I've been trying to piece together the most cost-effective way to achieve an outdoor 5G setup, that will all rely on the working of this adaptor.

mpci-e to m.2(B key)  adaptor is €8
LHGG with LTE6 modem is an mPCI-e port inside, that requires the above adaptor, if it works..... €126 (buying the LHGG LTE18 defeats the whole cost-effective route which has the m.2 slot).
and finally, the 5G modem itself, is €140. (RM520N -m.2 b key)

Putting a very cost-effective total of €274+shipping. 

An outdoor system is great for suburban and rural areas, and it also supports the N1/N3/N28 bands. Likely to see some really good speeds with this setup.

Hi Sean,

Your articles and the forum here is such a wealth of information that I find myself periodically returning to try and get more knowledge, usually to tackle a specific problem, and more often than not, to re-read something that piqued my interest previously.
One such thing that I seem to understand at the time but never retain is the mean of each of the radio stats (RSSI, RSRP, RSRQ, etc.)

Every time I read an explanation it makes sense and I make a mental note but I've that many bookmarks at this stage that I can never find the same info again.  Sure, it's a topic you've repeated in slightly different contexts several times now, but I can't help wondering if it's a subject that you've got a definitive post on, tucked away somewhere??  maybe even an article that I havent found?

I'm about to start trying to tweak my antenna direction and would like to understand better what I am looking at!

With recent upgrade works on the local Eir mast I topped up my Eir SIM to see what may have changed.  Despite no apparent change in the bands or speed, I did make a rather interesting discovery in that it is reporting 5G available again.  It was not just this mast, but with every Eir 4G mast I encountered including on a recent trip to Dublin was showing the 5G icon on my phone.  I do not recall encountering a single place where my phone showed 4G, just 2G, H+ (3G) and 5G.  Of course, disabling 5G on my phone did result in it showing the 4G icon.

Like others including GoMo 5G customers reported, the vast majority of speed tests I ran were not particularly impressive for what’s being indicated as 5G, mostly in the 20 to 60Mbps range and the very occasional one above 100Mbps until I visited Dublin. 

As an example, the following speed tests were taken one after the other in Ardara, the second with 5G disabled on my phone:

       

I repeated this a few times and then made one more speed test with my 48 SIM.  Although there was no 5G on Three either in Ardara and 48 doesn’t officially provide 5G access, it had no problem delivering over 100Mbps using band 3 (Eir’s mast was operating on the lower bandwidth 4G bands 20 and 28).  The false 5G indication also leads to Ookla recording the speed tests as being over 5G:

   

Within Dublin, the speeds typically varied between 100 and 500Mbps with a few in the low 700’s, like what I would expect from a proper high bandwidth 5G cell.  

       

By monitoring the signal readings with the NetMonster App along my trip to Dublin, it quickly became clear what’s going on.  The majority of the rural Eir masts I encountered had the 5G indicator active, but without any 5G carrier, i.e. no 5G cells (or 5G served by DSS).  Generally a mobile network only configures a mast like this when there is another mast in range serving 5G, such as in urban areas.  This allows a 5G mast to use other nearby masts closer to users as the primary 4G carrier for 5G NSA.  However, many of these rural 4G masts are well out of range of any 5G mast never mind mountains or obstacles obstructing the line of sight.  For example Eir’s 5G mast in Carrick, Co. Donegal is in a valley, yet has the 5G indicator active at this time of posting. 

The main giveaway in NetMonster is where it shows “5G NSA Disconnected” with an exclamation mark, as shown below.  Touching this shows “Connection Failed, Not Carrier Restricted”, unsurprisingly as there is no active 5G cell to connect to.  With other networks, this generally only occurs if the user is outside the 5G range limit, such as indoors where the weaker higher frequency 5G bands cannot penetrate the building material.  Some phones distinguish between the cell indicating 5G and an active 5G connection.  For example, certain Samsung models show either a solid or outlined 5 icon to distinguish between an active 5G connection and 5G being indicated only, such as in this post. 

Besides showing a false indication of 5G on user’s handsets, this also leads to Ookla’s speed test and possibly other speed test services falsely collecting these speed tests and signal readings as 5G speeds and coverage.  From checking Ookla’s map, it is clearly showing many Eir 4G coverage areas as having 5G, but not on ComReg’s Site Viewer or Eir’s own coverage maps.  The following is the example from Ardara along with NetMonster showing no active 5G cell:

       

It is possible that Eir is getting ready to offer 5G on the 700MHz band n28, such as by swapping the 4G band 28 for 5G or enabling DSS, in which case they will suddenly have widespread 5G coverage, at least with masts that have the radio hardware to provide 5G on the 700MHz band.  This would effectively double the bandwidth on 5G handsets and routers that support 5G band n28, but lack support for 4G band 20+28 carrier aggregation.  By offering 5G on the 700MHz band, 5G phones that support this band would be able to aggregate the bandwidth with the 800MHz 4G band 20 as part of the 5G NSA connection.  As 5G only provides a slight improvement in spectrum efficiency over 4G, the maximum speed will not be much better than a single 20MHz band 1 cell, let along one with carrier aggregation (4G+).

How to tell if the 5G icon is an actual 5G connection (on Android)

With some Samsung phones, the appearance of the 5G icon indicates whether the cell is connected (solid filled in icon) or not (square around the 5G) as shown in this post.  Most Samsung phones also report the 5G signal information by dialling *#0011#, select the SIM (if dual SIM) and scroll down to the <NR Information>.  If it shows "ENDC Status: Active", it has an active 5G connection and will show the 5G signal readouts (NR Band, NR RSRP, etc.) below as shown in this post.  If the NR readings are blank, it is not connected on 5G.

For most Android 5G phones, the NetMonster App (also ad free) reports both the 4G and 5G signal read outs and the actual 5G connection state.  When it is connected on 5G, it will show the 5G signal readouts as shown above.  If it shows "5G NSA Disconnected" with an exclamation mark as shown below, touch the exclamation mark to check whether a 5G bar is in place.

   

The first image below shows the 5G status with 4G-only Eir masts that are falsely reporting 5G availability.  This will also occur with actual 5G masts if the signal is either too weak, out of range or on a 5G band that the phone does not support, e.g. Samsung A51 5G does not support 5G bands n1 or n3 that are deployed in some rural areas.  The second image shows a 5G bar where the network does not allow 5G access, in this case with my 48 SIM.

       

Hi,

I recently bought Mikrotik ATL, which in theory can utilise 4x4 MIMO and 5x Carrier Aggregation. My BTS is roughly 1km away, and it has 4 bands, 1, 3, 7, 20. I am pretty sure that the ATL doesn't use intra-band CA (like 3+3), or maybe I couldn't find a screen to confirm it.

Based on the ATL's CA data sheet (https://mikrotik.com/product/atl18#fndtn-downloads) I see 2 main options for configuration: 3x CA on band 1, 3, 7 with 4x4 MIMO, or 4x CA on bands 1, 3, 7, 20, with 2x2 MIMO.

The band 20 doesn't seem to be much performant, it varies between 5mbit/s - 20 mbit/s.
The 3x CA, 4x4 MIMO seems to be a bit faster, (210 Mbps DL, 30 Mbps UL) over 4x CA (195 Mbps DL, 5 Mpbs UL).

So my question is: are there any other factors beside the bandwidth to go with 4x4 MIMO over additional band in CA (or other way around), like latency or stability?

Greetings folks.

First of all, thank you for an excellent and extremely helpful forum.

I live in the twigs which is slightly further afield than the sticks.
Walls are a meter thick and the windows are shatterproof and triple glazed.

I have an Arcadyan Meteor 5G router with what seems like 11 antennae (pictures attached).

I'm trying to figure out which connectors I should pigtail an external 4G 5G NR MIMO (2 SMA) directional antenna to in order to improve 5G reception. (XJ7 and XJ8?)
I cannot find any documentation for this box, hence I'm turning to the experts.


Thank you in advance

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Testing a house for a customer this morning with a 20 euro prepay SIM in 5g phone getting download of 170 Mbps 

Tried a tp link 4g plus router and Huawei 4g plus router
Both with external antenna fitted but only getting speeds of 12 through this system

Any ideas on Wath is best equipment to pick up the 5g speeds

Hi all,
New here so hopefully this hasn't been covered. Been a long time Mikrotik user and trying to optimise my connectivity.

I'm using cell-monitor via the terminal to see which cells/bands are being picked up. Many I can simply find on CellMapper, but a few are providing quite elusive. Given that physical cell IDs are reused across the network, if I search in CellMapper by PCI, I get loads of eNB results. Am I missing something? Is there a way to narrow down the results to a search area or any other way to map a PCI back to mast?

Thanks.

With my Iskra P-58s recently giving issues with water ingress (not droplets bridging the bars this time), I decided to purchase the Poynting PDA-92 LTE kit to replace them and try to get a little more gain from the 800MHz band to improve my upload speed. 

The Poynting antennas arrived individually packed in retail cardboard packaging along with the +/-45 degree mounting bracket (model brkt-33) also packed separately.  For comparison, the Iskra P-58s originally arrived packed together in a plastic bag, unsurprisingly with a few bent bars that required straightening.  The first thing that surprised me with the Poynting LPDA's is that they are die cast aluminium including the bars.  With the pair mounted together with the 45 degree bracket, they are quite heavy:

   

Another observation is the step in bar size between the low and high band bars, so clearly concentrates on the lower and upper cellulcar bands with lower gain from 1000MHz to 1700MHz based on their gain graph. 

   

The gap between the bars is larger than the Iskra P-58s with three plastic spacers on the Poynting vs none originally on my Iskra P-58.  This means rain is less likely to bridge the bars.  The end caps also have drainage openings:

   

So far I've just tested them on a stack of plastic storage boxes to see how they roughly compare against the Iskra P58's shown here at the top. 

       

The weather is dry today, so the Iskra's are performing back to normal again until the next wet spell.  From testing them directly below the Iskra's, I was getting several dB better across the bands varying depending on the positioning as shown above. The signal quality is no improvement (like my previous MikroTik LHG modem tests), so am curious to see how they perform once mounted on the pole. For comparison against the LHG (with an EP06-E modem) from past testing in this same spot, the LHG performed around 11dB better on band 1 (RSRP was -91dBm), whereas the LPDA P-58s with this Chateau LTE12 perform about 7dB better than the LHG on band 20 (RSRP peaked -98dBm).

Hi all,

My first post on here. I live in the sticks AKA the Lincolnshire Wolds and am planning to away from my 3Mb/s ADSL to 4G Mobile BBand.

I was given an external 4G antenna by a friend, it has no markings to say who made it and the coax cable that's fixed to the PCB inside has an odd slightly oversized core, so normal SMA connectors don't fit. The antenna works with the Huawei 535 that I bought but the cables are too short.

I've taken the cover off to see inside but there are no clues apart from the PCB which has the number 2200199 on it.

Just wondered if anyone has any ideas about where it might have been made so I can get some specs on the cable used etc?


Thanks

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I'm pulling my hair out here!

Background info:
Home environment- I've a Ubiquiti network (mostly), Router, Switch, APs, and a controller VM.
currently using an 818 (with Eir) in passthrough to the UBNT router and looking to migrate to an LHG LTE18 kit.
I have the LHG, and have mounted it.


I'm really struggling with the LHG config.
Ideally I just want to pass through the public address through to the router, and also access the LHG on a management interface.

I've tried a good few things at this stage but have gotten nowhere!
Any good setup guides for routerOS 7.x out there????



Cheers,
RB