I appreciate the link to the product page, but I’m unable to find the answers to my specific questions there:
1.) what is the max upload speed (what is the max cell upload speed this device has achieved?)
—edit: I found it on the pdf at the bottom the product page you linked above – thank you!
Router Throughput: 400 Mbps
LTE-A Pro Downlink/Uplink Datarate: 1.2 Gbps/150 Mbps
2.) does it use multiple antennas to upload as well as download (are the aux antennas used to send data to the tower or only receive data from the tower?)
I guess the answer to my #3 question would be an obvious yes, otherwise it wouldn’t have four antenna ports. I guess the real question is whether there is a way to use less than 4 antennas and what would happen to the performance when doing so, or if there are some locations where not all 4 will be utilized, etc. I was confused as my reseller’s product page for the cat18 modem says 2 antennas are included in the box but it has 4 lte antenna ports.
The product page linked above says: Package Content (MAX Transit)
MAX Transit
12V2A Power Supply (ACW-601)
2x 5dBi Wi-Fi Antennas (ACW-341)
1x GPS Active Antenna (ACW-232)
2x 2dBi 4G LTE Antennas (4G LTE)
(ACW-813)
1 Pair of Mounting Brackets (ACW-724)
Package Content (MAX Transit Duo)
MAX Transit Duo
12V2A Power Supply (ACW-601)
2x 5dBi Wi-Fi Antennas (ACW-341)
1x GPS Active Antenna (ACW-232)
4x 2dBi 4G LTE Antennas (4G LTE)
(ACW-813)
1 Pair of Mounting Brackets (ACW-724)
but I’m not seeing a separate item listing in the box for the MAX-TST-GLTE-G-T which I ordered. The photo calls out 4 cell antenna ports, so I’m assuming that there will be 4 cell antennas in the box… If it doesn’t have all antennas connected, will it fall back to an LTE-A mode and perform like the Cat-6 / Cat-12 versions, or will it perform worse because the Cat-18 needs all 4 antennas to work?
So I received my Transit Max Cat 18 on Tuesday and I’m going to try and answer some of your questions.
Yes, It does come with 4 small antennas that gave me about 2db less signal than my old high end wideband paddle antennas - proxicast/Mofi
The modem in the Cat 18 doesn’t use all 4 antennas in my case because my towers evidentially don’t have 4x4 enabled, but more on that later. For now, here’s why in a picture…
Theoretically I should get 270.8down and 37.5up based on the modem using 66, 66, and 2 at 2x2 mimo in my case. Well shy of the gigabit speed I’d hoped for…
So real world on T-Mobile I’m seeing a more stable connection to the towers because it’s always talking on 3 frequencies every time I query the device. I’m seeing 20-40 down and 10up during the day and 100-130down 10-18up at night. I’ve ordered a new AT&T line of service that comes tomorrow and I think I’ll have better luck there based on my research. Hope all this helps!
Extremely helpful – thank you. I have a t-mobile SIM coming tomorrow and the towers near me support 4*, 12, 66, 71.
If I read the above correctly, it looks like the antenna on Primary RF Antenna #1 and Secondary RF antenna #1 don’t support any of those 4 bands, so it won’t make a difference if I connect those until the tower has more bands added. I have two large proxicast omni antennas that have worked well for me and two yagi antennas to test with, but not 4 like external antennas; reseller got back to me and said that there will be 4 small paddle LTE antennas in the box.)
Coolpad Surf in same location (free with tmobile test kit, no external antenna ports) : 19.1 download 7.3 upload
I was expecting I’d get LTE-A but so far the Max Transit Cat18 is only showing LTE
(this is my first experience with t-mobile; I only had the coolpad surf test device and that device doesn’t show band stats, so it may be that the tower has 4 12 66 but doesn’t do LTE-A?)
Edit: it got LTE-A and showed Band 12 700 mhz and Band 66 but speed was about half of when it connects on band 66 alone; each time after a few minutes it goes from LTE-A back to LTE alone. Will test again tomorrow.
Question: to confirm
Primary RF antenna #0 supporting B4 B12 B66 B71 = Main 1A labeled on the device
Secondary RF antenna #0 supporting B4 B12 B66 B71 = Aux 1B labeled on the device (is this correct? (not Aux 1A?)
I have my 2x2 mimo antenna plugged into the 2 outer connectors. My understanding is the outer connections are one set and the inner connections are another set. Makes sense that they set the primary mimo as far apart as possible when designing it, since you want uncorrelated signals.
I did some further testing tonight and found the documentation above to be slightly wrong. The ports across the back, left to right as 1,2,3,4… 1 and 3 are primary and 2 and 4 are secondary. I confirmed this when measuring individual antenna feeds. I unplugged all 4 to measure each feed individually and after you measure in port 1, you can put it in port 3 and get the same measurement, in port 4 you get nothing. So port 1 and 3 are Mimo’ed together. That also confirms I’m in 2x2 mode since the other port yields no measurement. Hope this helps!
Should read…
Primary 0, Primary 1, Secondary 0, Secondary 1
Here’s where my Cat 18 settled on both T-Mobile and AT&T. I had some problems with bandlocks on Both carriers, it seemed like the modem would get stuck and I’d change the band lock and change again and it would unstick, seems like there’s some sort of bug there. I’m seeing much higher speeds on the AT&T side. The T-Mobile tower is definitely more congested.
Interestingly with t-mobile, I can often get an LTE-A connection on band 12 primary + 66 secondary, but oddly, the upload speed is slower than when it has an LTE connection on band 66 alone (it’s about 1/2 to 1/3 the speed upload when in LTE-A mode with band 12 or when I lock it to band 12 alone compared to band 66 alone. It seems to also drop out of LTE-A into LTE mode every few minutes.)
So for now I’m keeping it on band 66 alone. Will recheck periodically to see if anything changes with the tower I’m connected to. It’s performing very well on the single band right now though.
@aquablue: Yup. You are not alone. Sadly, it seems that “tuning” is often required. Actually, in the environments in which we usually work it’s the norm rather than the exception. “Some fiddling required.” LTEA is nice – in certain locations.
@aquablue You are experiencing the issue where you need to know the bandwidth of each band. The modem currently uses aggregation in the download, but only the primary band in the upload. So for me, my towers have 5mhz, 10mhz and 15mhz frequencies… sadly, I don’t have access to a single 20mhz frequency, which is what the theoretical max speeds are based off of… lol. Here’s the Theory based max upload speeds… Again Theory… so a little more than half is possible in real world…
5Mhz = 18.75Mbps (this is my B12)
10Mhz = 37.5Mbps (B2,B4,B66 on T-Mobile for me, B30,B5 AT&T)
15Mhz = 56.25Mbps (B2,B4,B66 on AT&T for me)
Thanks! Learning slowly but surely! Thanks for all the info.
I was wondering how you figure out whether a given tower has 5,10,15, or 20 Mhz available on a given band, if it was deduced from real world performance or can be looked up.
Folks … it is not that simple. Knowing what the allocated bandwidth is is useful. But do you also know the following?
System losses (log-normal fading, Raleigh fading; attenuation due to man-made and natural obstacles, etc)
Carrier power budget (TX and RX; includes such basics as TX power, RX sensitivity, antenna gain and line loss)
Antenna system design & performance (down-tilt, diversity scheme, etc)
Cel geometry (azimuth limits of each cel; and don’t think all sites are intended to perform similarly in all directions)
Modulation schemes, fade margins, BER, etc
Carrier algorithms (decision rules) regarding band assignment/frequency utilization
Back-haul capacity
etc.
Sometimes it is just best to “experiment” (translation: try a number of well thought-out alternatives which are based on solid experience and a modicum of technical knowledge).
Really appreciate all the info to understand how things are working at least a little bit better than before though.
Interesting how in the screenshot above there are two LTE Band 66; mine will only LTE-A with band 12 primary and Band 66 secondary on the tower I’m pointed at (It’s too bad it won’t LTE-A with 66 as primary and 12 as secondary since the upload bandwidth is much better on 66 and that gets sacrificed the other way around; but it doesn’t. ) It has never gotten two Band 66 connections like in the screenshot above. I get about 20-30 mbps upload and download though on the single band 66 connection so I’m happy right now.
If the chipset is Telit, then you need to be a Telit Partner to have access to the current version releases and notes. Telit currently has the latest firmware versions hidden from the public. Hopefully, they will open up in the future and make the information publicly available as the other manufactures do.
It is fair to expect there are releases with Telit that address the specific ways that Telit chipsets operate with the various mobile/cellular networks around the world. Base on our experience, we recommend raising a support ticket so that the Peplink Engineering team can dig deeper. We have an existing ticket #20030685 with @sitloongs on the issues with cellular firmware releases. By working with the Peplink support team, we confirmed a fault with the Telit firmware that was preventing the chipset from working correctly with Telstra in Australia. Currently, the only way to do cellular firmware updates for Tilet supplied models is to have Peplink manually log into every Tilet Cat-18 chipset and remotely patch the chipset. Hopefully, this will get addressed in the future system firmware updates (such as 8.1.0).
Happy to Help,
Marcus
Thanks very much for the info. Yes, Telit LM960 running firmware 32.00.153 modem hardware revision 1.0. This explains why the support.cgi check for modem firmware button returns “try again later” right now.
Hello @aquablue,
Your Telit LM960 is on newer firmware than the units deployed here in Australia (such as MBX HD4 & EPX/SDX units). Put a ticket in with Peplink Support and invite them to take a deaper look into your system, maybe they will find something to assist you that can then be deployed to everyone.
Happy to Help,
Marcus
LTEA is nice – in certain locations.
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