Afrihost Vodacom Fixed 5G thread

Honestly I still can’t get bridge mode to work it just gives me a dhcp ip and not passing the public ip through my Unifi

Anyone got this down successfully ?
 
William1102 said:
Honestly I still can’t get bridge mode to work it just gives me a dhcp ip and not passing the public ip through my Unifi

Anyone got this down successfully ?
Click to expand...
I thought that you had got this working previously?

I have been having a few issues with my 5G connection dropping every time I try to sign into the router from a web browser using 192.168.0.1. If I type in https://192.168.0.1 it seems to sign in correctly. I have been trying to disable IPv6 but I can't find any settings for this. I did contact ZTE using the Getting More Help e-mail address ([email protected]) on Page 15 of the Let's Go Manual. I am still waiting for a response.

If you want to contact ZTE at the e-mail address above you need to first provide them with your details.
Thank you for reaching us.

In order to better assist with the query, we may request you to provide with some basic information accordingly, is that OK with you?
If that is fine: Please provide the below requested details.

IMEI number of the device.
Build Number of the device ?
The place where you purchased the device (country/city) & the purchase date.
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Please maintain the same E-mail subject and revert back to us at the earliest.
Click to expand...

If you are considering doing a factory reset, Afrihost has a detailed guide. I might try this myself as my router didn't reboot when I first received it!
help.afrihost.com

How to manage the ZTE G5TS router | Help Center

How to manage the ZTE G5TS router
help.afrihost.com help.afrihost.com

According to this information brochure, the G5TS is a Dual Stack IPv4/IPv6 router so there may be some issues with connecting to some routers. They also claim that it supports OpenWRT which seems unlikely. Maybe you can try to bridge it with a different router?

forum.mikrotik.com

Lots of difficulty configuring IPV6 and IPV4 in dualstack

Hello everyone, I’ve spent several hours and conducted hundreds of tests, but I’m still struggling to get IPv4 and IPv6 working in dual stack mode on my Mikrotik router. I’m really at a loss about where the problem lies and am hoping someone here can offer some assistance. I’ve gone through...
forum.mikrotik.com forum.mikrotik.com

Let us know if you get it working.
 
Last edited:
Jake45 said:
I thought that you had got this working previously?

I have been having a few issues with my 5G connection dropping every time I try to sign into the router from a web browser using 192.168.0.1. If I type in https://192.168.0.1 it seems to sign in correctly. I have been trying to disable IPv6 but I can't find any settings for this. I did contact ZTE using the Getting More Help e-mail address ([email protected]) on Page 15 of the Let's Go Manual. I am still waiting for a response.

If you want to contact ZTE at the e-mail address above you need to first provide them with your details.


If you are considering doing a factory reset, Afrihost has a detailed guide. I might try this myself as my router didn't reboot when I first received it!
help.afrihost.com

How to manage the ZTE G5TS router | Help Center

How to manage the ZTE G5TS router
help.afrihost.com help.afrihost.com

According to this information brochure, the G5TS is a Dual Stack IPv4/IPv6 router so there may be some issues with connecting to some routers. They also claim that it supports OpenWRT which seems unlikely. Maybe you can try to bridge it with a different router?

forum.mikrotik.com

Lots of difficulty configuring IPV6 and IPV4 in dualstack

Hello everyone, I’ve spent several hours and conducted hundreds of tests, but I’m still struggling to get IPv4 and IPv6 working in dual stack mode on my Mikrotik router. I’m really at a loss about where the problem lies and am hoping someone here can offer some assistance. I’ve gone through...
forum.mikrotik.com forum.mikrotik.com

Let us know if you get it working.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately not, assumed it would be as simple as ticking bridge mode and it was not
 
Hows the performance been?
Considering moving away from fibre, the performance is beyond garbage during peak times.
 
Zurg said:
Hows the performance been?
Considering moving away from fibre, the performance is beyond garbage during peak times.
Click to expand...

Mines at the office so not sure on peak times but the routers antennas are quite bad compared to my tp link so only getting 150mbps
 
William1102 said:
Mines at the office so not sure on peak times but the routers antennas are quite bad compared to my tp link so only getting 150mbps
Click to expand...

Hmmm that's not good.
I have LOS of a tower, not sure if I would be connecting that one.
 
I tried my Afrihost MTN fixed wireless sim in the ZTE 5G router. I tried it in the same position as I normally use the the MTN sim in a Huawei B535 and even though the ZTE showed it was picking up 5G and 2xLTE and the signal sort of looked OK to me (I didn't compare it to the Huawei signal numbers unfortunately) I didn't even get as good speeds with the 5G router as I normally get on the Huawei B535. Interesting.
 
Are most Vodacom 5G customers connecting on Band N41 and Bands 1 & 3 on 4G ?

Screenshot_20251002-093405.png
Screenshot_20251002-094346.png
 
Last edited:
What's the status on supporting Mikrotik Chateau 5G routers? These routers are far superior to anything ZTE and Huawei offer, yet they no longer appear on the list of approved routers for MTN or Vodacom.
 
The unused data at the end of a month is supposed to roll over for a month right? Did it work for other people? Mine didn't roll over any unused data that I can see. I'm on the 300Gb package and I started October with 300Gb.
 
Anybody moved from fibre to LTE?
If so what has your performance been like?
 
Zurg said:
Anybody moved from fibre to LTE?
If so what has your performance been like?
Click to expand...

The biggest issue with LTE/5G compared to fibre is bufferbloat. This is when your latency increases as throughput increases. For example, if you can normally ping a server with latency of 20ms when your connection is idle, that latency will shoot up to 100ms or 200ms when you download or upload a large file or stream a video, etc. Even if you're getting 100Mbps on your LTE connection or 300Mbps on your 5G connection, bufferbloat still occurs no matter how fast your connection is. This is terrible for gaming and other latency-sensitive apps like Zoom, Meets, VOIP, Whatsapp, etc. However if you have a decent router that can implement queue management, or you put the LTE/5G router in front of another router like Opnsense, Mikrotik or OpenWRT you can fix this very easily and get a good stable connection that performs well under load.

At home I've got an Opnsense router with dual-wan failover between fibre and MTN Fixed LTE. On the odd occasion that the fibre goes down I don't even notice it and the only reason I even know the fibre has gone down is because I get an email alert. The LTE works flawlessly because the Opnsense router shapes the traffic to prevent bufferbloat.
 
Oh! I just realized that I have a Poynting XPOL-6 which is rated for up to 2700MHz and if I'm using 5G band N41 which is "2496 – 2690"MHz (from wikipedia) then I should actually just be able to get the right adaptors and plug the external antenna into the ZTE router and do some testing.
 
deweyzeph said:
The biggest issue with LTE/5G compared to fibre is bufferbloat. This is when your latency increases as throughput increases. For example, if you can normally ping a server with latency of 20ms when your connection is idle, that latency will shoot up to 100ms or 200ms when you download or upload a large file or stream a video, etc. Even if you're getting 100Mbps on your LTE connection or 300Mbps on your 5G connection, bufferbloat still occurs no matter how fast your connection is. This is terrible for gaming and other latency-sensitive apps like Zoom, Meets, VOIP, Whatsapp, etc. However if you have a decent router that can implement queue management, or you put the LTE/5G router in front of another router like Opnsense, Mikrotik or OpenWRT you can fix this very easily and get a good stable connection that performs well under load.

At home I've got an Opnsense router with dual-wan failover between fibre and MTN Fixed LTE. On the odd occasion that the fibre goes down I don't even notice it and the only reason I even know the fibre has gone down is because I get an email alert. The LTE works flawlessly because the Opnsense router shapes the traffic to prevent bufferbloat.
Click to expand...
Good info, thanks! I've never really known about the bufferbloat problem before, but I definitely have noticed increased latency when downloading. Why is the bufferbloat more of a problem with LTE/5G than fiber though, isn't it more a router/queuing thing?

I have a TP-link MR600 router that I won't be using next month and that seems to support openWRT, so then I can load openWRT and use that in front of the ZTE router running the 5G to improve bufferbloat.
 
@1am7h30n3: I will be very interested to see if you notice any improvement.

I have been running a few bufferbloat tests on my ZTE G5TS. The tests were done over WiFi using my phone which is not ideal. A wired connection to the router should give better results.
www.waveform.com

Bufferbloat and Internet Speed Test - Waveform

Is bufferbloat causing issues with your internet connection? Run this test to find out.
www.waveform.com www.waveform.com

As expected the results vary greatly (from an F Grade to a high C Grade) depending on the time of day and presumably the amount of traffic on the tower. I would expect that the uncapped 5G FWA customers receive a fairly low priority when the tower is busy.

Screenshot_20251006-232543.png

Screenshot_20251008-080313.png

Screenshot_20251007-034516.png
 
1am7h30n3 said:
Good info, thanks! I've never really known about the bufferbloat problem before, but I definitely have noticed increased latency when downloading. Why is the bufferbloat more of a problem with LTE/5G than fiber though, isn't it more a router/queuing thing?

I have a TP-link MR600 router that I won't be using next month and that seems to support openWRT, so then I can load openWRT and use that in front of the ZTE router running the 5G to improve bufferbloat.
Click to expand...

It's just less noticeable on fibre because fibre inherently has lower latency than LTE/5G, but it's still there. On my Opnsense router I shape all WAN traffic using the FQ-CoDel packet scheduler, both for fibre and for the failover LTE, and I get A+ ratings on both WAN connections when I run the bufferbloat test.
 
I ran the bufferbloat test and got a grade of F on the 5G.

Just for a bit of fun I ran the bufferbloat test on my work internet as well and got a grade of F. Work internet is fiber. Test was done before work hours so there was only 1 other person in the building, so I doubt that would affect the result. The 5G was better in every metric except upload speed where the fiber had a higher upload speed and the baseline latency was 27ms lower on the fiber than the 5G.
 
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