Intermittent dropouts with NR5103E

[mfarmilo]

I've had the 5g service now for just under 3 months. After about the first month, intermittent dropouts (only every few days) started. At first, logging into the Admin page of the router showed no cellular connection, and rebooting it would sort the problem. More recently, I will get dropouts where the admin page says I'm connected but everything in the house says no internet, and again a reboot is required to sort it. For the first few weeks I was getting a speed of around 400-600mbps, which droppped in November and towards the Christmas period to around 200 and now seems to be back up to 600-700. The firmware version is showing as b12, which I gather is the latest. In Cellular Info, the Cell ID is showing as 1643337 and Bands are B1,B3,n78,n78 if any of that helps. Would appreciate it if anyone can give me any pointers on what is the problem or if there's anything I can do to stabilise the connection.

[crypt0ninja]

Hi @mfarmilo,

Just confirming that you have checked the status checker to make sure there are no issues in your area atm?

Could you please reply with a screenshot of the Cellular Statistics page via the NR5103E router admin portal so I can get an idea of your signal quality?

Where is the router located in the property?

Personally, with the NR5103E I have found that locking to a specific band combination that performs best for my location has stabilised things and improved both download/upload speeds, as I also was having random dropouts and slower than expected speeds. I suspect something weird going on with the NR5103E firmware and its default auto band/cell selection logic.

I have checked that Cell ID you provided in to in order to see what bands are available via that mast and it seems that mast can provide B1, B3, B20 and B28.

You can try locking to some specific band combinations to test both speeds, stability and signal stats in order to determine which combination is best for your location.

With the NR5103E you can lock bands by navigating to the following via the router admin page:

Menu Button (top right) > Network Setting > Broadband > Cellular Band (its a tab)

Going from the CellMapper details of that mast you are currently connected to I would advise to try the following combinations and test speeds, stability and signal to see what turns out to be best for you.

B28 + N78

B3 + B28 + N78

B1 + B28 + N78

B1 + B3 + B28 + N78

I've purposely left out B20 and its not a great band for speeds and B28 is the better option when available (not all masts have B28 atm looks like its still being rolled out but yours has it) but you can try messing around and replacing B28 with B20 for testing purposes.

Hope this helps!

Cheers

[mfarmilo]

Hi, no issues are shown in my area at the moment - it actually went off again about 10 minutes ago. Router admin page showed me online at the time, but no internet access anywhere until I restarted the router. I have attached a screenshot of the Cellular Info page. I'll see if I can work out how to try those bands you suggested, thanks!

[mfarmilo]

The router got stuck again today, everything in admin panel said it was online but no Internet connection. Three support asked me to factory reset it, which I have done. Now wait a few more days to see how it goes...

[mfarmilo]

This appeared to be an internal problem, rather than the actual 5g connection. Oddly enough, I have found that disabling IPV6 in the router seems to have fixed this - certainly hasn't happened at all since I did this. Up to that point, it seemed to happen almost exactly daily, at pretty much the same time.