MTN tower location

AgentSmithZA

AgentSmithZA

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I'm trying to locate the tower I'm connected to.

My RSRP, RSRQ, and RSSI are great, but SINR fluctuates like crazy.
SINR goes from -5 to +8, to -1, to +15, etc

I've positioned my antenna to point in the direction that gives the best RSRP and RSRQ.

How can I determine the location of the tower, based on CELL_ID?
 
Last edited:
webyep said:
I'm trying to locate the tower I'm connected to.

My RSRP, RSRQ, and RSSI are great, but SINR fluctuates like crazy.
SINR goes from -5 to +8, to -1, to +15, etc

I've positioned my antenna to point in the direction that gives the best RSRP and RSRQ.

How can I determine the location of the tower, based on CELL_ID?
Click to expand...

Using this Guide and changing the info

Rain Tower Location: PM me your Cell ID's

I might have found a way to locate the Rain tower that you are connected to if you are wondering where to point your external antenna. PM me your Cell ID, and I will reply with the tower location. It can be found under Settings >> System >> Device Information. Look next to 'CELL_ID:'
mybroadband.co.za mybroadband.co.za

MNC to 10 which is MTN because MTNSA is 65510

That should give you and estimated location
 
cavedog said:
Using this Guide and changing the info

Rain Tower Location: PM me your Cell ID's

I might have found a way to locate the Rain tower that you are connected to if you are wondering where to point your external antenna. PM me your Cell ID, and I will reply with the tower location. It can be found under Settings >> System >> Device Information. Look next to 'CELL_ID:'
mybroadband.co.za mybroadband.co.za

MNC to 10 which is MTN because MTNSA is 65510

That should give you and estimated location
Click to expand...

Thank you very much. I've located the tower!
 
webyep said:
Thank you very much. I've located the tower!
Click to expand...

Nice were you pointing it in the correct direction?

If I may ask what service are you using? Fixed LTE and what Router?
 
cavedog said:
Nice were you pointing it in the correct direction?

If I may ask what service are you using? Fixed LTE and what Router?
Click to expand...

Funny enough, the antenna is on the wrong side of the house, pointing in the wrong direction. I used the Huawei Band Tool to try to locate the best direction for the best RSRP and RSRQ. The signal I'm getting is likely reflected off one of the bluegum trees...

Apr-07-2020 09-19-50.gif

I've got a B618, with an XPOL-2. I'm currently with Axxess - MTN Fixed LTE until the end of this month, and I've ordered Afrihost - MTN Fixed LTE.
 
webyep said:
Funny enough, the antenna is on the wrong side of the house, pointing in the wrong direction. I used the Huawei Band Tool to try to locate the best direction for the best RSRP and RSRQ. The signal I'm getting is likely reflected off one of the bluegum trees...

View attachment 813953

I've got a B618, with an XPOL-2. I'm currently with Axxess - MTN Fixed LTE until the end of this month, and I've ordered Afrihost - MTN Fixed LTE.
Click to expand...

That signal stats are not bad at all though. You get 4G+ in the router right? What is the speeds like
 
Daruk said:
What numbers should we be aiming for?

View attachment 813961
Click to expand...

You would want SINR as high as possible with 30dB being the max there and RSRP for get the minus in front so you want that as low as possible with the lowest being -54dB.

That usually means line of sight and a 100m from the tower or so.
 
cavedog said:
That signal stats are not bad at all though. You get 4G+ in the router right? What is the speeds like
Click to expand...

Speeds are good. I do get 4G+, speed varies. I usually get 60-80 Mbps. I've got a lot of trees around me, with no LOS to the tower.

9248088839.png


What's gotten me tinkering is the fluctuating SINR, and some latency (which may not be signal related).

Example, simple ping:
Code: 
--- 1.1.1.1 ping statistics ---
100 packets transmitted, 100 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 20.712/34.719/162.441/14.380 ms

The ping managed to hit 162.441ms, but then back down. I don't know if its ISP/signal related, so the easiest place to look is signal. I could run the test, and it could hum between 25-40ms, without the spike. The issue is sporadic, and I've noticed a lot of "Your connection is unstable" at night on Zoom video calls. Although, I think Zoom is bursting at the seams at the moment with everyone shifting to work at home.
 
I forced the router to connect to 900 Mhz. SINR doesn't fluctuate much now - only the cost of speed.
1586286452744.png

9251030113.png


I'll leave it like this until I get time to tinker with the antenna placement.
 
webyep said:
I forced the router to connect to 900 Mhz. SINR doesn't fluctuate much now - only the cost of speed.
View attachment 814379

9251030113.png


I'll leave it like this until I get time to tinker with the antenna placement.
Click to expand...

Yeah it's refarmed 2G spectrum. Very limited bandwidth on that band as you can see 5MHz dual channel. Not a lot of phones use this band unless they are new devices that uses 3 carrier aggregation or is very far from the ower in which case the 900MHz travels much further than the rest.

Also take note that once you connect an antenna to the B618 or other routers the mimo mode drops to 2x2 mimo compared to internal antennas that might be 4x4 mimo if the tower supports.

It's a pity MTN Fixed LTE does not support a router that does 3 carrier aggregation like the Huawei H112.

BTW what tool are you using to check the stats?
 
Daruk said:
Hmm.... very much "estimated". It's a very broad circle with the center right in a residential block - definitely no sign of towers there... was I expecting too much for it to be accurate?
Anyone know what MTN towers look like? This one is a few blocks away:

View attachment 813985
Click to expand...

That is definitely an MTN and Vodacom tower. Each network has it's own cabinet at the bottom means at least 2 networks on that tower maybe 3 because Rain and Vodacom IF Vodacom rolled out Rain on that tower share the same cabinet. If it's a in Gauteng or CPT then it's likely that Rain hosts their own equipment in their own cabinet.
 
cavedog said:
Yeah it's refarmed 2G spectrum. Very limited bandwidth on that band as you can see 5MHz dual channel. Not a lot of phones use this band unless they are new devices that uses 3 carrier aggregation or is very far from the ower in which case the 900MHz travels much further than the rest.

Also take note that once you connect an antenna to the B618 or other routers the mimo mode drops to 2x2 mimo compared to internal antennas that might be 4x4 mimo if the tower supports.

It's a pity MTN Fixed LTE does not support a router that does 3 carrier aggregation like the Huawei H112.

BTW what tool are you using to check the stats?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, very interesting. It makes sense, I've noticed slightly higher speeds without an antenna, but at the cost of a weaker signal.

The tool I'm using is the Huawei Band Tool - found here. I quite like the responsiveness of this tool. After doing antenna adjustments, I run this signal strength indicator within a tmux session on my home server. I can then check-in after some time and see how any of the values(avg, min, max) behaved throughout the day/night.

Here's what the signal strength indicator looks like:
1586319843084.png

The AT TCP signal strength indicator is quite nice too:
1586320016755.png
 
So, I moved the antenna after doing some basic tests. Signal looked good, I drilled some holes, crawled in the ceiling... etc all the good stuff. Eventually, the antenna was mounted and ready for tweaking.

The signal seemed better, but then it degraded suddenly, then it got better. I've got a fail-over to Telkom 3G on my Mikrotik, and when I did a speed test I found that it was showing Telkom, then Airmobile, then Telkom again.

I then discovered, my WAN IP kept changing... The router was in a tower hopping loop and my Mikrotik kept failing over... I ended up undoing everything and moving the antenna back to pointing in the wrong direction, on the whole side of the house. I actually got slightly more consistent SINR after tweaking further, so I guess it wasn't a total write-off.
 
webyep said:
So, I moved the antenna after doing some basic tests. Signal looked good, I drilled some holes, crawled in the ceiling... etc all the good stuff. Eventually, the antenna was mounted and ready for tweaking.

The signal seemed better, but then it degraded suddenly, then it got better. I've got a fail-over to Telkom 3G on my Mikrotik, and when I did a speed test I found that it was showing Telkom, then Airmobile, then Telkom again.

I then discovered, my WAN IP kept changing... The router was in a tower hopping loop and my Mikrotik kept failing over... I ended up undoing everything and moving the antenna back to pointing in the wrong direction, on the whole side of the house. I actually got slightly more consistent SINR after tweaking further, so I guess it wasn't a total write-off.
Click to expand...

Ohh no. Well tower hopping would not generate a new ip unless the connection got killed for some reason.
 
webyep said:
I noticed 5 about different WAN IP's in the space of about 3 minutes.
Click to expand...

I'm wondering why it's dropping the connection. Not supposed to happen. 4G has pretty decent tech for that not to happen.
 
@cavedog Check this out... I got a new router from Afrihost, its the ZTE MF286C. The only change was moving the antenna from the B618s-22d to the ZTE... (still using my same sim) My SINR is now hopping between 15 and 22, mostly in the 20's.

1587123554186.png

1587123610478.png
 
webyep said:
@cavedog Check this out... I got a new router from Afrihost, its the ZTE MF286C. The only change was moving the antenna from the B618s-22d to the ZTE... (still using my same sim) My SINR is now hopping between 15 and 22, mostly in the 20's.

View attachment 824003

View attachment 824005
Click to expand...

Very nice. I wonder what bands it's aggregating. Must be B1 and B3 can't be 3 carrier aggregation though :unsure:
 
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