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TP Archer MR600 + Three 4G Wifi

eddo_

Casual Member
Hello,

I'm trying to navigate the slightly confusing landscape of 4G routers and am not getting very far.

For the last year we've had Three 4G Home Wifi using a Huawei B535-212 router and attached an external aerial which really helped, but it's still unstable at best. Sometimes it's super fast, sometimes barely registers at all.

After some research, I thought I might try getting a better router and settled on the TP Archer MR600 (to see if it made any difference) but have now read that it's not compatible with Three?

Does anyone have any experience of this? Can anyone recommend some solutions as to how we could improve our home WIFI? We're tied into a contract for another year. :confused:

Thanks in advance!
 
This post would probably be better off in the Mobile Broadband section, but anyway, why do you think the MR600 isn't compatible with Three? It supports all the bands of 4G Three have, apart from B32 which isn't widely deployed anyway, and it also supports 2100 for 3G too, so it's fine.

When you say the speed fluctuates is that when you're connected to WiFi, or hardwired Ethernet to the router? I'd always recommend using Ethernet when testing/debugging to eliminate any potential WiFi issues. Do the speeds fluctuate regularly at a specific time of day, e.g. peak times?

What external antenna do you have? Does it have a clear line of sight to the mast? If it's directional model is it aligned to point at your local mast? If there another mast in the area that it could be pointed at which may provide a more stable connection?

Do you know what frequency bands it connects with? You say it's super fast at times (what speeds?) but that could suggest it's aggregating the fast bands (band 3+1) - does it show 4G+ in the router UI? When it goes slow it may be dropping to band 20, which doesn't provide much throughput at all (it's more for coverage and deeper indoors)
 
Hello,

I'm trying to navigate the slightly confusing landscape of 4G routers and am not getting very far.

For the last year we've had Three 4G Home Wifi using a Huawei B535-212 router and attached an external aerial which really helped, but it's still unstable at best. Sometimes it's super fast, sometimes barely registers at all.

After some research, I thought I might try getting a better router and settled on the TP Archer MR600 (to see if it made any difference) but have now read that it's not compatible with Three?

Does anyone have any experience of this? Can anyone recommend some solutions as to how we could improve our home WIFI? We're tied into a contract for another year. :confused:

Thanks in advance!
I worry that as with many others who blame the Huawei B535 you’re going to experience much of the same issue with any other router because the network in your area (and pretty much everywhere) is oversubscribed.
The B535 performs excellently when the network it’s running on has the backhaul to support the customers.
 
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Hey, thanks for your replies. Sorry for posting this in the wrong thread.

It's not blaming the router, more just utter frustration on my part as Three aren't interested in helping, we're tied in for another year and I wondered it would make a difference.

We aren't super users in the house. Two of us here, we don't play online games, stream one feed at a time usually, don't download huge files either. Sometimes we're registering 17mbps speed and sometimes 0.5 with seemingly no correlation between times of day etc etc. Resetting the router does temporarily fix the issue for perhaps an evening or afternoon but it's a rollercoaster of frustration.

I'll repost this in the mobile broadband thread. Apologies.
 
I don't suffer from the same issues with Three as others do, but I am on a shared mast where the other occupant is EE, the company that runs the masts is MBNL. So check you mast on say cellmapper, if it is shared then the router may be the issue, if not shared its likely to be Three network congestion.
 
Why would the mast being shared be an issue?
I was under the impression that with shared masts they had their own separate infrastructure and frequencies
 
I have an MR600 that we use on GiffGaff.

We dont have a LOS and the walls are thick (150+ y/o property), so speeds arent great, however it is reasonably stable as long as it isnt raining/snowing.

Before spending money on a new 4G router, I would try different networks or different towers, in case it is an issue with your LOS on the 3 tower.
I used to have a clear LOS from my house, then people behind me built an extention, and now I dont. As you can imagine, the speeds I got dropped a lot, and vary a lot, especially when a large panel sided wagon, or cargo container unit passes through the one remaining reflected signal point.
 
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Why would the mast being shared be an issue?
I was under the impression that with shared masts they had their own separate infrastructure and frequencies

As my local shared mast fails on both EE and Three at the same time, plus I do not get any congestion related issues as other Three subscribers then there is more than just the steel mast being shared. In my case the mast being shared seems to be to my advantage not disadvantage.

The other mast that covers my area is a shared Voda/O2 mast, with Voda being the lead and O2 the 2nd partner based on the map online elsewhere.
 
Hello,

I'm trying to navigate the slightly confusing landscape of 4G routers and am not getting very far.

For the last year we've had Three 4G Home Wifi using a Huawei B535-212 router and attached an external aerial which really helped, but it's still unstable at best. Sometimes it's super fast, sometimes barely registers at all.

After some research, I thought I might try getting a better router and settled on the TP Archer MR600 (to see if it made any difference) but have now read that it's not compatible with Three?

Does anyone have any experience of this? Can anyone recommend some solutions as to how we could improve our home WIFI? We're tied into a contract for another year. :confused:

Thanks in advance!

Three is the problem bud, facing the same issues this past while. Full bar 4G signal, was always 4G+ but noticed it says 4G now. Ever since their disastrous failure of 5G rollout everything has went up in smoke and Three are trying to keep a lid on it.

Damn company should've waited to ensure they had the correct infrastructure in place before overloading the system but sure what can you do.

Their traffic management is a disaster. When your struggling to connect to ispreview you know something is going wrong. Next time I'm going with a reliable ISP as opposed to cheap.
 
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