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Question regarding 4G bandwidth

I've wondered this for a while.. can anyone answer this:

We have EE 4G running at 23.5 down and 48 up, fairly solidly.

If I had a second EE 4G service at the same location..

If I run a speed test on one, and I get 23.5/48..

.. and then I run a speed test on both at the same time..

What will I see?

1) Both connections @ 23.5/48 (there are enough frequencies available to supply two at those speeds)
2) Each connection @ 11.75/24 (both are sharing identical resources)
3) Something else?

A bit vague maybe, I could always actually set this up and test it, and it would be the only way to know for sure, but what do you think?
 
Microwave backhaul is the problem..

they have to rate limit connections to share the very limited bandwidth. (each microwave site probably has about 300Mbps) (assuming 2 dishes carrying 155Mbps each + TCP Overheads etc)
 
I'd say a. The highest 4G speed I've seen for myself is about 70mbps down and about 40mbps up. This means it should certainly be able to handle the downstream of two devices.

Think I'll run a test using my field to do do a long distance wifi speed test with multiple devices, see how that works.
 
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Depends on local capacity I guess and how much headroom they've left, also I'd put a little space between the two devices to avoid any close proximity interference (not sure if this would even be noticeable but..). I'd expect something roughly akin to option A though, but at the same time I'd like to see that experiment myself as its something I've not tried before.

Come to think of it there are two people in my home with Three UK, but I'd need a second identical dongle to do the test.
 
I'll get hold of a PAYG EE SIM and put that in the original Alcatel dongle and try this out at some point.

You can probably guess where this might be going.. mind you it would double the costs. I doubt I could make use of 100 Meg upstream, but I could certainly make use of 50 Meg downstream. Quite how that would be achieved is a mystery to solve later on.

I doubt I'd get a true 100% uplift, but I'd like to see what happens too.
 
Bonding two CGNAT style mobile broadband links together, now that's going to be an interesting challenge hehe.

On the other hand I'm starting to wonder if my initial assessment of your prospective performance gains would be correct. I know that bonding 3G is pointless (if it's all from the same carrier) due to the dumb capacity management, but 4G works intelligently with how it allocates and shares that capacity so I'm still uncertain. But I think the best gain would come from bonding 4G via two different carriers.
 
That's where it all starts going wrong, potentially, isn't it.. ;)

Bonding works best when the two (or more) links being bonded have similar performance and latency.

EE 4G is the only network round here that performs like that. Though Three's 4G shouldn't be far away now.

It intrigues me that I see 23.5 / 48 almost all the time. This does not accord with most peoples' experiences. So there must be some spare capacity. OK, I don't test it all the time, so trying it now..

3933575069.png


I think there was an email sending at the time and partner is on the iPad.

Makes me think there's a hard cap of that downstream speed in place. But then I have seen it higher than that on occasion. It's supposed to be "double speed".

Is it inadequate backhaul? If I were the only user at any time, then yes, I'd guess so. But I can't be the only one using it, surely. But then, if there is more to go around, why do I never (except on a few rare occasions) see it? It can't have the identical bandwidth demand almost all the time so I see the same speeds, can it?

Although it's just guesswork - something tells me they're both coming to come in at around 20 down and 20 up.
 
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You will not see an improvement by bonding two 4G connections on the same network... Unless one modem is connecting to a different cell (either at a different location or different frequency same mast).

When I tried bonding two EE 4G connections the performance was actually worse than the speed of one connection. In part this might have been a self interference issues, although unlikely but a possibility.

1x 4G EE = ~20Mbps

2x 4G EE = ~19Mbps:-
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hrjww06hiph9kps/Screenshot 2014-05-09 17.14.44.png?dl=0

1x 4G EE + 1x 3G EE = 29Mbps:-
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q4wb7rf1x451zq1/Screenshot 2014-05-12 15.45.41.png?dl=0

If bonding 2x 4G connections are both connecting to the same cell you are contending with yourself and are unlikely to see an improvement in speed unless the network rate limits each connection to less then the cell can deliver.

FYI you're upload result looks wrong and you speed test doesn't say that you are using EE/T-Mobile/Orange which it would if you were connected to EE. So you're going through a VPN? Which probably has a web cache and is screwing with the result. LTE upload is 50Mbps max, after overheads something like 40Mbps is possible but not 45Mbps.
 
"something like 40Mbps is possible but not 45Mbps. "

Not true at all.

I had something like 46Mbps other day (granted i was in the EE store at the time but its possible)
 
What device? Is it Category 5 LTE? If so then yes 75Mbps upload data rate and something like 60Mbps would be possible.

The upload test on the speedtest.net up is often too short to get a realistic average/sustained result.
 
What device? Is it Category 5 LTE? If so then yes 75Mbps upload data rate and something like 60Mbps would be possible.

The upload test on the speedtest.net up is often too short to get a realistic average/sustained result.

i did it using a xperia Z1. the test was done using speedtest.net using my own server (i host several servers)
 
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