Afrihost MTN Fixed LTE-A Thread

GhostShow said:
I am willing to put money on a bet that they won't have a clue how to support the Mikrotik. Even Afrihost doesn't even know what LTE bands MTN uses. Nor where the towers are, which bands a tower closest to you supports. So I am finding this hard to believe. The argument for congestion I am willing to accept. But that becomes a whole different ball game when outdoor antennas are involved.
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Band 1 | ~5-15MHz
Band 3 | 10-20MHz
Band 8 | 5-10MHz
Band 41 | 20MHz
Band 41 | 20Mhz

MTN 5G has a mixed bag of frequencies but most coverage should be NSA N78

The capacity varies per tower and whether that tower has fibre or microwave backhaul or both.
 
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AfriNatic said:
MTN has has the device limit to prevent old LTE equipment from saturating certain bands while leaving others Idle.

If you look at the B315 for example. It can only use 1 band at a time and it prefers 1800MHz on Auto. Having 40 of these routers on a tower will slow that band down significantly. MTN decided to allow only certain devices which is cat6 or higher which at least supports B1+B3 aggregation. This spreads the load a bit.

I don't have the details why not all routers cat6 and higher aren't allowed, but I would think it's related to the sheer amount of devices out there and difficult to manage.
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Very simple to specify only CAT 6 or above routers, surely?
 
I am tempted to just have my Mikrotik clone a MAC address of the hauwei range.
 
AfriNatic said:
Band 1 | ~5-15MHz
Band 3 | 10-20MHz
Band 8 | 5-10MHz
Band 41 | 20MHz
Band 41 | 20Mhz

MTN 5G has a mixed bag of frequencies but most coverage should be NSA N78

The capacity varies per tower and whether that tower has fibre or microwave backhaul or both.
Click to expand...
So silly question but why are they not looking at more outdoor devices or external atennas? According to what I know and have read up on, if a tower can support 30 devices, and then all 30 devices used external antennas, that tower could then support 60 devices? Due to the fact that the towers can communicate better and do better path forming with the external antennas.
 
So I had a chat with MTN, apparently the devices need to be approved by ICASA as well. I find this a little odd, since normally when it comes to phones you need to make sure it supports the operators frequency bands, not that the operator supports your phone, but anyways. They also have a contract with Huawei it would seem, which explains the large amount of Huawei devices being approved. But let's see if they will help with signal issues.
 
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AfriNatic said:
Auto should work the best but there is a few combo's you can try.

B1+B3 is the most popular.
B1 + B8
B3 + B8
B41

B41 is part of the temporary spectrum and even if you can't aggregate on Band 41 since MTN has 2 x temporary spectrum blocks rolled out currently it should still give you around 60-100Mbps due to it being a band that is not supported by a lot of devices especially ones on the approved list.
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There are little devices that support B1 + B8, or B3 + B8 , from the B618-22d product sheet
Intra-band contiguous: CA_1C,CA_3C,CA_7C,CA_8B, CA_38C Inter-band: CA_1A-3A,CA_1A-20A,CA_3A-7A,CA_3A-2 0A,CA_7A-20A,CA_20A-38A

CA_1A-8A seems to only be on the B818, or the better Mikrotik Chateau LTE12.
 
AfriNatic said:
Not yet. Work in progress still unfortunately.
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Should all be IPv6 compliant by now, but sadly won't happen till it starts costing ISP's and others money, because they are not compliant. Then there will be a massive stampede dragging everyone along, into the IPv6 world.
 
elf_lord_ZC5 said:
Should all be IPv6 compliant by now, but sadly won't happen till it starts costing ISP's and others money, because they are not compliant. Then there will be a massive stampede dragging everyone along, into the IPv6 world.
Click to expand...

Our network is fully IPv6 ready. ;)
 
AfriNatic said:
Our network is fully IPv6 ready. ;)
Click to expand...

Not too many are, too many have old routers, running, that they see no reason to replace, and if Eskom's load shedding kills one, and it is cheaper to replace with a non IPv6 unit they do. Especially business'es - instead of using it as an opportunity the powers that be, see no point in sending the little extra to future proof their investment.
A lot of routers with buggy IPv6 implementations, don't help either. Especially in the cheaper segment of the market.

Then my Mi-Box has IPv6 ability, tho I don't know that it would be great. My Shield on the other hand, I have more confidence in their implementation.

But if IPV6 was implemented, that would also improve.

But both the devices and router need to be "properly" ready as well.

A bugger, of a situation ...
 
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Got my sim today. Signed up for the 40Gig package to test it out. Just popped in the sim, and everything works like a charm. I must say never had any problems with Afrihost. Now if only they can much Axxcess at R779 for uncapped:unsure::unsure::unsure::unsure:
 
To upgrade before the 15th I click on "Migrate Package" on the product in client zone?

I get this error:
Screenshot 2021-11-11 at 08.46.19.png

Developer tools shows
{"code":500,"message":"Something went wrong","error_slug":"internal_business_logic"}
Click to expand...
 
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