Issues getting Outdoor hub to connect to 5G and stay connected to it.

[Xandros]

Hello. I signed up to Three 5G Broadband back in April with the promise that I'd get around 120mbps downstream on average, and got given the Greenpacket 5G Outdoor hub and eero router.

I live in a three story block of flats (on top floor) and I'm about 100m away from the mast so I figured I'd probably get fairly good signal with an outdoor hub. Indoor though is non existent, always has been. I knew that beforehand though as I've checked 5G coverage here before when I first got a 5G capable phone and the coverage maps say outdoor coverage is supposed go be good but indoor is a no go in this area which rings true.

When I got the hub I initially put it on my windowsill with the temp stand just to see if I could a 5G signal there. I was surprised to find I could. It wasn't great, it varied around 50-60 percent according to the hub metre, but that got me around 100-150mbps downstream at best and 10mbps upstream (seemed to start high and drop down before evening out when I did speed tests).

Occasionally (like once every few days) it would drop to 4G which is abysmally slow here, but I found rebooting the hub from the web portal would kick it back into 5G. I'd obviously been meaning to fix it to an outside wall but as it worked most of the time on the windowsill I kept putting it off.

Then about two weeks ago, it started to drop to 4G after only a couple of hours and would often not connect to 5G again at all, ever after rebooting. I repositioned the hub on the windowsill multiple times until I found a new "sweet spot" but again, it only lasted a few days before it began dropping to 4g constantly and getting it to connect to 5G again was difficult to achieve.

I decided that clearly I needed to bite the bullet and fit the hub outside on the wall as it was intended, altho I couldn't understand why it had suddenly stopped working on the windowsill, it was almost like the signal had been reduced from the mast. I rebooted it leaned out the window with it my hand and looked for a good place to put it.

Seemed like right next to the window was good enough, I would get 70-80% signal there. And around 200-350mbps downstream and upwards of 40mbps upstream which was great.

Having said that again when doing a speed test it would start off around 350mps and drop rapidly to 200mbps before leveling out. The upstream was always fairly constant at around 40.

I fitted the modem a couple of days later to that spot on the wall, only to find it refused to connect to 5G. I tried restarting it from the web portal multiple times but it only ever connected to 4G again, which even outside on the wall only gives me around 5mbps downstream and barely 1mbps upstream.

I can only manage to get it to connect to 5G if I turn it off completely and leave it off for a good few hours. However this itself only seems to last a few hours before once again it was back to 4G. Multiple restarts and power cycles later I got it back on 5G, again with 75%ish signal. And again within a couple of hours (if not less), back to 4G.

I was worried at this point but used Three's network status checker and found it said there was an issue in my area that was being addressed, so I just chalked these problems down to that and put up with it. This lasted at least a couple of days until the night before last when I checked the service status again and it went back to saying no issue was reported.

However, my hub was still connected to 4G. Leaving it switched off for an hour didn't work (it was late at night by this point) so I turned it off and went to bed.

Yesterday morning after turning it back on again, it connected to 5G and stayed connected. Although the portal claimed signal strength was around 80% doing speed tests of it varied. It would either be around 350mbps and drop to 150, or it would start at 40 and creep up to around 120. Within hours, it had fallen back to 4G again and simple restarts or even powering it off for an hour won't get it to connect back to 5G. This time I've had it switched off for an hour, just turned it back on and it went straight back to 4g!

Seems like it needs to be switched off for many hours to make it work again. Even then I'm not sure this is a "reliable" (for want of a better word) way to get it to connect to 5g. So I'm starting to wonder, why? Has the 5G signal from the local mast been reduced in power or something, or does it keep dropping out, and the hub is only sporadically able to pick it up, and in the end it gives up and connects to a much poorer but evidently more stable 4g signal?

I will note that my phone doesn't pick up 5G at all most of the time when I'm in my flat or even if I stand near the window. It doesn't even pick it up outside if I'm round the kther side of the building where the entrance is (although that's not where my window is).

I have noticed sometimes though even before I got this hub that imy phone would randomly connect to 5G in the same room where I had the hub on the windowsill so even it seems to sporadically see signal (however its rarely a good signal, my phone usually shows it as having none or 1 bars signal strength).

There is another block of flats identical to mine next door which blocks line of sight to the mast from my windows so I'm wondering if I'm actually just SOL and the signals being blocked by that building. But, why did it work OK for those first few weeks just sat on the windowsill? And why when it does connect to 5G do I get 80% signal strength?

Obviously if I hadn't been able to get it to work on the windowsill initially I'd have tried fitting it outside sooner and when I found that didn't work properly I certainly wouldn't have stayed with the contract if I had these issues, but it's almost like it waited until after the cooling off period I was given to end before it decided to stop working properly (and now doesn't work at all unless I switch it off for a ridiculous amount of time). So now I'm stuck on a 24 month contract and no doubt will get s hefty cancellation fee if I cancel it?

I can't feasibly keep having to turn the poxy thing off all night just to get it back on 5G for a few hours. Given im in a flat too theres a limited number of places I can refit the modem as well. I did try other areas when I first got it but only that windowsill and directly outside that window seems to get the strongest signal anyway.

Any ideas?

[Xandros]

Hello. I'm back again with major issues.

Since my posts last year about 7 months ago the hub's been vaguely stable. It would still have moments but nothing as bad as I was experiencing back then. Now though, it seems within the last few weeks it's developed a fault. It keeps factory resetting itself and getting stuck on 4G again.

Searching on this seems to suggest it's a widespread issue with recent firmware updates? It has version 130.00100.113.039 on it which appears to suffer with major bugs. This is disrupting my internet connection on the regular which is also causing me issues with my network servers and smart devices.

Could a Three representative please get in touch with me on this, it's clearly faulty and either needs the firmware rolling back (if that's even possible) to a version it had around September/October when it was actually mostly stable, or preferably, mark it off as faulty and send me a replacement (preferably not a Greenpacket, I'd rather cut my own leg off and sell it on the black market to buy my own 5G modem than have to deal with one of these ever again).

I'll leave this for a day or two to see if I get a response because I know this thread is ancient now and buried under hundreds of others so I'll make a new thread on this if needs must. If nothing can be done on here perhaps someone could inform me the right numbers to call to get this sorted out. Thanks.

[MymsMan]

I have been on 130.00100.113.039 since January and I have not noticed any lack of stability since the firmware update.

Unfortunately the logs are now so sparse that they will probably not contain any indication as what is going on when your router is playing up

[Xandros]

Out of interest though do you change any settings on the hub? If you do and it's not factory resetting itself (i.e. your settings don't get reverted) constantly then mine must have developed a fault since I do change a setting, only one mind you; I turn the firewall off (set it to routing mode, turn off the firewall, then put it back in IP Passthrough). I do this because I need to port forward on my router for my NGINX Proxy among other things to a server and the firewall on the hub blocks the connection. As such I know when it's factory reset itself because the remote connections stop working, and sure enough when I go to the IP of the hub when I have access to my network it pops up with the welcome message and asks me to set a password for the user account again. It was also stuck on 4G all day yesterday too, and has been doing that on and off for a few weeks, slowly getting worse (service status around here though said no work was being done to the local masts).

Funnily enough though I was having the issue this morning, as usual, then posted here out of frustration and ever since I posted, the damn thing's not factory reset itself once, nor dropped the 5G connection. Sods law at work. It's been finicky for a month if not more then when I actually decide to start having a moan about it it starts behaving itself.

Although I will note that despite it saying I've got signal strength in the range of 71, but with SINR being 15dB and RSRP being -105dBm is still from what I understand quite bad in terms of actual quality, I'm not getting much more than 60mbps downstream. Before all these issues started firing up I'd get less signal strength than that (maybe 60 at best but usually 55 or lower) but I'd get 120mbps+ downstream speed. So whatever happened around here be it with the hub itself or the masts, the strength's gone up and the quality's gone down.

If only I had £400 to spare, I'd just buy a ZyXEL FWA710 or similar but alas, I'm skint. I can't imagine I'd ever look back if I got one of those, supposedly better with the antennas too because they're directional 9dBi long ranges ones as opposed to the Greenpacket's omnidirectional 5.2dBi - I don't live in a particularly weak signal area but there's a block of flats blocking my line of sight to the nearest mast which the Three Hub clearly isn't all that fond of.

[MymsMan]

I do change the TR069 service off during the day and on again during the day since it appeared to be implicated in loss of connection events to avoid losing connection during the day.  Since implementing this automation the connnection has been very stable with few drops so it might not really be needed.

It did reboot just before 4am GMT this morning but the previous connection stayed up for 22 days, I collect hub stats every hour, and download logs and settings daily.

The latest firmware has removed the link to the TR069 settings page from the menu but the underlying function is still available for my script to use.

I use tailscale to allow remote access to my home network rather than attempting to open ports.

[Xandros]

I noticed TR069 was gone from the web interface and read it was actually something people turned off to make the thing more stable. I was running that inquirehub script thats floating around and was padding it out yesterday to also turn the firewall off but never got around to enabling it. If the TR069 settings are still there, just hidden, that might be useful to add into the script too I guess.

Although it still hasn't done another factory reset though. This is literally the longest its gone in ages without factory resetting itself or dropping to 4g. Hmmm...

[MymsMan]

I shall need to check whether I have uploaded the latest version of inquirehub to github,

I will incorporate firewall switching if  you want to send me the changes (or create a Github Pull request)

[Xandros]

Ah I didn't realise that was your creation, great work on that, it's been very handy.

I don't know if it's worth it to add the option for the firewall though. I changed the line in InquireHub.py to read:

('Firewall Setting', '/web/v1/setting/firewall/firewallsetting', True),

Then tried to customise the reboot script to do it as well, but I haven't been able to get it to work (it said it was turning the firewall off in the log, and then says it succeeds, but on inspection, the firewall was still on). I was still working on fixing this when the hub stopped misbehaving randomly after I posted which kind of negated the need to do it (for now). I still can't believe how its been playing up for weeks and as soon as I post in here it becomes stable again.

[Xandros]

Well it did it again. But now it absolutely refuses to see any 5G signal. It's like it just vanished overnight last week and won't come back. Masts supposedly not experience issues either.

This time however it was the straw that broke the camels back. So I made a complaint to Three and they just offered to cancel my contract and take the equipment back free of charge because after checking they say the signal in my area is "not good". Was just over a year into a two year contract so I took the offer.

Last month a new 5G mast was installed down the road from me which means I'm now practically sandwiched between two about 100 metres (if that) from each one. So I would have thought the signal quality and strength would have gone up but clearly not, in fact the signal strength DID go up but the signal quality went DOWN for some reason. Now I don't even get 5G on my phone anymore which I used to in spots around here or if I hung out the window with it so whatever they've done recently they've completely ruined the signal. I did notice workman back at the new mast a week ago faffing around with it so I suspect even though Three says there's no service issues, both these masts are actually problematic, but presumably maintained by another company, not Three.

Oh well, that's that I guess. 

[Sal09]

Have you tried both APNs?

three.co.uk

3internet