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Start with good signal but drops away if antenna not inside the window

msaspence

Casual Member
I have a 3 mobile broadband sim in a Hauwei B525-4G attached to a Pyonting 4G-XPOL-A0002 Directional outdoor Antenna. I have clear line of sight to the cell tower.

If I mount the antenna directly pointing at the cell tower outside mounted on the house I initially get 5 bars of signal with up to 32mbs down, over the next hour or so it drops to 2 or 3 bar of signal and less than 10mbs down.

If however I put the antenna inside up against the window pointed at the cell tower I get 5 bars of signal and up to 32mbs consistently. The signal does not drop.

What gives? What is going on here? And how might I resolve it? I'd really like to avoid having to mount my antenna indoors.
 
Do you know the bands the B525 is connecting to, is it changing when it drops speed. I use LTEInspecteur to set mine to use Carrier Aggregation, upload band 3 and download on band 3 and 20 to get my fastest speeds. The mast sometimes flakes out and will only allow a connection on band 20, resetting with LTEInspecteur restores normal speeds.
 
I don't, I'll try and have a go at running that but likely to be a pain in the ass as I don't have a windows machine to run it on.
 
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Try Hmanager also known as Huawei Manager which is an android app but only in Polish so you need to do some google translation. Not as user friendly even after you know what the words mean.
 
Another brilliant example of how the best and most logical solution doesn't always turn out to work quite as well as expected. Mobile can be a real pain in the ass. As kommando suggests, it would probably help to have an eye on what bands are being used at any given time and indeed what the dBm signal measurements are (those 5 bars are pretty darn useless for diagnosing this stuff). Look for RSRP and RSRQ readings as they've handy.
 
Although you cannot change the band this way, if you log into the router and click on Settings, System, Device Information.

You will see the CELL_ID and other useful information such as SNR and RSRP that Mark mentioned. With Voda I was seeing the CELL ID change as it was swapping to a different band and lower speeds, but in my case stronger signal. (More bars but slower)

However its interesting that you say its changing to a weaker signal.

I too recommend LTEInspecteur. If not Windows then what? I suppose it depends how important this issue is to you, if its worth you looking into dual booting or buying a cheap second hand Windows machine?
 
@johnf What exactly is the CELL_ID? Is it the tower it is connected to?

It did change cell ID when the signal dropped. Is there a way to white list or black list the cell ID.

If not maybe I can fashion a cone with foil to further narrow the antenna's directionality and exclude any towers other than the one I have clear line of sight to?
 
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@msaspence The tower, yes. If you install the OpenSignal app on your phone it shows the towers around you on a map and their id number. It maybe that the tower you think is nearest isn't giving the best signal.

Whitelist? No, I don't think so. I've never heard of that. However, for me, picking the band I wish to use locks me to a specific tower and gets me great speeds.

I'd forget the tinfoil and get installing Windows haha Though as someone else said Hmanager on Android is another option.
 
OK so I got LTEInspecteur up and running on a virtual machine

I'm currently on the tower I want

I see UL Band is 20, but I don't see where the DL Band is shown?

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Another brilliant example of how the best and most logical solution doesn't always turn out to work quite as well as expected. Mobile can be a real pain in the ass. As kommando suggests, it would probably help to have an eye on what bands are being used at any given time and indeed what the dBm signal measurements are (those 5 bars are pretty darn useless for diagnosing this stuff). Look for RSRP and RSRQ readings as they've handy.

Perfect example today.

Lost my data service at 10:30ish this morning. I had a full 5 bars, occasionally dropping to 4 bars all afternoon; it was still not passing data either way when I left work at 5pm.
O2 now list the mast as (in my own words) BUGGERED.
 
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OK so I got LTEInspecteur up and running on a virtual machine

I'm currently on the tower I want

Great job. So now simply change the frequency from automatic to B20 (800Mhz) and that should lock you to that tower.

One other tip. I see you have changed it from automatic to 4G only. Did you know you can plug a normal telephone into the back of the router and use your sim's free minutes and indeed receive calls etc? But this only works if you change that back to Automatic.

It will also use this phone if you fill in the voip settings in the router. So I have plugged in my old cordless dect phone into there, and set it so that when I call out it uses the sim minutes totally free, and incoming calls from old family members who want a local free number call the voip number.

This was really the final piece of the puzzle that has allowed me to say goodbye to BT forever.
 
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