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Huawei 818-263 - wildly inconsistent signal levels.

Evanz

Pro Member
I’ve had this thing for a couple of weeks now and it’s been in the same exact spot, on the edge of window sill (move it a millimetre and the speed will go down significantly). A couple of days ago, the signal figures suddenly dropped quite a bit and I had to twist it a few mm to get back to the original figures, which weren’t that great to start with (I’m about 9 or 10 miles away from the mast, but when I get my best signal, I’m averaging 50 - 70 mbps) .
Since then, I’ve had to move it a few times to get my signal levels back, and now it’s messing me about even more by aggregating to band 3 (I’m on EE, by the way), instead of band 7, which is the fastest band for me. Also, sometimes I’ll restart it, and the signal will bounce back, without me having to move it, and it’ll stay there for a good while, lulling me into a false sense of security, and then it’ll drop to 3 bars LTE+, so I’ll try changing bands with Huactrl and then it might go to 4 bars, which as good as it gets, and the cycle starts again.

I’d appreciate it if someone could shed some light on this for me. Is it the router? Is it EE farting about, or is it just that I’m miles away from the mast and the signal is losing its grip now and again?
 
Has it been recorded what the Cell ID and tower is connected before and after the signal parameters changes? The most likely explanation is usually a connection to a different tower which may have different available cellular bands, or backhaul/fronthaul performance.
 
Has it been recorded what the Cell ID and tower is connected before and after the signal parameters changes? The most likely explanation is usually a connection to a different tower which may have different available cellular bands, or backhaul/fronthaul performance.
I'm a bit of a novice with all this stuff, but I think it's the same cell id and enb number before and after, but I've just taken a screen shot (via Huactrl) of the 'before', when the numbers are good, and I'll take another when it all turns to ****.
Thanks for your thoughts, anyway.
 
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I'm a bit of a novice with all this stuff, but I think it's the same cell id and enb number before and after, but I've just taken a screen shot (via Huactrl) of the 'before', when the numbers are good, and I'll take another when it all turns to ****.
Thanks for your thoughts, anyway.
Well I think.I've figured out some of what's going on. I looked at the Cell ID and ebn number of each of the 3 bands I'm connecting to, which are 1, 3 and 7, and found that band 1 emanates from a different mast than the other 2, which the router is pointed at, in fact its in the exact opposite direction.

I've also found that when the signal drops, if I disconnect all bands except band 7, which seems to be the strongest band, the signal levels bounce back, and I get a green 3 bars LTE+ in Huactrl. I can then add bars 1 and 3 afterwards and it stays on 3 bars.

Anyway, I bought another 818 from Amazon, which is going back because it wasn't any better than this one, in fact it had issues which this one doesn't have, which I think is down to the older firmware that was on it.
 
If you want to avoid the router from connecting to the other mast leave Band 1 unticked in HuaCtrl. Selecting Band 3 and 7 should be sufficient and will hopefully reduce the chance of you having to keep intervening.

With my CPE Pro 2 it works best with Three in my area using Band 28 only as it forces a stable 5G connection. But if I put it back to Auto or enable any other bands I end up back on a slower 4G+.
 
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If you want to avoid the router from connecting to the other mast leave Band 1 unticked in HuaCtrl. Selecting Band 3 and 7 should be sufficient and will hopefully reduce the chance of you having to keep intervening.

With my CPE Pro 2 it works best with Three in my area using Band 28 only as it forces a stable 5G connection. But if I put it back to Auto or enable any other bands I end up back on a slower 4G+.
I did what suggested and it worked Like a charm for a while, then I noticed that there were 2 green lights on the router, not 3, so I opened Huactrl and saw that the router in it’s wisdom had decided to put me back on auto. Anyway, I put it back on band 7, which gave me 3 4g+ bars back, then I added band 3 and it’s been fine since then - until the router decides it knows best I suppose.

Thanks for your input.
 
Is there a noticeable speed drop between 2 and 3 lights? Just testing an EE sim in my router, if I select Band 7 only it is noticeably faster than Band 3 or Band 3 and 7 combined. I also appear to have carrier aggregation on single band selections.
 
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Is there a noticeable speed drop between 2 and 3 lights? Just testing an EE sim in my router, if I select Band 7 only it is noticeably faster than Band 3 or Band 3 and 7 combined. I also appear to have carrier aggregation on single band selections.
If I do a speed test, then I can see the difference, but if I didn't know it was on 2 lights, or didn't see what was happening in Huactrl, in normal use I probably wouldn't notice - mind you, for me, when it's on 2 lights, I'm getting 30 or 40mbps download, as opposed to 60 or 70 when I've got 3 lights, and that's at peak times.

You're right about getting 4g+ on single bands though. For me, b7 is fastest, then 3, but sometimes I can add b3 and it speeds things up.
 
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