Question

Dear all,

Recently I switched from a RUTX14 to RUTX12 in order to have the capabilties of having the 2 SIM cards up and running at the same time. To give some background information, the router is being used on a vessel offshore and as such it is always moving. We have 2 SIM cards of differernt providers to try and pick up the best one available at the location we are at that moment. While using the RUTX14 we had to do this manually, but it worked fine if you put some effort in it, however now on the RUTX12 it does not work at all anymore. Note the setup has not changed other than the router itself.

The problems we are facing:
- The secondary modem does not work, if the primary modem is enabled. If we want to switch to the secondary modem, we have to turn off the interface of the primary modem. This entirely defeats the purpose of the upgrade to the RUTX12.

- Even though the primary modem picks up the provider of SIM 1 (Chungwa) and secondary modem picks up the provider of SIM 2 (Far Eas Tone) in the home screen dashboard, it looks like everything is directed on the SIM1 slot. To further explain this see attached screenshots. In the interface section, you can see that both MOB1S1A1 and MOB2S1A1 indicate to use SIM1. Instead of having one on SIM1 and the other on SIM2. Furthermore if I browse to "Mobile - General" page, one can see that again two time SIM1 is mentioned instead of SIM1 and SIM2.

Another issue that was noted is that the speed of the RUTX12 generated internet is considerably less than the RUTX14. It could be maybe due to the issues above, however the RUTX14 generated 85mbps on the chungwa SIM and RUTX12 can only reach 20mbps. Test performed with only router changed and setup unchanged, while being on the same location and not moving.

One last question: in case the above issues are solved, can I expect that the RUTX12 will combine SIM1 and SIM2 bandwidth as a default? If not, is there a way to tweak the settings that way, as to have both SIM cards work together at all times?

Note: in the screenshots attached, one can see rather poor connections on both modems, this is because we were far offshore at the time of writing this question. However the tests were also concluded in port with good connections on both modems.

Looking forward to a solution to this problem.

Thanks ahead!

Answer 1

Hello,

It seems that both modems are working fine and both are connected to different providers. They have successfully obtained IP addresses and are up. There is also traffic passing through. It seems that you want the traffic to be split between the modems. I suggest you take a look at load balancing. With this feature, you will be able to split outgoing traffic via different modems and you can specify the ratio yourself. For load-balancing, take a look at our wiki articles here and here.

Load-balancing can increase the overall bandwidth available on your device, but it may not necessarily improve the speed of a single connection. For example, downloading a file over a single connection may not see any speed improvement. However, with load-balancing and multiple modems, other connections (from other services running on the device or other users) can utilize the additional bandwidth provided by the second modem.

EDIT: 

It's important to note that the RUTX12 router includes two 4G LTE CAT 6 modems, whereas the RUTX14 has a single CAT12 modem. These modems utilize different technologies and offer different data rates. CAT6 modems can support speeds of up to 300 Mbps for downloads and 50 Mbps for uploads, while CAT12 modems can support speeds of up to 600 Mbps for downloads and 100 Mbps for uploads. However, it's important to keep in mind that these are theoretical maximums and actual speeds may be lower due to various factors such as interference, attenuation, available bands, tower congestion, and other variables. As a result, the RUTX14 router may be able to provide higher speeds for a single connection compared to the RUTX12, despite only having one modem.

Kind Regards,

Andzej

Answer 2

Hello,

  

While in theory RUTX12 and RUTX14 have the same maximum mobile speeds, in reality, they operate in very different ways.

RUTX14 contains a single Cat 12 LTE modem, which allows you to aggregate 3 bands simultaneously. This allows for higher speeds from a single modem.

RUTX12 on the other hand, contains two Cat 6 modems, where each of which can aggregate two bands.

The way the speeds can be "combined" on our devices is by the use of Load Balancing. More information on how to set up load balancing can be found here. However, load balancing does not "combine" the bandwidth of both SIMs, rather it distributes it between the clients. This means that in order to utilize the bandwidth increase, two or more clients/applications need to be using the connection simultaneously. The speed test will not display the actual throughput of the connections.

You also mentioned, that only one SIM is used for the majority of the data. This is most likely because of a lack of load balancing. Once it's set up, both SIMs should be used roughly equally.

If you still have the RUTX14 and are willing to get another SIM for it, then it can also be added to the Load Balancing equation by connecting the LAN port of RUTX14 with the WAN port of RUTX12.

Let me know if any more information is needed!

  

Best regards,
DaumantasG