am doing something wrong.

I recently decided to give a try to mobile broadband because my appartment doesnt have fiber and it hit very low speeds ranging from 15-20mb download with Sky broadband. Didnt think it could get any worse with cellular internet but I guess it could. I was wondering if someone can help me figure out if there is anything at all I can do to better my speeds.

The details: My router is GL x3000 NR
Provider : I have tried a sim with Smarty and a sim with EE (via scancom)
Should be noted in my location I can only connect to 4g+
Ive run probably over 100 tests on ookla speedest so far, not much variance.
with the smarty sim, during very early morning and late night I hit good speeds with around 25-50 download , 30 upload
Any other time of day, I hit 0.5-5 download, and 20-30 upload.

Thats pretty much unusable for my needs, I cant tell if theres something wrong with the router, if its because im in a busy area, or something else that I could do? Connection to the poles seem good enough according to the router. Here is my stat right now as I am writing this:

Band 3
RSRP: -85
RSSI: -55
RSRQ: -9
SINR: -19

I am very happy to provide any info I can, hopefully someone can help guide me a bit as I am growing desperate, just need to know if I should give up on mobile broadband for my situation right now and go back to the line.
Is there any chance you could provide the eNB or cell ID (it's about 8 digits iirc)? That would help us determine whether it's a busy area or not.
 
Looking at the stats you've posted, is your SINR (Signal to noise ratio) -19db or is it 19db? If it's 19db then your signal quality looks good, if it's -19db then that isn't good.

I don't know where you are located, but it's usually a good idea to figure out where the masts are in your area and find out what mast you are connecting to, this can help with placement of your router so you can put it where you get the best signal to the mast. It might also be worth trying your router in your loft if you have access to it, as getting it up higher can sometimes help. But from what you are saying that you get reasonable speeds at night it could well be that the mast you are connecting to is oversubscribed during the day and slowing your speeds down.

Cellmapper on your phone can help you to locate masts near you and find where they are.
 
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Is there any chance you could provide the eNB or cell ID (it's about 8 digits iirc)? That would help us determine whether it's a busy area or not.
Hi thanks for the reply, my router says the ID is 7AC02 however i cant find that on the cell mapper, on cell mapper the closest one I can find is eNB ID 1964 / cell identifier 502784 . does this help?
 
Looking at the stats you've posted, is your SINR (Signal to noise ratio) -19db or is it 19db? If it's 19db then your signal quality looks good, if it's -19db then that isn't good.

I don't know where you are located, but it's usually a good idea to figure out where the masts are in your area and find out what mast you are connecting to, this can help with placement of your router so you can put it where you get the best signal to the mast. It might also be worth trying your router in your loft if you have access to it, as getting it up higher can sometimes help. But from what you are saying that you get reasonable speeds at night it could well be that the mast you are connecting to is oversubscribed during the day and slowing your speeds down.

Cellmapper on your phone can help you to locate masts near you and find where they are.
Hey hey, I made a mistake there, my SINR right now is 15 as Im typing this, I assume when I made the other post it was 19 not -19.
I do live on second floor appartment so I was hopin thats high enough but I dont know. Ive posted the cellmapper info I can find on another reply if this helps
 
Hi thanks for the reply, my router says the ID is 7AC02 however i cant find that on the cell mapper, on cell mapper the closest one I can find is eNB ID 1964 / cell identifier 502784 . does this help?
It's a bit of a pain trying to convert 7AC02 to something readable, but it looks to be cell identifier 502786 (cell 2) so it's probably that mast

Area looks quite busy considering there's a school there
 
It's a bit of a pain trying to convert 7AC02 to something readable, but it looks to be cell identifier 502786 (cell 2) so it's probably that mast

Area looks quite busy considering there's a school there
Is it possible whether you could lock onto eNB 51631? That might be broadcasting 5G and is likely the nearest PoW in your area.

Cellmapper has limited information on it, only B1 mapped, you might want to see whether you can latch onto it on an Android phone?
 
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Is it possible whether you could lock onto eNB 51631? That might be broadcasting 5G and is likely the nearest PoW in your area.

Cellmapper has limited information on it, only B1 mapped, you might want to see whether you can latch onto it on an Android phone?
I have a bit of a hard time understanding which mast is which from cellmapper when i look through my router settings, they all have names like the one I mentioned before ( 7AC02) which doesnt match any of the other ones on cellmapper. Do you have any tips about how I can lock into it a different way or how to match the names?
 
they all have names like the one I mentioned before ( 7AC02)
I had to use a hexadecimal to decimal converter and paste the result into Cellmappers cell ID search.

I'm not too familiar with mobile broadband so I'm not sure how much more help I can provide unfortunately 😥 but it does seem as if the mast you're connected to does have issues with capacity (theoretically the best that mast will provide at the moment is 250mbps and considering it's right by a high school, it will cripple during the day).
 
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All I have done so far is install one update on the stock firmware that the router prompted me with when I first turned it on. Is there something youd reccomend I do?
Try the Snapshot that GL.inet offer, you are using a qualcomm RM520 modem, and your speeds should be better than that.
 
Try the Snapshot that GL.inet offer, you are using a qualcomm RM520 modem, and your speeds should be better than that.
Should being the operative word, but it largely depends on the capability of the mast. If it only has b1 & b3 and no n78 for 5g, then the best you are going to get is around 60 - 100mb tops with 2 carrier aggregation which would then make the RM520 modem a little pointless. Maybe a suggestion, drive out to the mast and see what it is actually capable of and what bands it is supporting, I'm guessing it's probably b1 & b3, 4g only.
 
Should being the operative word, but it largely depends on the capability of the mast. If it only has b1 & b3 and no n78 for 5g, then the best you are going to get is around 60 - 100mb tops with 2 carrier aggregation which would then make the RM520 modem a little pointless. Maybe a suggestion, drive out to the mast and see what it is actually capable of and what bands it is supporting, I'm guessing it's probably b1 & b3, 4g only.
Yes indeed the mast i am connected to is 4g only, as you say b1 and b3. I cannot connect to the 5g mast in the area reliably, only managed to connect to it once last week. honestly I just wish i could reach the 60-100mb of the 4g mast, during the day it struggles to get over 10 if it manages to get over 5mb download that is... i will see with my phone which is on giffgaff so also 3 network if the mast gives better speeds when near it.
 
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Try the Snapshot that GL.inet offer, you are using a qualcomm RM520 modem, and your speeds should be better than that.
Im trying the snapshot right now ive managed to hit some good speeds but likely because its nighttime. it still sometimes falls to 10mb download randomly when testing seems to go up and down a lot... What is weird is that many times when i start testing, theres a huge spike at the start reaching even 60mb sometimes but then falls immediately down to 10mb after that and will at most get up to 20mb download when that happens... idk why its acting like this
 
Im trying the snapshot right now ive managed to hit some good speeds but likely because its nighttime. it still sometimes falls to 10mb download randomly when testing seems to go up and down a lot... What is weird is that many times when i start testing, theres a huge spike at the start reaching even 60mb sometimes but then falls immediately down to 10mb after that and will at most get up to 20mb download when that happens... idk why its acting like this
Is this Smarty or EE?
 
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