Rural Lithuania | B528s-23a + 2x2 Mimo | Slow Upload

[Cramorant]

Hello,

I live in rural Lithuania and am about 2,5 km away from the next Tower. Tower is on a Hill above the tree Line. 

Here you can see what it looks like on Cellmapper. 
Router: HUAWEI B528-23a 
Antenna: Rantelon Nelli 0727

My property seems to be right on the Edge of Band 3 Connectivity. 
Sometimes my router is on Band 20, sometimes on Band 3. It jumps between 4G and 4G+ as well. 

The above configuration works well for download speed. Getting 20MB/s as max speed. Regardless of what Band I am connected to. Speed drops to 10MB/s sometimes but that’s due to congestion i suppose. 

What puzzles me is the upload speed as it is wildly inconsistent. Sometimes I get around 2,5MB/s and then again it struggles to get 0.5MB/s

I tried different providers and the cheapest one offer only Band 20 but regardless of Router/Antenna is seem to get above 2MB/s consistently. 

That led me to believe if I lock Upload to Band 20 it should yield consistent results on my main provider as well but that is not the case. 

If I walk towards the tower I can see the Upload speed increasing and stabilizing. 

Attached are 2 LTE-H 1 Hour Windows from the same day. Router connected to Antenna I did not move it. 
Shows Band 20 and Band 3. Posting Speedtest Results from the same Timeframe as well. 

There is another Screengrab showing the UL Speed increasing when I walk 1km towards the tower. Until I have a line of sight. Can’t get better speeds closer to the tower which gives me hope as I seem to be reasonably close. 

In order to place the antenna I walked around the property and tried different heights. 
It was outside on the side of the roof for 3 Month. Recently placed it inside the Attic a bit higher and pressed up to an old window. Didn’t make a difference but inside into more accessible for testing. 
It’s directed towards the Tower. Rotated it in slight increments to see which direction is best. Tried mounting it on a pole to see if adding 2m of height and changes anything but it did not have an impact. 

Currently I am using two HUAWEI B528-23a. One with said Antenna and the best provider. Another one without Antenna as speed didn’t change much even if I connect the antenna.

I connect both via Ethernet to my MacBook and use Speedify to bond the Connections. Download gets worse but upload is at 3-5MB/s

Trying to understand if the UL Speed issue is congestion and there is nothing I can do. 
Or if it’s worth trying another Antenna/Router or maybe trying to boost Band 3 with a Satellite Dish. 

Thank you for reading and your attention. If you need more info I can provide it or run different tests if needed.

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[Seán]

That's a great amount of technical info. With the RSRP graphs you have, I would expect the upload speed to be much higher such as over 10Mbps on band 20 with that H-Monitor RSRP graph hovering around -102dBm RSRP.

Check the antenna setting in the Huawei's web configuration is set to "External", i.e. not Auto, mix, etc. where it could be transmitting (for uploading) using its internal antenna. Assuming the menu is the same as the B525 model, go into Settings -> System (left menu) -> Antenna Setting.

As you get both band 3 and 20, try locking to band 3 to see what the RSRP reading is on band 3 with your Rantelon antenna attached. This will determine whether it is worth upgrading the antenna to a higher gain log periodic pair (which look similar to TV aerials) or going for a parabolic dish antenna. If the coaxial cables are very long (e.g. over 10m) or lossy (RG58 and especially RG174), most of the transmission power would be lost in the coax before reaching the antenna.

For example, if the RSRP on band 3 is below -110dBm, I suggest going for either a satellite dish based antenna (like this) or getting the MikroTik LHG LTE18 which is a combination of a router and dish in the one unit. The MikroTik LHG has the advantage of not having any cable signal losses, so may deliver a faster upload speed than using a satellite dish based antenna.

Another test you can try to test for upload contention (network congestion) would be to try running a few speed tests very early in the morning such as before 6am. If the upload speed is still very low at that time, the issue could be something emitting radio interference such as a household nearby operating a poor quality mobile repeater broadcasting noise across the band 20 or 3 upload frequencies.

[Cramorant]

Thank you for the input. Yes I do a lot of measurements as I don't quite like get what's wrong or can be improved. 

Trying to wrap my head around the data to figure it why upload is such an issue. 

Cable from the Antenna is 5m.Tried switching around Antenna 1 and 2. And double checked it’s set to external. 

Locked it to Band3 and Band20. Will attach the readings. Last one is locked to Band 3 and Antenna set to internal to see the difference the antenna already makes. 

My neighbor is 250m away across the street. Before buying my antenna last year I checked with him if he has any antennas and at that point he did not. Since the village is only 100people and that my only direct neighbor I doubt that congestion is the case. Let me start a 24h test with testmy.net. It would alt least make sense if interference is causing these issue. 

The LHG LTE 18 looks promising. Do you think getting an old 80cm dish and repurposing it could be wise? Just to see if I get any improvement before I spent a more money on an antenna? I hope it could work as a proof of concept before committing to a pricier option. Not sure if it’s worth the hassle though.