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Strange Issue with Huawei B535 Router on Three Network

Just to let you know, in my experience the rabbit ears on the B535 made the signal received worse overall than the internal antenna.

Fair enough - it's amazing how much everyone's experience varies. I tried one of the Poynting external antennas that many people have raved about, and found it made negative to zero difference to the signal I was getting from the rabbit ears; closer to the internal antenna than the rabbit ears, no matter where I put it.

So, in summary:

You could get a better signal with rabbit ears. Or you might not.
You could get a better signal with a Poynting antenna. Or you might not.
You could get a better signal with the internal antennae. Or you might not.
If you do get a decent signal, and you're on Three, then give up now because even with a decent signal, the network is flaky and irritating - the number of times a day I have to refresh a website to make it load is ridiculous.
 
I use a 525 and a 535 in two different locations with a Smarty sim. One location does not get coverage according to Three on 3G and 4G- a not spot on the map around the property but it does, just. To make a call there using the 525 you have to force 3g sometimes and wait before attempting a call (you can monitor using LTE inspector)- sometimes it works automatically as designed. Incoming calls are most often lost as the switch to 3G fails in the allocated time. 4G however works well at up to 60mbps down with the router in the sweet spot. Power line adaptors feed the house tech stuff. A 'phone at the same sweet spot can just about work, maybe.
The other location gets coverage but Three say no when you use the website to purchase the router package, not available or whatever. Package bought online for another address, £17 sim in their dual sim'phone for data and hot spotting for the house - mast is across the road and up the hill. I have the router. I'm getting up to 50 mbps down in a more populated area but at least twice what BT can offer with FTTC. I have the 525 there to make use of the included calls without any issue. The 535 is where use of 3g for calls is unreliable as no calls with that one. Both locations have VOIP set ups with "local" numbers.
Both routers perform marginally better with the rabbit ears in both of my situations. It does take some fine adjustment of the aerials and the positioning of the router itself. Both routers optimised for performance using the available tools as well. One sits on top of a dog biscuit tin by a window at a slight angle to the window in the house with no 3/4G cover, fortunately in the utility room where the sweet spot is!
The aerials for the 535 bought from ebay at £3 odd, came in a couple of days. Work perfectly on both routers, no performance difference to the factory ones that came with 525 as had them on both to compare.
Previously had dlink 921's with an O2/giffgaff sim for testing in the area with no Three cover but found both router and O2 lacking in both locations for performance. Reliable though and strong wifi (adjustable too). Bought the 525 and tested with a three sim, what a difference. Three sim in the 921 there better (only a short test with a free sim) than the O2 one in the same area despite supposed good O2 coverage.
 
Meant to add that the issues described earlier in this thread I've not experienced but the 535 has not as yet had use over a long period of time, only a day or so.
 
That's the link from my amazon order history.

They definitely made a big difference to both my bandwidth and my RSRP/SNR/RSRQ values according to HuaCtrl.
Sorry to keep pestering - can you go on the order details and see which seller it was? It'll either say Sold & Dispatched by Amazon or have the name of a third-party seller who is selling them on Amazon.

If you managed to get the genuine ones it will be worth it for me to give it a try.
 
I think there is something wrong with these routers. Mine was fine until March then became very fustrating (possibly after firmware update) I read in one thread its something to do with lagging when setting up TLS / SSL connections. So its not so much the connection speed its the lag - sometimes the hiccups making it so fustrating its unusable. Click on a few pages they go fine then one will lag on a black browser screen for 10 seconds. I put my SIM in a B311 and its back to running amazing so not netwwork

Good luck getting the hub replaced. I can see no way of doing this

I tend to find the rabbit ears give a slower connection on routers ive tried them on.

I am litteraly 150m from the transmitter though.

Oh and there are no issues if im on vpn
 
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Hello. I’ve just created an account to comment on this as I’ve been experiencing the same thing since early January 2020.

My setup consists of a Huawei E3372 USB dongle, acting as my gateway. The dongle is connected to a router which handles DHCP and a NAS which handles my internal DNS.



The problem:

I’ve been having problems navigating to web pages. It is very intermittent and only happens around 50% of the time. If a page is failing to load, I click refresh again, and it magically starts working, most of the time.

Using Wireshark, I’ve determined that this is an issue within Three’s intranet. More specifically: The TLS handshake/dance and its associated packets are either getting dropped or being routed incorrectly within Three’s intranet.

This appears to be a configuration problem that can only be solved by the ISP.

I’ve also observed that this only applies to their unlimited broadband packages. I have no problem with their capped 100GB line on my actual phone. This may be due to the fact that their unlimited packages implement CGNAT, and have no ‘public facing’ IP. That, however is just speculation.



The solution:

I have solved all of these issues by creating a VPN tunnel and forwarding all outbound traffic through that VPN.

The fact my ‘gateway to the Internet’ is extended to the VPN endpoint when using it (i.e. establishing a TCP connection to the VPN and putting all my traffic through it, thereby not traversing through ISPs intranet) kind of backs up my case that it is a configuration issue at the ISPs end.

i.e. TLS packets are routed through the established VPN TCP connection.



Three’s response:

I’ve contacted Three around ~6 different occasions since then. It appears that nobody seems to have a clue what the issue is, and the responses I’ve got are basic cookie-cutter advice at best.

Even their ‘technical team’ appear to have no real understanding of the issue, and will not raise an issue because ‘their testing’ has determined that there are no problems.

I’m very worried for the company, and it’s perceived mismanagement.



All of this is anecdotal, but I hope the VPN solution works for other folks who have stumbled across this article.
 
I think "perceived mismanagement" isn't actually perceived, a proportion of its management team recently left so something most certainly isn't right at the top of the company.

The very fact that they refuse to acknowledge any problems with the service when its blatantly obvious there is one across their entire network is most worrying. You can't even complain to OFCOM because Three refuses to accept complaints in the first place. Like many on here, I've tried writing to them and still got the run around. Months down the line I am not alone in finding it impossible to even get a deadlock letter issued, without which OFCOM won't even bother investigating.

Of course, Three is well aware of this (I told them in my letter to checkout this forum and thinkbroadband) and yet instead of addressing genuine customer complaints head on, it goes down the "ostrich tactic route" of burying their collective heads in the sand and hoping the "trouble maker customers" just shut up and go away. I personally don't think they even have the skilled technical people capable of even addressing the issues within the three network, so the ostrich method is their only option knowing they are incapable of resolving the issues they're very own 5g implementation has created.

The only thing "Three" is bothered about is rolling out 5g and getting as many sign ups as possible. It don't matter to them that they've done a pi$$ poor job of this by making it CGNAT, because their own marketing department will gush daily about how bl00dy brilliant it is, and sell it to unsuspecting customers as "The best gaming internet speed you can get!", even if you can't actually use it for that purpose because its CGNAT.

From my experience of Three, they are not listening. They certainly were not before the COVID-19 epidemic, and they certainly aren't now either.
 
I don't think it's anything to do with traffic management. It's just that their MTU is messed up. I've seen sooo many people try and work out the MTU on this site and none using the correct way to detect it. Most people use the ICMP method. Which would work if Three ICMP wasn't so dodgy. Detecting MTU is simple. Run wireshark, capture a TCP conversation. Look at the SYN ACK packet and find the MSS option. The MSS + 40 bytes is the MTU. Looking at my setup which is a E3372 on the back of a ASUS wireless router on Three Network you get 1220 MSS, so thats 1240. 1240 is low. Remember they are running ipv6 with some dodgy ICMP. So they are most likely using the IPv6 minimum MTU which is 1280 so they don't need to get the ICMP working right. They have also trimmed some more bytes off the MSS for luck.

Plug 1280 MTU and clamp MSS to 1220. Boom. All fixed.

FYI. They have two network. ISPreview told us last year they were building it. The old one's MTU is 1358 (the standard mobile MTU) the new one seems to be 1280. I'm guessing because of IPv6. So take the lower because you can't control which network that your SIM gets put on.

By the way, using a VPN seems to fix the problem because openvpn has a MTU detection routine and it seems to work it out that the MTU is low.
 
@nealhella admittedly I'm far from knowledgeable regarding MTU, however I've checked wireshark for the SYN ACK packets you mention and I see the following:

Wifi connection to Huawei router: MSS=1346
Wifi connection to ASUS router (sits behind the Huawei router, connected via ethernet): MSS=1346
Wifi connection to ASUS router with VPN (PPTP) enabled on the ASUS router: MSS=1360

Any thoughts on this?
 
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Looking at it I think MTU discovery is changing it constantly across every users individual devices across the entire three network, regardless of what it's set at on your router.
 
Where exactly are you setting it on your router?

For me its only settable under the [Network Settings] > [Ethernet] > [Ethernet Settings] when that is set to something other than LAN only - i.e. there is a wired WAN connection attached to the the WAN/LAN Ethernet port.

As far as I can see there are no settings to set the MTU for the mobile network (4G) connection?
 
Network settings on main screen, says "internet connection" under it is a "mobile data" switch, under that a "data roaming" switch and under that is MTU size. (I've set it to 1500)

I thought this was the router setting your connection specifically to the mast?

Under Ethernet settings is another MTU box, which again on mine is now also set to 1500. I presume this is the internal home network.

(Though my xbox when I check connection changes every time I look at it)
 
Ah I see, that's not a UI option for me - and its not even hidden/disabled through CSS - though I don't have the B535 so looks like its not even an option in the firmware of my Huawei.
 
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I don't think it's anything to do with traffic management. It's just that their MTU is messed up. I've seen sooo many people try and work out the MTU on this site and none using the correct way to detect it. Most people use the ICMP method. Which would work if Three ICMP wasn't so dodgy. Detecting MTU is simple. Run wireshark, capture a TCP conversation. Look at the SYN ACK packet and find the MSS option. The MSS + 40 bytes is the MTU. Looking at my setup which is a E3372 on the back of a ASUS wireless router on Three Network you get 1220 MSS, so thats 1240. 1240 is low. Remember they are running ipv6 with some dodgy ICMP. So they are most likely using the IPv6 minimum MTU which is 1280 so they don't need to get the ICMP working right. They have also trimmed some more bytes off the MSS for luck.

Plug 1280 MTU and clamp MSS to 1220. Boom. All fixed.

FYI. They have two network. ISPreview told us last year they were building it. The old one's MTU is 1358 (the standard mobile MTU) the new one seems to be 1280. I'm guessing because of IPv6. So take the lower because you can't control which network that your SIM gets put on.

By the way, using a VPN seems to fix the problem because openvpn has a MTU detection routine and it seems to work it out that the MTU is low.
Anyone willing to digest this into something a beginner could follow?

Would love to test it out and see if its a fix. Have installed the software but can't follow along.
 
What I did...
  • Open Wireshark
  • Select your connection from your PC (wifi/ethernet)
  • Paste this into the 'filter' bar across the top: tcp.flags.syn== 1 and tcp.flags.ack==1 and tcp.port==80
  • Browse a HTTP website (because port=80 in the filter). Something like this http://www.httpvshttps.com/
  • Look for the MSS value in the results, like the attached

Annotation 2020-04-30 180425.jpg


However, I don't have anywhere to put the value, but as I mentioned above it none of the values I see match with what nealhella stated
 
Apparently the industry standard for 4g LTE's MTU is 1428, so its interesting to see it reporting 1360.

I've set the mobile data connection to 1428 and 1360 and still noticed the problem today, not seen any packet loss right up to an MTU of 1500 so I don't think the routing issue is MTU or packet loss related.

I think its more down to traffic management been poorly implemented.
 
What I did...
  • Open Wireshark
  • Select your connection from your PC (wifi/ethernet)
  • Paste this into the 'filter' bar across the top: tcp.flags.syn== 1 and tcp.flags.ack==1 and tcp.port==80
  • Browse a HTTP website (because port=80 in the filter). Something like this http://www.httpvshttps.com/
  • Look for the MSS value in the results, like the attached

View attachment 281

However, I don't have anywhere to put the value, but as I mentioned above it none of the values I see match with what nealhella stated
Ok thanks that helped. Still have the voxi sim at the moment though but that gave me MSS=1320

So does that mean I should try with MTU of 1360 in @nealhella example?
 
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