topic Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test in Archived Posts

4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

goodlegs — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 09:47:02 GMT

Hi there,

We're recording reasonable download speeds but zero (0.00) mbps upload speeds when running speedtest, which explains why our service is completely unusable.

We're in London zone 2.

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

bristolian — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 10:00:26 GMT

Hello @goodlegs

What devices are you using? And are these problems happening on all of them? How long have you been having these problems?

I'm not sure what you mean by "Zone 2", presumably the TFL transport zones, but that covers a very wide area. You can check for known network issues on the coverage & status checker and following "check network"

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

goodlegs — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 10:03:10 GMT

We're near Hackney Central. The upload speed has got a little better and is now 0.88mbps, still below the national average.

We're using a £170 modem (Teltonika RUT955).

I have an EE sim in my android phone but the mobile speedtest url there only seems to report download speed, not the upload.

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

goodlegs — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 10:09:56 GMT

Connected using LTE band 3 to cell ID 2723841. Signal strength -83 dBm.

speedtest.near earlier -> ping 1697ms download 30.59mbps upload 0.0mbps

speedtest.net has got better -> ping 23ms download 34.92mbps upload 1.13mbps

It was at 0 upload mbps for a good hour. EE on the phone said national average upload speed is 4-5mbps which includes rural areas so in the centre of London presumably higher.

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

bristolian — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 10:20:36 GMT

It sounds like your upload speed is now varying, which is symptomatic of varying traffic levels on your serving site.

The expected UL speed in any given location would depend significantly on the amount of available capacity on your serving site divided by the amount of users.

These factors can vary significantly in all areas, although admittedly your quoted speeds are a little on the low side.

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

goodlegs — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 10:51:58 GMT

Agreed, 0.0mbps is on the low side.

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

mikeliuk — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 11:02:07 GMT

Hi @goodlegs ,

If you ever see a ping as high as 1697ms, I would highly recommend to discard the result as it's a good indication of congestion (e.g. of the network or the target server or one of the links along the route) which in your case appears to be congested up but less so down (more commonly I've seen congestion down but not up).

Usually I find that speedtest.net is very good and selects good target servers for multithreaded tests but I would recommend that you verify with a second service such as fast.com

I agree that poor performance would not be expected in Zone 2 but it may be that there is some unusual event causing the network capacity to be insufficient at the particular peak time. I'm near a town centre in Zone 6 and occasionally need to restart the radio as it may become camped on a cell tower which gets very busy during the day.

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

goodlegs — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 11:03:10 GMT

0.018mbps upload speed now.
Looking at past speed tests we got 28.33 mbps upload speed on 23-Jan-2021, 14.5 mbps on 22-Jan, 13.23 mbps on 21-Jan

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

goodlegs — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 11:04:12 GMT

Ok, but that means 'discarding the result' for a whole hour as it was like that for an whole hour.

I take the point that a single measurement like that is bogus but the upload link was totally down for a whole hour, and since then is consistently under 1mpbs.

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

goodlegs — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 11:06:22 GMT

Up to date measurements:

speedtest.net -> 0mbps upload

fast.com -> 870kbps upload

I don't believe its the choice of servers.

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

goodlegs — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 11:07:11 GMT

(Also we didn't come here because we were running speedtest repeatedly and noticed small numbers, we ran speedtest because we could literally do nothing on our network. So it's not that speedtest and fast.com are reporting bogus numbers)

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

bristolian — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 11:13:56 GMT

Is anything reported as awry on the network status checker I mentioned previously?

If not, there is an option to "report a problem" which would be the next step.

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

goodlegs — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 11:20:40 GMT

It didn't look like it, no. We also spoke to someone at EE on the phone who said there were no reported issues. They said to turn the router off for 5 minutes, which we did, same result after restart.

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

mikeliuk — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 11:58:06 GMT

Hi @goodlegs ,

Please may you check whether you can switch to a 3G connection to run those tests again.

If you've lost internet service for an hour, that's sufficient to report a problem to the service provider without running any bandwidth measurements.

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

bristolian — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 12:18:00 GMT

I appreciate you've looked on the status checker for existing issues, but have you used the "report a problem" link to raise a suspected new issue?

Equally, do you know of anyone else in your locality who's using EE and is also having problems? That would be strong evidence of a wider network issue that may not yet be logged.

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

goodlegs — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 15:31:49 GMT

We called EE and reported the issue on the phone to them.

When we signed up to EE I didn't realise that we were signing up to doing our own technical support by knocking on our neighbours doors to ask them if they use EE and if so how their connection is.

Off the top of my head I have no idea what our neighbours are using.

Two roads down a friend has just got access to fibre via G-network and as soon as they arrive on our street I don't expect I'll be using EE anymore.

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

Christopher_B — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 16:11:18 GMT

Hi @goodlegs

Sometime when we are investigating an issue, we will ask you to find out information. I know this isn't always possible and we will move forward without any information you're unable to get.

Where did you leave things with the call?

Thanks

Chris

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

mikeliuk — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 16:49:11 GMT

Hi @goodlegs ,

I can safely say that in the two years I have used 4G LTE as my main broadband internet connection, I've never gone door-to-door to check if other users find the issues which I do.

To save myself the embarrassment of doing that, I instead use the Opensignal app and cellmapper.net to see whether I am in a signal blackspot when areas nearby remain fine. Other engineers instead recommend against the cellmapper.net check and would instead recommend to ask around but I personally prefer aggregating the data of many handsets instead of the hit-and-miss strategy of a door-to-door survey which I'm anyway too shy to carry out.

The density of cell towers in Zone 2 is such that a simple restart of the radio should resolve most issues but it should not be that every cell tower within range of you can be congested. If you frequently find a problem, I would judge that its cause might be apparent on cellmapper, for example if there is a red spot in a particular area due to the surrounding buildings so it may make sense to add an outdoor antenna or switch to a network with better signal covering the location of interest.

Hope things improve for you as we exit the peak congested usage of the working day and in the future during the working day.

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

bristolian — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 16:41:55 GMT

Cellmapper won't indicate congestion or slow data issues that @goodlegs seems to be reporting. At best it'll indicate a localised area of poor coverage that is too precise to be displayed on the public website map.

The best course of action that can be followed is to report this issue to EE through the usual channels.

Re: 4G broadband: 0 upload mbps according to speed test

EssexBoyEE — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 17:33:16 GMT

The Teltonika RUT955 Router doesn't have any Internal Antennas but instead relies on the supplied Paddle or an External LTE Mimo Antenna.

Which are you using, if the Paddle Type (X 2 of them) are these the correct LTE Antennas required to cover the UK LTE Bands.

Could you post up your (on the Admin Page) your Cell ID, RSSI, RSRP, RSRQ and SNIR