Forum Discussion
A possible solution to speed issues (N71 vs N41)
Some background: My Arcadyan KVD21 gateway became super slow about 3 weeks ago. The config app said that I had good SN, etc, but I was always connecting a slow N71 tower that's a mile or so from my house with clear line-of-sight. Maybe there was an upgrade to this tower or whatever, but when I was originally getting >100 Mbps I was now crawling at a snail's pace.
Cellmapper showed another tower on the opposite side of my home, about 3 miles away. No line-of-sight. So I concluded that I need to try to connect to this other tower.
Today I located a place in my garage - in front of a window turned 90 degrees away from the tower - and I’m getting N41 with up to 90 Mbps downloads and 30 Mbps uploads!
I only hope this continues to work. Hopefully they'll upgrade the N71 tower.
My suggestion to those of you who are getting slow speeds is to keep on moving the gateway around and rotating it until you get N41.
If you have actual clear line of sight the n71 performs pretty well at that distance. We have the tower 5.3 miles due north on a ridge, and we are on a ridge with full view of the tower base to cells. With the n71 we were getting a pretty clean stable signal and solid downloads and uploads. Recently T-Mobile made the n41 signal available here and the gateway flipped to n41. The signal strength is reported as less than the n71 but the signal quality is better and noise is less. The speeds pretty much doubled both up and down with the n41 and B2 or B66. Still the downloads are pretty impressive ~300 and latency and jitter is low and no packet loss on testing. The metrics fluctuate from time to time but so far the n41 has been stable like the n71. I am a bit surprised as I was a bit apprehensive when it flipped to n41 as the conversations in the community seem to reflect the service starting out great only to degrade and become unstable. So far with n41 service on the 5G it has been stable since mid September.
If you can get a good stable signal from the n41 and it is done right it works well. If not then getting on a stable n71 with good metrics can be pretty good too. As long as the source is not overloaded and experiencing congestion and throttling it is a good solution.
AusMaw wrote:
I wish it would connect to the better signal. My KVD21 will connect to N41, which has a somewhat good download, but latency of 80-100 ms which is choppy. The N41 band can only get an SINR of about 5. Now if I get it turned just right I'll get N71 after a while. SINR of 15, 30 ms ping, 150 down 60 up. Everything works great.
I just wish there a few more selections you could make with your gateway. In my area, hands down, I prefer N71 over N41, but it gravitates to the weaker signal. I get N71 and go as long as I can without a reboot.
It turned out that a tower 5 miles south gives me very fast (>100 Mbps down, >20 Mbps up) service. I think that this tower was being worked on when I first got my gateway, so I never tried that side of my house. It's odd that I'm only getting 3 bars of strength, but I don't care as long as it keeps working.
I wish it would connect to the better signal. My KVD21 will connect to N41, which has a somewhat good download, but latency of 80-100 ms which is choppy. The N41 band can only get an SINR of about 5. Now if I get it turned just right I'll get N71 after a while. SINR of 15, 30 ms ping, 150 down 60 up. Everything works great.
I just wish there a few more selections you could make with your gateway. In my area, hands down, I prefer N71 over N41, but it gravitates to the weaker signal. I get N71 and go as long as I can without a reboot.
The gateway should select the best available signal on its own.
Well crap. Slow again (<3 Mbps down, .15 up). Is there any way to shield the gateway from an unwanted signal? I'm thinking tin foil…
