Hello community, I sought to provide 4G/LTE broadband for the house after 2 weeks on no service from wired broadband - the installation is 5G-XPOL-1 POYNTING 4G/5G Omni-Directional Antenna with twin 5M SMA > RUT260 Teltonika 4G/LTE CAT 6 Cellular Router > 30M Cat 6 cable (could be reduced to 20) > TP Link Gigabit 8 Port > various wired and wireless devices. 5G is a non starter in my area, hence the cheaper 4G router. I used the cell mapper and open signal apps to identify tower locations and strongest signal direction, then a samsung S22 ultra to identify best antenna position (speed/video test) around house at ground or first floor. Sure, weather or contention level can reduce speed, but I am mainly concerned about anything I can do to improve my configuration. Test results and router info below:
Id/Three/Voda Mbps - 52.7 - 6.72 - 43 ms - Sec 1.7- 0.0 - 90.1% 720P
Chrome Box via switch Mbps - 11.5 - 4.0 - 39 ms - Sec 2.6- 0.0 - 85.2% 720P
Chrome box direct router Mbps - 22.1 - 10.5 - 43 ms - Sec 2.5- 0.0 - 85.6% 720P
RUT 260 mobile page RSSI(dBm) 56 Excel RSRP 88 Good RSRQ 14 Good SINR 9 Fair to Poor
Grateful for any advice, I have some networking experience, but not in depth, and not mobile networks.
First of all, to mention, the Poynting XPOL-1 (2x2 MIMO) omnidirectional antenna you’re using, while a good general-purpose external antenna, isn’t the most optimal match for the RUT260 Cat 6 modem. For best performance, it should be mounted at the highest possible point, ideally (not necessarily) facing toward the serving cell tower.
Also, if that same antenna is being used for Wi-Fi as well, please note it only supports the Wi-Fi 3 (802.11g) standard, which would explain poor throughput for your wireless clients.
A few follow-up points and checks that would help understand the situation better:
Could you confirm which LTE bands the modem was connected to during your speed tests? You can see this under Status → Network → Mobile.
Please perform another test and share a screenshot of that page while the test is running (keep in mind to hide sensitive details such as public IP, IMSI, ICCID, etc.).
If you haven’t tried already, you could experiment with band locking (Network → Mobile → Connection) to see how speeds or stability change on specific bands. More guidance on band locking can be found in the sources below:
As a comparison, it may be worth testing performance using the stock mobile antennas included with the router.
For the long-term solution, I’d recommend considering one of the officially approved to be compatible and optimized for RUT260’s LTE Cat 6 modem:
Thanks again, I have now worked through some of the steps. I can confirm that the existing is at the highest point on the house available to me (just below roof eaves) and at the best mobile signal according to the 'arrow' and 'speed tests' on the open signal app on my phone. The router conne cted to Band B3 automatically. I set band locking to manual and tried all bands - frequencies below B3 showed some improvement and I selected those - the router chose Band B8. There are better results on the mobile network status page and open signal speed tests on my phone when connecting by WIFI. The antenna that came with the router produced much worse results.
The overall results still give me about 10Mbps which I would consider ok for an emergency service, but not as wired broadband replacement yet. I’ve ordered the Teltonika antenna on the chance it improves matters further. I’ll post current and future screenshots at that time.
