Peplink BR1 mini max speed on At&T

Product Discussion
1

I have a problem with my Peplink running on 8.3.1 firmware.

  • On my iPhone with AT&T I got 100/40 (download/upload speed)
  • If I thether from my iPhone as a hospot I can have 40/20
  • with Peplink I got only 4/4

I don’t what is wrong. I have a plan for the Peplink hotspot for tablet and hotspot high speed.
Can anybody help me with that please. That would be very appreciated.
Thank you

2

Physical size isnt everything. The modem in your iPhone is superior to that of the one within your Max Mini.

If you want speed you should have gotten something with CAT18 modem.

I get over 100Mb down with att using CAT18 or 5G devices.

3

To build on Eric’s comment:
There are a number of factors influencing the quality of your cellular connection:

  • The number of bands that may be aggregated by the provider: e.g., CAT4 (1) v. CAT6 (2) v. 5g etc.
  • The number of bands employed by the tower, and its choice of bands for your particular device’s connection
  • The number of bands made available by the modem to the tower (e.g. a CAT6 modem may not have all the bands available that at CAT18 modem does)
  • Your antennas

It really comes down to the modem, the antennas and your provider’s plan. Smart phones generally have very sophisticated (CAT N where N is high) modems, even if their processing power is limited. They have a fairly narrow scope of optimized functionality, whereas a router such as a Peplink is much broader.

W.r.t. routers: moving from CAT 4 (regular LTE) to CAT 6 (basic LTE-A) to CAT 18 to 5G in an otherwise identical router (think MAX TRANSIT) can have a very significant influence on the connection (e.g. in an urban setting), or none at all (e.g. in the mountains, where a provider may give you only one band, anyway).

4

I drew pictures to explain why your iPhone can be faster than a BR1…

2 Likes
5

Great article!

1 Like
6

With the BR1 mini I currently get an LTE-A maximum speed of 50 mbps download speed and 45 mbps upload speed using a pair of yagi antennas. With the paddle antennas, I get about half that.