Question

I did some testing to find the most performant settings with my provider. When I use completely automatic settings, TRB500 uses triple band 4G/5G CA (B1, B3, B20), but the download speeds are mostly poor and can vary wildly. Usually it's somewhere around 5-20 Mbps but can occasionally jump to 200 Mbps.

If I lock the 4G band to B3, I get much more consistent speeds around 60-100 Mbps.

Is this a limitation of the CA technology, a compatibility issue with the provider and/or perhaps something that could be improved on the TRB500 side? Ideally CA would always utilize the less congested bands, but feels like it hinders more than helps as B1 and B20 have worse congestion or signal quality.

Answer 1

Hello,

  

The way band locking works is that it disables carrier aggregation altogether on that technology of the network (4G, 5G). The culprit of the varying speeds is most likely one of the bands that your device aggregates, and when you lock onto B3, it most likely remains stable because the band that is causing instability is eliminated.

We do have a cell locking procedure described here, however, it is not really supported on 5G devices, and it does not eliminate the root cause of the issue, as the secondary bands cannot be chosen when carrier aggregation is active (only the primary).

However, you can blacklist the bands, so for example, if B1 is the one that is causing the issues, you can navigate to Network → Mobile → General, select the network type as 4G + 5G, and select the manual band selection. Include all 5G bands and all 4G bands except the one that is causing the issue. This may result in lower speeds, but a much more stable connection.

Let me know if any additional information is needed!

  

Best regards,
DaumantasG

Comments

Thanks for the info. I've set 4G + 5G, enabled all 5G bands but only B3 for the 4G. That seems to be the best compromise at the moment. I lose some of the theoretical maximums but overall the connection is much more stable and rarely slows down to a crawl like it does with full auto.

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That does seem like the best solution in your situation. I'd recommend periodically (~3 months) disabling the band lock and checking if the situation improved.

  

Best regards,
DaumantasG