The Huawei B593 LTE discussion thread

[SHANRSA]

Thanks to advice on this thread I took the plunge and bought a B593 from Edgars. It is the 601 variant at R1499 plus 200mb of Telkom Mobile loaded on prepaid for 12 months which is good to run lots of speed test.[ edit 1/2 a speed test] I am about a km from my tower and have just one LPDA 11A ( turn2wireless/uniterm ) pointing at it. I found connecting the aerial to the left external antenna port worked better. Standard paddle in the right one. Antenna set to AUTO. ( Signal 5 bars steady ) I'm getting close to 50Mbps and I'll post my speeds once I fine tune everything. On my to do list is to buy another LPDA, never needed it for my E367 .Wifi signal improves greatly once set to 100%, out of the box it seems worse than the MR3420 but once you jack it up to 100%, it's way better.

I came of a 3G Telkom Mobile setup and this is like being in heaven. I originally had an E3276s-920 plugged into a TP Link but speeds were between 2 and 10 Mbps. Tossed that and hopped into the B593. It's really awesome.
This is my current wireless analysis.

 

[jcheek]

Thanks to advice on this thread I took the plunge and bought a B593 from Edgars.

Welcome to Speedland !

I am about a km from my tower and have just one LPDA 0092 pointing at it. I found connecting the aerial to the left external antenna port worked better. Standard paddle in the right one. Antenna set to AUTO. ( Signal 5 bars steady ) I'm getting close to 50Mbps and I'll post my speeds once I fine tune everything.

That's great feedback for anyone considering going the same route. "Unconventional" setup, but its clearly working well for you!

On my to do list is to buy another LPDA, never needed it for my E367.

Hardly seems necessary, unless something changes ...

I came of a 3G Telkom Mobile setup and this is like being in heaven. I originally had an E3276s-920 plugged into a TP Link but speeds were between 2 and 10 Mbps. Tossed that and hopped into the B593. It's really awesome.

Kindof addictive, isn't it ? Only downside is how quickly 60GB of TM data gets used up ... :erm:

This is my current wireless analysis.

Really great signal - enjoy!

Thanks for taking the trouble to give feedback on the thread.

Edit: Out of interest, and since Bundu is trying the same setup (1 external, one internal) : When you connect your LPDA to one port, and nothing to the other, with the Antennas set to "Auto", which port comes up as "External" ?

 

[Bundu]

I'm wondering now if my signal jumping between 2 or 1 and 4 or 5 bars, could perhaps mean that it's jumping between two towers - maybe time to get up on the roof again and adjust to see if I can maybe get it better set to a single tower?

 

[SHANRSA]

Thanks for your comments, I'll try taking out the paddle and feedback to you once done. I suspect he is not pointing his antenna correctly,adjust 30 degrees either way, what I like about the B593 is the signal bars move immediately when you adjust so you kind of know if you going worse or not. BTW I downloaded of Apple's servers and I got a peak download speed of 2,1Mbps . I am like fook!!!!!

 

[Bundu]

Thanks for your comments, I'll try taking out the paddle and feedback to you once done. I suspect he is not pointing his antenna correctly,adjust 30 degrees either way, what I like about the B593 is the signal bars moves immediately when you adjust so you kind of know if you going worse or not. BTW I downloaded of Apples servers and I got peak download of 2,1Mbps . I am like fook!!!!!

must the external antenna be mounted vertical or horizontal? (excuse my ignorance...)

 

[SHANRSA]

I have a single LPDA, Looks like this, https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47616004/5.jpg
It's 90 degrees to an upright bar so I guess horizontal. The best is to know where the tower is I guess, otherwise just move in 30 degree increments and wait 10 seconds and have someone yell how many bars. Good luck.

 

[SHANRSA]

If I take the paddle out from antenna 2 and leave the LPDA plugged in signal drops to 4 bars and this is what is displays (Antenna left to AUTO ) Antenna 1 Built-in Antenna 2 External:erm:

 

[SHANRSA]

This is what my antenna setup looks like

 

[Bundu]

I have a single LPDA, Looks like this, https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47616004/5.jpg
It's 90 degrees to an upright bar so I guess horizontal. The best is to know where the tower is I guess, otherwise just move in 30 degree increments and wait 10 seconds and have someone yell how many bars. Good luck.

so your antenna is mounted as in the url that you posted?

 

[SHANRSA]

so your antenna is mounted as in the url that you posted?

It's not the exact one as in this picture but basically the same as in the picture pointing to the tower. My cable is 7m, how long is yours??

 

[Bundu]

IIRC my cable is also 7m and the orientation is as in your URL, so I'll just rotate it slowly whilst monitoring the signal bars - I'm assuming the B593 does not show the tower number that one connects to? or?

 

[sajunky]

IIRC my cable is also 7m and the orientation is as in your URL, so I'll just rotate it slowly whilst monitoring the signal bars - I'm assuming the B593 does not show the tower number that one connects to? or?

Correct. If you want to position antenna correctly, borrow LTE modem with external antenna connector, it will most likely show Cell ID (B593 doesn't). Then find the maximum signal with the same Cell ID and meassure throughput in peak hours. Repeat the same for different Cell ID and decide on which tower you want to use.

 

[Bundu]

thanks sajunky!

I'll just give it a go as is with my B593 and if I don't make progress, I'll have to beg here, or buy a damn USB modem...

 

[jcheek]

Hang on ...

... I am about a km from my tower and have just one LPDA 0092 pointing at it ...

... I have a single LPDA, Looks like this ... ,

Do you have an LPDA-0092 from Poynting, or an LPDA11A from Uniterm Direct, or something else (like a Poynting LPDA-0020) ?

 

[SHANRSA]

My apologies jcheek, it is indeed the 11a from turn2wireless, I bought it 3 years ago so I was confused about the model, I'll edit my original post. Many apologies for incorrect model.

 

[jcheek]

My apologies jcheek, it is indeed the 11a from turn2wireless, I bought it 3 years ago so I was confused about the model, I'll edit my original post. Many apologies for incorrect model.

Relax mate - no apology needed, just making sure we've got our facts straight!

must the external antenna be mounted vertical or horizontal? (excuse my ignorance...)

Bundu : it seems that the two elements on the LTE antenna at the base station are generally oriented at 45 and 135 degrees to the horizontal plane, which means there is a signal component in both the vertical and horizontal planes. That means you can orient your own (single) LTE antenna at 0, 45, 90 or 135 degrees and still get signal. For backward compatibility with 3G, you may want to orient your antenna vertically.
Practically speaking, try both orientations and go with the one that seems to give you the best result.

Bundu, SHANRSA : If your roof (and aerial gymnastic skills) permit, take your B593 and a laptop up on the roof and look for optimum signal right there using the B593's signal stats page - you'll get quick and more specific feedback that way. Once you've found the optimum antenna position(s) and alignment, you can fix your antenna(s) in position and place your B593 permanently indoors.
For tips on how to set up your antenna system with a B593, have a look at the Antenna Installation and alignment thread. This post may give you some pointers.

In order to find the "best" base station in the first place, you could also try this technique.

 

[jcheek]

B593 port numbering

I'm trying to get a handle on the B593's port numbering based on the internal/external tests done by SHANRSA and Bundu.

Bundu's test was unfortunately inconclusive as the B593 chose to use the built-in patch antenna on both ports.

SHANRSA : If I understand your antenna experiment correctly, you had your B593 antennas set up like this:

This is what my antenna setup looks like:

... and with that setup (LPDA antenna connected to the port in the background), but with:
- The flat whip removed from the port in the foreground (very important to verify that this was the case!)
- The B593's antenna selection set to "Auto"

.. you got this result:

If I take the paddle out from antenna * and leave the LPDA plugged in signal drops to 4 bars and this is what it displays (Antenna left to AUTO ) Antenna 1 Built-in Antenna 2 External

That being the case, it looks like the left-hand port on the B593 (looking from the antenna connector side) is what the firmware labels as Port 1.

Do I have it correct ?

 

[SHANRSA]

I'm trying to get a handle on the B593's port numbering based on the internal/external tests done by SHANRSA and Bundu.

Bundu's test was unfortunately inconclusive as the B593 chose to use the built-in patch antenna on both ports.

SHANRSA : If I understand your antenna experiment correctly, you had your B593 antennas set up like this:



... and with that setup (LPDA antenna connected to the port in the background), but with:
- The flat whip removed from the port in the foreground (very important to verify that this was the case!)
- The B593's antenna selection set to "Auto"

.. you got this result:



That being the case, it looks like the left-hand port on the B593 (looking from the antenna connector side) is what the firmware labels as Port 1.

Do I have it correct ?

Correct 100%- The paddle antenna was removed and and antenna set to AUTO as requested and that was the result. So looking from the front it would be PORT 2 PORT 1,the reverse of what I would have thought to be normal.

 

[Derrick_SA]

hi there,

have been searching (maybe not well enough he he so I'm gonna ask anyways).

My DynDNS account is 100%, other modems work when I test (netgear). but for some reason the B593 is not updating the dynamic IP address to DynDNS. there is no confirmation or test in the firmware to know if it is communicating with DynDNS

does anyone maybe have a tip or two on how I can find out why it's not updating to the DynDNS servers?

 

[jcheek]

hi there,

have been searching (maybe not well enough he he so I'm gonna ask anyways).

My DynDNS account is 100%, other modems work when I test (netgear). but for some reason the B593 is not updating the dynamic IP address to DynDNS. there is no confirmation or test in the firmware to know if it is communicating with DynDNS

does anyone maybe have a tip or two on how I can find out why it's not updating to the DynDNS servers?

True - there's no confirmation that I've found on the B593 itself. It should be in the System Log, but strangely it isn't.

A partial solution is to login to your DynDNS.org account and select the "Host Update Logs" option under "My Hosts". That shows you a list of all update attempts mades per host. (another heads-up here : strangely, this page often returns "no update events" on the first access. A page reload refresh brings up the log on the 2nd try .. wtf ?!)

If the update attempt is being made (whether successful or not), you should see a log entry like this:



This isn't a complete diagnostic solution, but may give you some clues.

PS : For security reasons, DynDNS recently offered the option to change the login password used by DDNS update clients (like the B593) from being the same as your DynDNS website login, to being a different random alphanumeric key. Once you accept that option, your web login password won't work for updates any more. Ring any bells ?

PPS: How do you know your B593's DDNS IP isn't being updated ? Maybe you are being affected by delayed host IP updates on your chosen DNS server ? See here and here.