Comreg Siteviewer accurate?

ED E wrote: »

[Talking about 3 here]

Placed some of the towers. Using Comreg data its not possible to be sure of all of them. 3110 we've only seen one cell from, it could be an eNB running an extra cell on one of the existing sites or it could be where I've placed it, there should be a cell serving there. The slightly hilly nature may mean not all sites broadcast 360*.

Update: this is the cell you posted in the OP.

Looks to be radio fed in the past if not currently. That's one _possibe_ explanation for the intermittent dropouts if your signal to the cell remains ok but traffic dies.


The two sites along the railway are significant and probably well connected and also well used. One has two tiers of LTE Id say (North) and the other one tier.

Both sites are listed as 5G enabled for several months. In the next 6-12mo these could be the best option. You're essentially benefiting from all the teenagers that cannot afford an iPhone 12 yet but as time goes on the number of handsets loading the 5 cells will rise sharply. At higher frequencies you'll want either direct LOS or very low foliage cover in the way. The trees you mention are an issue but these two sites are quite tall and you're above them right?

What exactly does radio feed mean? Its acting as a relay?



Im higher than the railway cells like 3590. I am lower than the 3110/3676 cells but the thing is I dont actually ever connect to them even with the antenna directly pointing towards them. Probably due to the trees between me and that site. The site I am nearly always connected to are 398(Three). for vodafone i rarely get 4g if ever and the tower i was connecting to was 113111 which is not where it says it is.



The amount of foilage between me and 398 is probably similar to 3110 and 3676. plus i dont think 3110 and 3676 covers me as i drove around the site a number of times and there appears to be only cells on about 270 degrees around the building and the side im on does not appear to have cells facing it which would explain why im connecting to 3110/3676.


I was connected 398 the other day when walking and was about 1Km away and got over 100Mb dl on my phone. Never got anything near that when standing next to the cells on 3110/3676 with my phone.



Where are you getting the info about "Both sites are listed as 5G enabled" comreg says only vodafone(CK446) have 4g on the 3110/3676 site. Dont see anything about 5g on comreg


For 5g if LOS is needed then i am going to be pretty much f**ked as there is foilage on nearly all sides of me and the only side that does not have foilage does not have any cells on that side.

smuggler.ie wrote: »

If not mistaking, this site(3110 and 3676) is obscured from OP by heavy foliage, ~15m tall evergreen trees (thuja) - wall all year round.
Only guessing - signal from that side just being bounced off/signal from further sites in opposite direction(398) being reflected to the aerial.

If the signal is bounced off other sites would that mean i would see the true origin as the cell i'm connected to or the relay/intermittent cell?





I updated the router firmware to the latest branded version and no improvement. I need a windows machine to run the multicast hack to debrand/flash Huawei firmware so will create a windows VM shortly to do it but if i remember correctly i think i tried it a few years ago but could not get it to update to the Huawei firmware.



Stupid Question but is there any specific orientation i should have the antenna. I just am pointing the domes horizontally towards the cells towers and watching the router stats on my phone to determine the best position but it doesnt make much of a difference.

ED E wrote: »

Ahh ok, you're DF. I post in so many BB threads I forget who has what :pac:


Crap speeds for full price is hard to swallow but in a year when we're doing a hell of a lot of WFH the stability would be attractive to me. If you lived in the bog and it was 2Mb ER ADSL vs getting 4G to work I could see it being worth the insanity. If you have two people WFH earning €15/hr thats the fixed line tariff paid in 2hrs.


But if you have the patience to persist - do we know whats happening when it drops?
A - The LTE link drops/changes/stutters (does the cell ID change for a second, does RSSI change?)
B - Link stays up but IP traffic just stops flowing for a sec

Im not surprised your the main man for helping people with internet issues. Thank you again for all your help so far.



I have been thinking the same myself about fixed line and especially since we were informed we are WTF untii at least august.



Unfortunately with my work upload and dl speed is pretty important as im uploading and dl tonnes of stuff to servers. Usually my ratio is 1:0.75(DL:UL) with the less than 1Mb up with fixed line it would really slow me down. Most if not all of this uploading is done during the AM when im asleep.



The other factor is to access some of my company resources I have to be on a VPN that does not allow split tunnelling and this VPN kills a connection. doing a speedtest before connecting to VPN in most cases i would get around 30Mb after connection to VPN i get around 5Mb. I can only imagine what speeds I would get with the fixed line. Some of my colleagues have 1Gig connections and get less than 50Mb on the VPN so we only use this when we have to.



Even considering all this I was still thinking of going down the fixed line route and keeping the 4G connection for uploading and it is something I am now seriously considering after seeing the 5g router is going to set me back €400 and more than likely wont fix my stability issues.



Do you know if i have the option to pay for the cost of running a fibre fixed line from the cabinet to my house?



Multiple different things happen when it drops!


A - The LTE link drops/changes/stutters (does the cell ID change for a second, does RSSI change?) I never actually checked this. Will do the next time i see a drop out.
B - Link stays up but IP traffic just stops flowing for a sec. Link stay up but the lag is unreal. goes from <100ms to over 1000ms with pings to google DNS and in many cases the ping packets get no response.If a do a restart of the router the same still happens after reconnecting but usually comes good after about 5-10 mins. In the evenings it may take 30+ mins or longer to come good. This is the symptoms of the most common dropouts. See the same issues with our phone connections in most cases.
C - The link goes down completely and the router shows no service. Reboot of the router has no affect and i just have to wait till the connection comes back up which can be hours in some cases. This issue rarely occurs and i usually only see it once a month. Last time i seen it was 11am on 04/01/2021. Phones dont seem to have any issues when i see this issue.

D - Unable to reach any google services. I seen this issue on 3 and Vodafone, everything else works fine and i can reach google services when this happens using the work VPN.This is obvs an issue on there end.I rarely see this issue also.

On a positive since moving the antenna to point to 3662 and it instead connecting to 3736. I have seen improved stability and have not see one drop out in the evening which is the time i would usually prolonged dropouts and had just the 2 dropout during the working day, one being C and did not confirm the symptoms for the other but it could of just been the number of people on webex as pages seemed to be loading fine.

First off thanks for all the help and advise here.

Update.

So after replacing everything router, antenna and cables and testing for over a month I got a pretty stable connection on Band 1 to 3736 or I should say until the last week or so.

In the last week or so the router seems to be flickering between 3737 and 3736. 3636 give me around 50-100Mb at all times where 3737 never gives me more than 20Mb.

I dont really understand where 3737 came from as i never connected to it until recently and had a great connection before it popped up. It must be new as no changes where made to the antenna since before it popped up. I spent nearly a month moving the antenna every few days to find the best position for it as the router stats were useless. What @smuggler.ie said is correct the trees seem to be reflecting the signal so no matter where i point the antennas the stats were all over the place. I found the best position for the antenna doing 50+ speedtests over the course of days and documenting the cells i was connecting to. Currently the antenna is pointing directly at 3736 but does have to go through a large amount of trees. router connection stats are all over the place but speed is pretty consistent on 3736 depending on time of the day/congestion.

On the other side of the tree(<100m) with my phone i get 100Mb DL. on 3736. So it looks like where ever 3737 is the trees are reflecting its signal.

It would be brilliant if comreg would actually provide the ENBs of each tower so I can confirm where 3737 is at least as cell mapper has not provide any useable info to where it is located plus I have yet to see my phone ever even connect to it but it must has at some stage as cell mapper would not be aware of it other wise.

Any one have any idea if there is an app to force specific bands on a phone? At least that way i can force the phone to use band 1 and improve my chances of connecting to it. I could only find ones to force specific connection types e.g 5G, 4G etc..