4g internet issues

[Jhsummers]

There is no 4g signal inside our property so we have a 4g mast and aerial on our roof with a TP-link router that feeds a TP deco mesh system. Signal speed is fine (25-30mbs) but signal drops all the times making wifi calling and MS Teams/Zoom etc impossible to use for work.  this is the same whether connecting directly to the Router or to the  mesh system. We have tried replacing the aerial and the router, both of which are now on a UPS,  results are better but still phone calls and FT etc freeze after about 30 secs. I am tearing my hair out over this and the company we use, Astra Broadband hasn’t been able to solve it. CAn anyone help?

[Christopher_G]

Hi @Jhsummers

Welcome to the community.

Do you know if there are any maintenance works in your area? You can check on our network status checker.

Chris

[mikeliuk]

Hi @Jhsummers ,

Contractually speaking, I think it's best to debug with your direct service provider as they will have greater visibility of logs on their side.

If the service provider supplies a device, it would be best to debug with that and replaced it if it seems buggy.

You may wish to consider replacing your router for the purposes of testing. It's best to reduce the number of devices involved when testing and debugging.

[Jhsummers]

Service is OK and we can drive up the land and use 4g fine for calls and Zoom etc. this has been going on for a long time in fact ever since they put new masts up at Abergavenny 

[mikeliuk]

Hi @Jhsummers ,

If you are happy with service but the only issue is drops, I would recommend to look into free network monitoring solutions available.

All you require is something that can monitor ping to 8.8.8.8 throughout the day. Such a tool will aggregate data points over a long period of time so you have a sense of what is going on and may help to correlate the outages with some external event or time period which might help explain or track down the root cause.

You should see a baseline latency/ping indicative of normal behaviour, and a higher level of latency or jitter could indicate congestion somewhere in the network.

You've said you've already replaced the router so I would recommend to take a peek at the SINR parameter. This would give an indication of whether your physical link might be impacted or dropping, and whether packet loss should be looked into.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_network_monitoring_systems

[bristolian]

Hi @Jhsummers 

When you say the "signal drops all the time", do you mean the mobile network signal that the rooftop antenna is receiving?

Or the onward router signal that your devices are connecting to?

[Jhsummers]

I’m not sure - the drop offs were much more frequent and for longer before the aerial was changed.  I had to reboot to get back on.  Now it stays on but varies - phone calls and FT/Zoom etc freeze but then eventually come back on.  Thanks for your advice

[Jhsummers]

Thanks very much - will attempt what you suggest