Mikrotik LHGG LTE6 - Modem update

[chrisshan]

For 3CA , this calculates (removing the second band 20 count) as 73 + 81 - 9 = ~145Mbps.

Thanks for letting us know and doing the leg work once more! Just a note, it prob would be a waste of time 3xCA as port is just rated 10/100 on LHG4 and LHG6?

The download speeds certainly look promising with the LHG.  The upload speed however is much lower than what I would like to consider getting the LHGG LTE18.

Is the upload not band related? eg. availability? Or is it the modem/hardware used that will dictate? Eg. if i had 7mbps on b1 on LHG would i not get 7mbps in the same situation on b1 on another modem?

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For example, in this situation, the speed here is circa 80mbps, in north cork! This is a LHG LHG4, and only has a 10/100 port, upgrading the modem wouldn't benefit this situation only another 20mbps throughput is available on the port! I have been microsoldering for years, but I'm not sure a direct swap of the jack would help matters, im sure there's more to it. 

[Seán]

The upload speed depends a lot more on the antenna gain and VSWR than the download speed, i.e. how well and efficiently it focuses the signal transmission towards the mast. The dish is unable to focus the low frequencies on the low bands, so with band 20 the LHG performs no better than an omni-directional antenna, whereas the Iskra and other LPDA antennas offer better gain. If the mast was closer where I could use band 1 or 3 as the primary band, the LHG would make a dramatic improvement on the upload speed also.

Based on the above reading, it's probably not worth upgrading unless really need the additional 20Mbps. With such as a strong RSRP, the upload speed is likely as good as you'll get as the upload speed usually does not improve much further once the RSRP reaches around -85dBm to -90dBm from my experience.

[Meritez]

The only reason I have upgraded the modem in my LHG is for upload Carrier aggregation which hits 45 up on a good day and 30 on a bad day.

[Seán]

I did some further testing with a borrowed GoMo SIM (Eir network) which has band 28 coverage on the same >50km distant mast I pick up Three from.  Unlike Three, Eir has recently become a right pain for trying to use cell locking to a band 20 or 28 cell when a band 1 or 3 cell is present.  It kept trying to transfer my modem to band 1 or 3 as the primary band causing the connection to cycle up/down in a loop due to the distance.  This showed up in the log as repeat "NW Detach" events:

   

The only way I managed to eventually get it to settle was to turn the dish antenna away such that bands 1 and 3 became very weak (around -120dBm).  After a minute the connection finally settled on band 28 and was able to turn the antenna back towards the mast, where it then aggregated band 1 or 3 instead of trying to switch to it as the primary band.  Disconnecting (e.g. reboot) would cause the issue to return until I turned the dish temporarily away again, so this rules out ever using that mast for Eir here.

This modem uses the same cell lock AT command as the EG12 and RG502 modems:

   

The upload speed is roughly the same as what I get on band 20 with Three from that distant mast with this setup.  It was also interesting to see what download speed I could get with band 1 from Eir here as Eir requires an RSRP of -103dB or better on band 1 to aggregate it.  The Iskra antennas with past testing could only achieve an RSRP of around -107dBm on band 1 with Eir, resulting in the network not aggregating band 1.

Band 3 performs better on Eir, again requiring turning the antenna away until the cell stopped trying to hand over to band 3 as the primary band.

           

[Meritez]

found this:
http://cssmaps.killersoft.net/ep06e/

[Meritez]

EM12-G firmware:
https://github.com/4IceG/EM12-G

[Meritez]

Mikrotik have just added support for the Fibocom L850 GL in testing 7.8

[waveguide]

EM12-G firmware:
https://github.com/4IceG/EM12-G

Is it possible to update the firmware of the EM12-G while it is in the LHGG LTE6?
I am currently on EM12GPAR01A21M4G (Not sure what revision) and everything is working fine.
I wonder is it worth updating?

[Meritez]

@waveguide, if you download any of the firmwares you can read the change log and see if anything benefits you.

To upgrade in situ, you would require a DFOTA update file and I've not found one yet.