Do you see 4G+ or 4G with Rain?

cavedog

cavedog

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So just a follow up thread. I'm playing with my B618 and some other network simcards. Keen to see what they up to in terms of LTE and LTE-A

Now I can not recall seeing 4G+ with Rain once on my B618 :erm:

Put a Cellc prepaid simcard in and aligned my antenna a bit to the closest LTE-A Cellc tower and saw the B618 changed to 4G+.......

cellc_ltea_b618.png
 
That is quite interesting with RAIN says plain 4G, but they do market it as a LTE-A. I am guessing it should actually say 4G+ then but it does not?
 
Quicks said:
That is quite interesting with RAIN says plain 4G, but they do market it as a LTE-A. I am guessing it should actually say 4G+ then but it does not?
Click to expand...

I'm actually questioning the same. I don't think the B618 activates carrier aggregation to get LTE-A and thus just utilizes their normal LTE on band 3 aka 1800MHz.
 
So Rain has 2 bands which we know. FDD 1800MHz band which according to a tool that @Yuu gave me show max bandwidth @ 10MHz and TDD 2600MHz band 38 which has 20MHz.

So I suggest you guys try out the 2600MHz much faster than the 1800MHz band.
 
cavedog said:
So Rain has 2 bands which we know. FDD 1800MHz band which according to a tool that @Yuu gave me show max bandwidth @ 10MHz and TDD 2600MHz band 38 which has 20MHz.

So I suggest you guys try out the 2600MHz much faster than the 1800MHz band.
Click to expand...

How do I set it to 2600MHz
 
SlowInternet said:
How do I set it to 2600MHz
Click to expand...

http://2share.co.za/Files/Windows.zip

Unzip that. I'm assuming you have a windows pc.

Edit huawei_band_tool_config.txt with the correct username, password and router ip address.

Run this one LTE_2600_TDD.bat

That will force the router to the 2600MHz band only. LTE_1800.bat for 1800MHz band only these are the 2 bands Rain support. See which one give you the best speed.

Run LTE_ALL.bat if you decide to activate all bands again.


Thanks to @Yuu for the link to the tool. Works very well actually compared to the huawei toolbox for the B315. :)
 
Thank you cavedag.
Works really well

On 1800Mhz - I get 13mb/s down and 10 mb/s up
on 2600Mhz - I get 39mb/s down and only 5mb/s up


will stay on 2600Mhz for now ;)
 


The up load speed is a bit worse used to be 20up

But still it does not say 4G+
 
Yeah as far as I can tell though and I completely stand to be corrected it looks like 1800Mhz and 2600Mhz are not being aggregated and instead you get 1800MHz with 10Mhz bandwidth or 2600MHz with 20MHz bandwidth.

There does not seem to be any aggregation hence no 4G+ is showing. If the carrier aggregation is actually successful on Rain we will see speeds above 100Mbps for most people no doubt because Rain is using all or most of their allocated spectrum in those 2 LTE bands only they don't have to worry about 2G or 3G so they can 100Mbps minimum but I don't know why it's not working like that.

I was wondering my Samsung S8 was showing 4G+ before the device lock but when I investigated further it could just be that on the 2600MHz the S8 saw the chunk of 20Mhz spectrum and showed 4G+

The B618 seems to only show 4G+ if aggregation is enable and not bandwidth but I stand to be corrected on this also. Cellc activated 4G+ on my B618 when download but speeds were 30Mbps so I reckon the bandwidth total was probably 20Mhz or lower.

I will use the tool again to see if I can see what the total bandwidth is when Cellc activated 4G+ on the B618
 
Thanks for the tip!

1.This force band is it permanent or do I need to run it each time I reboot?
2. If I reset the router will it also reset this as well?
3. Will I need to run the software again to get back to normal (Run LTE_ALL.bat if you decide to activate all bands again.)

Just in case something goes wrong.

Thanks in advance.
 
cavedog said:
http://2share.co.za/Files/Windows.zip

Unzip that. I'm assuming you have a windows pc.

Edit huawei_band_tool_config.txt with the correct username, password and router ip address.

Run this one LTE_2600_TDD.bat

That will force the router to the 2600MHz band only. LTE_1800.bat for 1800MHz band only these are the 2 bands Rain support. See which one give you the best speed.

Run LTE_ALL.bat if you decide to activate all bands again.


Thanks to @Yuu for the link to the tool. Works very well actually compared to the huawei toolbox for the B315. :)
Click to expand...

The 2600MHz not working better for me. The d/l speeds more or less the same but the upload speed is bad

1800MHz

Ping - 23ms
D/L speed - 38.45Mbps
U/L speed - 8.50Mbps

2600MHz

Ping - 25ms
D/L speed - 38.73Mbps
U/L speed - 1.56Mbps
 
Gtx Gaming said:
Yeah only 4G here speeds was great!

MTN has 4G+ for me, but worse speeds.
Click to expand...

Yeah I suspected that though depending on how well the network actually refarm and configure their network and then congestion.

I'm surprised that Rain sold this as a LTE-A network when technically it isn't really and could have more potential I guess if they successfully aggregate 1800Mhz and 1600Mhz. Lot's of devices have different standards it seem for LTE-A. Samsung just needs the network to have cat6 LTE and 20MHz bandwidth. Huawei seem like if carrier aggregation is activated it's LTE-A.
 
SlowInternet said:
The 2600MHz not working better for me. The d/l speeds more or less the same but the upload speed is bad

1800MHz

Ping - 23ms
D/L speed - 38.45Mbps
U/L speed - 8.50Mbps

2600MHz

Ping - 25ms
D/L speed - 38.73Mbps
U/L speed - 1.56Mbps
Click to expand...

That is the problem I have. If carrier aggregation as happing then you would possibly see download speeds of 70Mbps+-
I thought the reason Rain went with this router is because it will do that and users will have very decent speeds but instead the B618 chooses a frequency based on signal stats and does not aggregate the two bands even though it looks like both frequencies are being transmitted from every tower. As far as I could see the B618 does not allow that aggregation so it's either the network does not support it or the router but the spec of the B618 does suggest 2ca.
 
So here is the stats I got Rain LTE VS Cellc LTE+/4G+

Rain LTE/4G:
Band 3 FDD: 1800MHz has 10MHz bandwidth
rain_1800.png


Band 38 TDD: 2600MHz has 20MHz bandwidth
rain_2600.png


Rain does NOT have carrier aggregation between these 2 bands which is sad really because combined bandwidth of 30MHz is a decent size that would provide some very decent speeds when aggregated.

Cellc LTE and LTE+/4G and 4G+:
Band 3 FDD: 1800MHz has 10MHz bandwidth Secondary servicing cell usually.
cellc_1800.png


Band 1 FDD: 2100MHz has 5MHz bandwidth :( Primary servicing cell usually
cellc_2100.png


So when forcing the B618 to each specific band on Cellc you can see it stays on 4G only but Once you combined them either by allowing all LTE bands or by forcing only band 1 and 3 you can see the 4G+ sign coming up and cellc activates 2ca on the B618. Upload can be set to either 2100Mhz or 1800Mhz respectively.

So Cellc has 2CA on their 1800Mhz and 2100Mhz LTE bands giving a combined bandwidth of 15Mhz explains the slow speeds on Cellc LTE+/4G+ compared to Rain 2600Mhz LTE only.



Damn I love playing with the networks bands and seeing how the networks work with LTE :) On a different note. Shame on you Rain for misleading the public. Get CA right and then we will talk.
 
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2600Mhz

RSRQ: -6dB
RSRP: -72dBm

Ping: 20ms
Download: 90.79Mbps
Upload: 8.64Mbps

1800Mhz

RSRQ: -5dB
RSRP: -58dBm

Ping: 19ms
Download: 37.02Mbps
Upload: 18.64Mbps

Quite a marked difference, everyone will lock to 1800 as it'll always be a stronger signal than 2600 because it propagates better. Incidentally this is why upload suffers on 2600 compared to 1800.
 
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Can you imagine if carrier aggregation was working on Rain. You would get like 120Mbps download speed.
 
Also to the guys with B315 sorry for you but you don't get to have B38 2600MHz TDD unless Rain is supplying a diffirent B315 than what Telkom sells.
 
I'm pretty sure they will activate CA, else there's not much point in 2600, without this "trick" no router will ever connect to it. Or they could be saving 2600 for RAIN mobile...

Will leave mine on 2600 and see how it goes but 90meg download is bloody awesome, it stays at 2600 after a restart btw.
 
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