Rain LTE bands

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GhostShow

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Hi all,

So I have been messing around with Rain's LTE for a bit now, and I am stuck with them on getting some basic help on which bands to use.

Thus far my experience has been that Band B3, seems to perform the best in terms of both upload and download speeds.
Band B38, has a much better download speed well above 10Mbps, however the upload is very poor.

This is then when even using an outdoor router like the MikroTik LHG LTE6 17dBi Outdoor CPE | RBLHGR&R11e-LTE6.

Now I can scan for different PCI's and as I understood each tower has 3 stations, but I have not been able to connect to every PCI, on certain towers 2, but on others just 1.

So does anyone have some advice on what to do here, should I try get a better signal with the B38 band. Currently on B3, RSSI is -54 dBm, RSRP -86 dBm, RSRQ -13.5dB, and SINR is -1dB.

Should I rather try an omni antenna with a less of a boost vs this directional 16dB gain antenna modem?
 
Where it comes to the PCI … remember each tower have different PCI’s … meaning Cells .. pointing to different directions … so even if you connect to a cell that’s not pointing to your direction wherever your house is it wont offer good speeds signal that explains why on some towers you can only connect to one PCI because it’s facing to your direction and covers your area …
 
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If it’s for testing and helping others in your area after it comes to the best towers for better speeds … why not … but also if it’s for yourself just fine a tower that’s best …
 
The weird thing is that I can only find 2 PCI's for Band B38. Surely if I see like 7 PCI's for B3, I should see more than 2 for B38?

Should I try get a good signal on B38? Also is the directional antenna better?
 
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GhostShow said:
Thus far my experience has been that Band B3, seems to perform the best in terms of both upload and download speeds.
Band B38, has a much better download speed well above 10Mbps, however the upload is very poor.
Click to expand...

This is because on Rain B3 uses FDD, and B38 uses TDD. TDD in most cases gives much slower upload speed, because the ISP sets it up asymmetrically to favour higher downloads speed at the expense of upload speed (users download much more than they upload). Unless you plan on uploading a lot, you don't need it. I get about 2.5mbps upload on B38 and it's enough.

Basically, FDD uses 2 separate frequencies for download and upload. TDD uses one frequency and the link changes state between downloading and uploading. Think of it like full duplex vs half duplex.

Read more here: https://www.cablefree.net/wirelesstechnology/fdd-vs-tdd/

The other issue however is most people on Rain LTE use B3, so it is congested on the downlink and you get the opposite result - slow downloads (due to congestion) and good uploads (because FDD is symmetrical and people generally upload far less than they download so there is no congestion on the uplink).
 
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GhostShow said:
The weird thing is that I can only find 2 PCI's for Band B38. Surely if I see like 7 PCI's for B3, I should see more than 2 for B38?
Click to expand...

No. A PCI is just a cell identifier. There is no rule here. A provider may have 10 antennas for one band, and only 1 or 2 for another band. Or anything really. It also depends where you are, what towers/cell are around you and what you pick up.

In general, Rain has far more B3 antennas/cells than they do B38.
 
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jbroo said:
No. A PCI is just a cell identifier. There is no rule here. A provider may have 10 antennas for one band, and only 1 or 2 for another band. Or anything really. It also depends where you are, what towers/cell are around you and what you pick up.

In general, Rain has far more B3 antennas/cells than they do B38.
Click to expand...
True … so if you only get two PCI’s or cells that’s Band 38 that could be the only 2 …

just try to get the best tower with consistent speeds that’s all you can do …
 
So I see that Mikrotik has a LTE 12 or CAT12 modem now, that seems to be capable of doing carrier aggregation between B3 and B38. Would this be a better option to then get vs the current RBLHGR&R11e-LTE6?
 
GhostShow said:
So I see that Mikrotik has a LTE 12 or CAT12 modem now, that seems to be capable of doing carrier aggregation between B3 and B38. Would this be a better option to then get vs the current RBLHGR&R11e-LTE6?
Click to expand...
It would if rain and their SIMs support CA. @rain_mobile?
 
Well there is also the Huawei B818, which is a CAT19 router. Which is really overkill, but the carrier aggregation with 8x8 MIMO seems much better.
 
Well actually maybe even @rain_mobile can confirm, but it seems that you can only do carrier aggregation
CA_3A-38A using 4x4 MIMO, I am not sure if this is possible with 2x2 MIMO
 
So this is rater interesting, the B38 band, which is TDD, and from what I have found to read, should be able to provide much faster speeds, and at 20Mhz band width. Yet now on 3 different locations the B3 band on a 10Mhz band width preforms consistently better, in both up and downloads.
 
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GhostShow said:
So I drove around a bit, and my phone can do 5CA, and will on vodacom, but I have yet to see the rain sim do 2CA, I don't think they actually do it.
Click to expand...
@rain_mobile so do you support carrier aggregation on LTE?
 
GhostShow said:
So I drove around a bit, and my phone can do 5CA, and will on vodacom, but I have yet to see the rain sim do 2CA, I don't think they actually do it.
Click to expand...

jbroo said:
@rain_mobile so do you support carrier aggregation on LTE?
Click to expand...

So Rain support it but it comes at a sacrifice.

Once B3+B38 CA kicks in mimo drops to 2x2.

Rain only supports the below modes on 4G:
B3+B38 + 2x2 MIMO
B3 + 4x4 MIMO
B38 + 4x4 MIMO

That is why you will find that just using one of the bands in a 4x4 mimo device gives more speeds than actually aggregating them.

Screenshot_20210807-215303_Service mode RIL.jpg
 
cavedog said:
So Rain support it but it comes at a sacrifice.

Once B3+B38 CA kicks in mimo drops to 2x2.

Rain only supports the below modes on 4G:
B3+B38 + 2x2 MIMO
B3 + 4x4 MIMO
B38 + 4x4 MIMO

That is why you will find that just using one of the bands in a 4x4 mimo device gives more speeds than actually aggregating them.

View attachment 1122438
Click to expand...
It’s so sweet seeing this or getting new information

but unfortunately if the tower only have one band lol … there is nothing else one can do … geez
 
I just looked through all of my B2338's settings again and put it in auto mode, disabled locking, etc, could not find any manual CA setting. I know for a fact the *same* PCI I connect to broadcasts both B3 and B38 - I can force lock to B3 or B38 for the same PCI. On auto mode, router still just connects to B38. No CA.

@rain_mobile @rain_networks is CA between B3 and B38 allowed on the network? The B2338-168 spec sheet confirms it is supported. I have the correct firmware.

 
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cavedog said:
So Rain support it but it comes at a sacrifice.

Once B3+B38 CA kicks in mimo drops to 2x2.

Rain only supports the below modes on 4G:
B3+B38 + 2x2 MIMO
B3 + 4x4 MIMO
B38 + 4x4 MIMO

That is why you will find that just using one of the bands in a 4x4 mimo device gives more speeds than actually aggregating them.

View attachment 1122438
Click to expand...
How did you get what MiMo the modes support?
 
GhostShow said:
How did you get what MiMo the modes support?
Click to expand...

Quite some time ago I wanted to complain about why Rain was not showing 4G+ when other networks were and how they can claim they have an LTE-A network when in fact they don't.

Mybb forwarded that complaint to Rain and their networks head wrote to me in an email explaining how the 4G is set up. It might have changed recently but from what I have noticed doesn't look like it changed much.
 
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