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Huawei B525 - bands etc?

Sip

Pro Member
Hi
I bought a B525 in Jan to replace my home fibre from Zen Internet. I live in a rural area and could only receive a download of 35Mbps and an upload of 5Mbps, which was fine, but I was paying £50 per month for the privilege. With B525 and an Unlimited sim from Smarty (£20 per month) I can now receive speeds of 60+ Mbps d/load and 25Mbps upload!!

The issue I have is that this speed isn't constant (can drop down to 5 Mbps download - sometimes less) and can sometimes drop altogether. While I expect the speed to fluctuate, sometimes it's all or nearly nothing. Watching iPlayer/Netflix can see buffering 2 or 3 times during an hour film!
I am about 2.5 miles from the mast and in a dip and I have the router pointing in the mast direction in an upstairs window. The mast I am connected to has the I.D. 11511 and it says that Bands 1,3 & 20 are available. I'm not sure what my router is connecting to, but I've heard that you can lock the router to a band for a more robust connection - although I can not find anything in the router setting that allows this. I have the option -2G, 3G, 4G or Auto with a provider switch for either Manual or Auto. I have also noticed that sometimes the web interface which always shows 4G, has occasionally shown 4G+, but only for 10 seconds at a time.

Does anyone know how I can stabalise the connection better and throw some light on the correct banding?

Thank you
 
You can manage the bands on a 525 by using lte inspecteur or other tools/apps. Best have a read on this and other forums.
Some versions of the 525 allow you do do this from the router dashboard though.
In the two locations I use mine with 3/Smarty my 525 and also a 535 now show 4G+ even when idle - when left on automatic and not selecting bands - not downloading. Previously in one location 4G+ only showed during downloads which is how I understood it worked, in the other location it never showed 4G+ at all at any time. Site or system upgrades I would imagine. There was about 3 weeks between both locations showing this change.
It may be in your case that demand on the mast is your issue as I've seen that at times. Lowest I've seen it is about 12mbps when lockdown started and there was absolutely nothing worth watching on the TV that evening.
 
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4G+ only happens when CA is actually in play, it's not constant on my local mast. Just watching my B715 and 4G+ only appears when the DL speed increases, last week it was on constant until I did a reboot so it looks to be a lottery getting it constant.

I use Huawei Monitor, also used LTEinspecteur but it froze too often.
 
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Is the 11511 the only ID the router informs you of? That's the eNB (mast) ID. If there was something that identified the CellID then you'd be able to tell which band it was connected to at that moment in time (each band has a different CellID).

Which B525 model is it? the 65A or 23A? I believe the 23A doesn't support B3+B1 aggregation, whereas the 65A does.

I get the feeling that when you see 5Mbps (or less) you've fallen back to just B20, which gives those kinds of low speeds.
With B3 that would give you the 60up/25down-ish speeds.
I think the 4G+ you're seeing is likely B3+B20 aggregation, but as B20 provides such small throughput it can easily go un-noticed.

If your router supported B3+B1 then given B3 speeds provide 60down then I'd expect the uplift of aggregation to deliver speeds over 100down. However as B1 doesn't travel as far as B3 and is more easily blocked by physical material due to its higher frequency then this may be why you're not seeing B3+B1 aggregation.

And, as others have said, 4G+ may only display when a download is occurring.
 
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Is the 11511 the only ID the router informs you of? That's the eNB (mast) ID. If there was something that identified the CellID then you'd be able to tell which band it was connected to at that moment in time (each band has a different CellID).

Which B525 model is it? the 65A or 23A? I believe the 23A doesn't support B3+B1 aggregation, whereas the 65A does.

I get the feeling that when you see 5Mbps (or less) you've fallen back to just B20, which gives those kinds of low speeds.
With B3 that would give you the 60up/25down-ish speeds.
I think the 4G+ you're seeing is likely B3+B20 aggregation, but as B20 provides such small throughput it can easily go un-noticed.

If your router supported B3+B1 then given B3 speeds provide 60down then I'd expect the uplift of aggregation to deliver speeds over 100down. However as B1 doesn't travel as far as B3 and is more easily blocked by physical material due to its higher frequency then this may be why you're not seeing B3+B1 aggregation.

And, as others have said, 4G+ may only display when a download is occurring.

Hi Thanks for everyone's replies. It is appreciated.

The Cell ID on the router is 2946818 and the router itself is the 23a. I got the number 11511 after the putting the CellID number into cellmapper, in a vague attempt to try to work out which mast I was connecting to. Is there anyway to fix the router to B3....or doesn't it quite work as simple as that? To be honest I'm out of my depth with this at this level, so advice at rookie level is appreciated.

Many thanks
 
You need a program on a PC such as LTEinspecteur or Huawei Manager, there are also android apps such as huaCtrl on Google Play to load on your phone or tablet. All these will allow you to force 4G Band 3 which gives me the best speeds.
 
Hi Thanks for everyone's replies. It is appreciated.

The Cell ID on the router is 2946818 and the router itself is the 23a. I got the number 11511 after the putting the CellID number into cellmapper, in a vague attempt to try to work out which mast I was connecting to. Is there anyway to fix the router to B3....or doesn't it quite work as simple as that? To be honest I'm out of my depth with this at this level, so advice at rookie level is appreciated.

Many thanks
You did the right thing to trace it - when looking at that mast, Cell 2946818 is shown as the B3 cell, so that confirms the band.
With the band locking/forcing softwares kommando mentions you should be able to lock each band at a time and you should see different CellIDs reported for each.
 
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As a Macintosh/iOS user, can I use the said software on my iMac/iPad?

Thank you
You did the right thing to trace it - when looking at that mast, Cell 2946818 is shown as the B3 cell, so that confirms the band.
With the band locking/forcing softwares kommando mentions you should be able to lock each band at a time and you should see different CellIDs reported for each.
[/QUOTE
 
I'm not aware of any software that is mac/iOS compatible. You'll maybe have to run an instance Windows in a virtual machine or something to be able to do it, though I'm not a mac user so I don't know what is possible - sorry!
 
I'm not aware of any software that is mac/iOS compatible. You'll maybe have to run an instance Windows in a virtual machine or something to be able to do it, though I'm not a mac user so I don't know what is possible - sorry!

I too have been hunting for Linux or Mac friendly software to do this. Can't find anything. Either an old Android phone or Windows VM on the Mac is how I've done it at various points.
 
I too have been hunting for Linux or Mac friendly software to do this. Can't find anything. Either an old Android phone or Windows VM on the Mac is how I've done it at various points.
Well I have managed to borrow a widows laptop in order to use LTEinspecteur, but there are so many sites listing this, plus I'm not sure what to do once I'm there. I take it I only need to lock the band once, and does this windows laptop need connecting by ethernet to the router to achieve this?
 
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Well I have managed to borrow a windows laptop in order to use LTEinspecteur, but there are so many sites listing this, plus I'm not sure what to do once I'm there. I take it I only need to lock the band once, and does this windows laptop need connecting by ethernet to the router to achieve this?
 
Not had that problem, maybe got from elsewhere but I did read that some antivirus did not like it. Have it on two different laptops, one an old steam driven thing.
 
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That was my experience, so now I use Huawei Manager

The latest version of Huawei Monitor can be found here: https://tiny.cc/HuaweiMonitor
Thank you. I have been able to use this without issue, although I've not seen much difference by just locking to band 3, as I still get the odd very slow speed, which I suppose is to be expected and is the very nature of 4G. Still not sure as to why I saw 4G+ a couple of times. Watched the router while downloading and it still does not make the 4G change to 4G+...must have been a bit of a flook!

Thanks again
 
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