The Huawei E5186 LTE-A discussion thread

[Gorman]

I am taking a Telkom LTE-A 100Gb 24m contract with I suppose the E5186 wifi router.
Is the E5186 a better router than the B315s?

What would be the best AP to go with the E5186 router to extend the wifi range in the house.
I am currently running Netgear extenders with my adsl netgear router - they are crappy.
Thus my question - what AP would you recommend with the E5186.
Thanks

 

[sajunky]

I am taking a Telkom LTE-A 100Gb 24m contract with I suppose the E5186 wifi router.
Is the E5186 a better router than the B315s?

What would be the best AP to go with the E5186 router to extend the wifi range in the house.
I am currently running Netgear extenders with my adsl netgear router - they are crappy.
Thus my question - what AP would you recommend with the E5186.
Thanks

None, as these routers do not support WDS, but perhaps proprietary Huawei extenders will work. Other brands may create another SSID over WiFi connection, it is not what you want, I think, so you will end up with Ethernet cable between E5186 and your router or access point anyway.

 

[airborne]

Where can you get these E5186 routers from?

 

[Azimuth]

Where can you get these E5186 routers from?

I happened to pick one up today from a Telkom Direct store in Roodepoort. There was just one in stock but it appeared they could be ordered if needed. R2599.00 cash, no SIM card or RICA nonsense.

Just tried to purchase the the E5186s-61a at Telkom Clearwater Mail and they would not sell it on prepaid, only with a contract.

A warning that Telkom franchise stores do the above and pretend they don't offer cash options so that they can push contracts. Just use a Telkom Direct store...

 

[airborne]

I happened to pick one up today from a Telkom Direct store in Roodepoort. There was just one in stock but it appeared they could be ordered if needed. R2599.00 cash, no SIM card or RICA nonsense.

Geebuzz, why so expensive?!

 

[Azimuth]

Where to buy:

Well above is what they cost when first brought to market - similar to the B593 when LTE was first trialling in S.A.

With LTE-A being relatively new still, it's basic demand and supply. These routers are quite hard to get prepaid and for a while they were contract-only.

The E5186 is also the only LTE-A router that I'm aware of...

 

[airborne]

What is the big advantages of this router?
Even the patently ancient B593 goes up to 150mbs on Lte?

 

[jcheek]

What is the big advantage of this router ?

The E5186 supports LTE-A as well as "plain" LTE, whereas the B593 and B315 only support LTE. So the promise is that the E5186 might one day deliver speeds in excess of 100Mbps at the air interface. But so far, the roll-out of LTE-A in SA hasn't been rapid enough to really deliver on that promise.
That said, if one can believe the signal metrics on the UI, the E5186 also appears to utilise available LTE signal somewhat better than its two lesser siblings, as suggested by higher RSRQ and SINR readings with similar RSSI/RSRP readings.

Even the patently ancient B593 goes up to 150mbs on Lte?

Some of the B593 models (like the B593-s601) are "Category 4" devices that support 150Mbps speeds at the air interface - on paper. But in practise, Telkom's current LTE equipment maxes out at 100Mbps.
Besides which, the B593 only has Fast Ethernet (100Mbps) LAN ports.

 

[airborne]

The B315 has gigabit lan but only N wireless if I remember correctly, does this perhaps have AC wireless and Gigabit lan, that would make it a lot more attractive.

The Mr200 Tplink is pretty awesome, AC wireless and all the Sa Lte bands but only 100mbit lan.

 

[jcheek]

...does this perhaps have AC wireless and Gigabit lan, that would make it a lot more attractive.

Correct on both counts - see OP. Forgot to mention that "plus".

The B315 has gigabit lan but only N wireless if I remember correctly ...

Again, correct on both counts ... well, sort of.
The "Gigabit" LAN ports on the B315 seem - like many other features on that device - to be dysfunctional - see here.
Not sure if the E5186 GE ports are similarly broken, but I'm sure Azimuth will let us know shortly ....

 

[Spacerat]

Sorry, I am afraid you can use Asus as Ethernet switch, not a router, because ASUS do not have WAN Ethernet port, only LAN ports.

Ok so I found out this is not true by RTFM. You can configure this Asus ADSL router to use any one of its 4 LAN ports as a WAN port. This is where you would then plug in LTE/Fibre routers. Yayyy. and they are trenching my street for Fibre as we speak...

 

[sajunky]

Ok so I found out this is not true by RTFM. You can configure this Asus ADSL router to use any one of its 4 LAN ports as a WAN port. This is where you would then plug in LTE/Fibre routers. Yayyy. and they are trenching my street for Fibre as we speak...

Thats good, well, maybe I overlooked. I am happy that I gave you proper direction where to look for, right?

 

[Spacerat]

Thats good, well, maybe I overlooked. I am happy that I gave you proper direction where to look for, right?

:wtf:

 

[roudan]

Hello,
I have this router in an area where is the signal is full on 4g but inside my apartment it falls to one bar, I tried placing it everywhere around the apartment and didnt help. Im not allowed to mount any antenna outside so I'd really appreciate it if you can help me with some other solutions.

** the router works fine and gives me good speeds around 8mbps but it keeps going offline for few seconds when the signal drops to 0.

 

[Azimuth]

Here's a copy paste reply but the answer is the same.

For low visual impact I'd go with an XPOL-0001. I think an omnidirectional product is your only bet unless you are extremely lucky and have LOS from your terrace.

"Not being allowed" to mount an antenna is archaic and you should certainly challenge this. It is no different from VHF/UHF antennas or a DSTV dish i.e. to get service reception.

You could perhaps just mount the XPOL-0001 and worry about the "consequences" later. Another option is to colour code the install and paint the housing the same color as the wall. Very often MTN and Vodacom do this at shopping centres.

 

[Gorman]

Hi I have the E5186 from Telkom. Want to know the following:
I am running freenas on a server with jails for SAB etc with fixed IPs on them (192.168.0.40 etc)
I have the freenas server connected via LAN to the E5186 with its own fixed IP. I can ping astraweb from the router diag page. The fixed IPs are outside the 100-200 dhcp range inside the route setup. SAB does for some reason not like to download files or connect to Astraweb. Is this a problem and mobile can't download through SAB?

 

[Gorman]

And I don't know what should be chosen in the Ethernet page under Ethernet Settings...
Auto
PPPOE+Dinamic IP
PPPOE
Dynamic IP
Static IP
LAN Only

As the WLAN is setup for LTE adv and thats where the internet access comes from.

 

[darkshadow]

Was wondering if anybody here know if this router will work on the new Rain LTE-A network?

 

[jcheek]

Was wondering if anybody here know if this router will work on the new Rain LTE-A network?

Not a direct answer, but by way of researching the question :

"Rain" is yet another different name for the iBurst/Wireless Business Solutions/Multisource LTE/LTE-A network (source here) which has been on closed trial for a year or two now.

Rain/WBS was reported to be operating its 4G LTE/LTE-A trial in the 2600MHz band using TDD, though they also apparently have spectrum in the 1800MHz band (source here). I picked them up in my own tests with a B593-s601 modem/router, which supports FDD/2600MHz and FDD/1800MHz. But unfortunately this modem-router doesn't allow me to see which band it is using, so I couldn't tell whether that was FDD/2600MHz or FDD/1800MHz, though I guess it was probably the latter.

The -s61a is the E5186 sub-model that's been most commonly sold so far, and according to the model information in Post #1, this model supports both 2600MHz/FDD and 1800MHz/FDD bands, but not the TDD/2600MHz band. So it may not work with Rain unless they roll out at FDD/1800MHz. The E5186-s22, the -s61a's sibling, seems to support both TDD/2600MHz and FDD/2600MHz as well as FDD/1800MHz, so maybe we'll start to see more of that model if/when Rain rolls out.

Several ISPs have announced that they're going to be partnering with Rain to offer LTE-A (source here), though they do seem to be having shaky start!

 

[sajunky]

Rain/WBS was reported to be operating its 4G LTE/LTE-A trial in the 2600MHz band using TDD, though they also apparently have spectrum in the 1800MHz band (source here). I picked them up in my own tests with a B593-s601 modem/router, which supports FDD/2600MHz and FDD/1800MHz. But unfortunately this modem-router doesn't allow me to see which band it is using, so I couldn't tell whether that was FDD/2600MHz or FDD/1800MHz, though I guess it was probably the latter.

FDD-1800MHz was active for at least two years, I picked it up on B315s-936, frequency band verified with Toolbox. It seems to be operating private network, otherwise they wouldn't maintain towers for so long time.

B315s-936 do not support B7 FDD-2600MHz nor B38 TDD-2600MHz, so Rain network must be verified with band 7 & band 38 compatible router. Owners of E5186 can do it with Toolbox.