EE Coverage 5/5 bars, mobile phone is 5/5 bars but 4GEE Home Router is 2/5 bars

[Chiu852]

I have just received my 4GEE Home Router 3, the SIM card is in, it is plugged in and up and running in the apartment.

My mobile phone is connected to Mobile Data on it's own running on GiffGaff 5/5 bars

The EE website stated 5/5 bars 4G coverage at my postcode, indoor and outdoor

So I purchased the 4GEE Home Router 3 expecting the router to receive the same signal as a mobile phone would, but it's only getting 2/5 bars on signal

It doesn't seem to make sense, is there a setting I need to update?

[Chris_B]

@Chiu852 the signal on your phone from Giffgaff is totally irrelevant to your EE signal on your router it’s two different networks try relocating the router to a different location as your home can be the cause of the low signal received. 

[mikeliuk]

Hi @Chiu852 ,

Many thanks for pointing me to this thread from your other thread.

I experienced a similar issue when I moved from Three to EE and expected much better signal but my Netgear MR1100 reported a disappointing SINR of around 2 dBm with initial usage.

I would recommend to first visit fast.com and speedtest.net and report the results shown. Disappointing signal may not be an issue if measured bandwidths and latencies are fine.

Ultimately, what improved my situation was to reposition my router and restart the radio a few times (in my case switching between LTE-only and the alternative allowing older protocols) and I found a router position giving SINR consistently better than 10 dBm and often 13 dBm to 20 dBm.

In my case, the poorer signal was seen in a logical central position in the room, whereas the good location was low to the floor and seemed to be obstructed, so it's worth trying non-logical positions.

It also took a certain amount of time for me to understand the behaviour of my router where it would often camp on a nearby town centre cell tower and see a reduction in performance as congestion occurred during the day, and I noticed I would find better performance when the router camped on a cell tower somewhat further away in the opposite direction.

It will take some days of observation and benchmarking before you have a good idea of how good or bad the performance will be in your property, and even for the router position and location you finally settle on.

[Chiu852]

@Chris_B @mikeliuk  Thank you, is there anything I can do when I go to the setting at 192.168.1.1 to help this as well?

Or is it purely the placement of the router?

Can I put the SIM in my phone and walk around the apartment to find the best signal and then put it back in the router when I've found a good spot?

The cable is not very long so I can't move it around easily

[Chris_B]

@Chiu852  There is nothing within the admin settings to improve signal it’ll be a case of trying different locations of the router.    All network area maps of signal quality are just a guide and not a guarantee of signal quality as they are just computer simulated of what to expect and are not actually tested in real world situations i.e. in your home.  

[mikeliuk]

Hi @Chiu852 ,

Unfortunately you cannot put your SIM into a mobile phone and walk around your property to determine a good position for your router. This is because your phone is a completely different device and it's not likely to be representative of the cell tower a router might connect to in the same position, plus it gives no indication of which cell towers it might connect to over the course of a day and a week.

The best strategy is to identify the two or three places you could put the router in the long term and to try each of those locations systematically. Typically higher up is better.

Before doing any of the above, I would recommend to report the fast.com and speedtest.net benchmark data during the quiet and busy parts of the day (e.g. early morning and late night for quiet). It's possible you could be debugging a non-issue. It would also be worth searching online for whether you can access the SINR parameter either via a documented or non-documented management page.

[NetSA]

Disagree a little here @mikeliuk , I am a 4GEE home customer and I popped the sim in my handset to give me indication of coverage . Yes it doesn't given you 100% indicator but it does make it quicker to try new locations. 

By doing this I solved the same issue. I'm actually in a not spot on the coverage map but with abit of playing around i get quite happily 60Mbps which is alot better than the 3Mbps copper line i had. 

@Chiu852 I suggest popping the SIM in an unlocked handset and running some speed tests around the house to see where is best.  As others have indicated upper windows of a property are typically better. 

[mikeliuk]

Hi @NetSA ,

Point taken that it would give you some indication, and I believe I did something similar by simply moving the Netgear MR1100 around a little (two or three locations in a room and holding and walking) and restarting the radios a few times.

I think one just needs to keep in mind that a good signal found using a mobile does not guarantee a good signal for putting a router in that location, and a bad signal does not guarantee the router would always get a bad signal in that location. As long as this is understood, it's ok to try in the phone.

Single data points are always suspect so one should have a morning, afternoon, and late evening benchmark to get an idea of the best location for typical uses (e.g. streaming after work, or video conferencing during the working day). One would expect performance to vary over the week and in different months. Some times I'm able to hit 80 Mbps quite reliably, and at other times not (topping at around 40 Mbps). I've only seen 130 Mbps once around 4 a.m. so it's taken me about seven months to get a good feel for the behaviour of the Netgear MR1100 in just a single location.

For a single fixed location, the router might connect to upwards of three or four different cell towers in different directions depending on which towers are congested and other hidden selection parameters (at least not immediately presented to the user) so simply bouncing the radio a few times during a week may give quite a variety of benchmark numbers.

[bristolian]

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@mikeliuk wrote:

Hi @Chiu852 ,

Unfortunately you cannot put your SIM into a mobile phone and walk around your property to determine a good position for your router.

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For the benefit of others reading this thread as well as @Chiu852 who started this query, this bit of advice is incorrect.

Apart from some very specific scenarios, a phone & mobile data device are accessing the exact same network signal - so testing using on one device is an excellent way of helping diagnose problems on another.

[Chiu852]

@bristolian @mikeliuk @NetSA @Chris_B I ended up putting the SIM in my unlocked phone, I walked around and found a spot that gave me 5/5 bars and then set up the router there. It ended up giving my 2/5 bars - is this strange?

I ended up finding a window sill point away from the city center which is giving me 3/5 bars - my speedtest is showing me 11mbps download and 23mbps upload... this seems odd? Isn't download usually higher than upload?

Thank you all for helping me out