E169 - New router - Billion 7404VGPX (speed issues)

[petemoss]

Have been using the E169 on both Ubuntu and XP okay now for a year or two. Have had the occasional speed drop, but overall , it hasn't been too bad. It was used as a dongle, directly attached to the computer.

Now I have a new router, a Billion 7404VGPX and the speed is basically back to dialup.

Have checked the obvious setings, like APN is exetel1, MTU is 1500 I think. It connects okay and it working, but the speed is terrible since I started to use it. Any other settings I should check please ?

Pete

[Dazzled]

Pete, could it be that the back of the router is a lousy modem location? Perhaps try it on a USB extension cord to see if another spot, say a window sill, gives better signal strength (see 3G status).

[petemoss]

Dazzled, the modem was always connected to an outside antenna, and so that factor hasn't changed.

In the config for the WAN connection, the settings are:

Mode: UMTS first
Tel No: *99***1#
APN: exetel1
Auth. Protocol: Chap (auto)
LCP Echo Period: every 10 seconds
MTU: 1500
Connection: Always On
Keep Alive: Enabled

Pete

[jokiin]

is that the preferred MTU for 3G, it would be no good for ADSL, not sure how much overhead is involved in 3G though, I guess you could pull it down a bit and see if any change

[petemoss]

I don't know what the MTU should be for 3G. Can't find any docs on the settings.

[jokiin]

I don't know what the MTU should be for 3G. Can't find any docs on the settings.

not sure either, taking it down a bit and comparing results is easy enough to try though

[petemoss]

Seems MTU of 1492 is the value shown from this Whirlpool search

I tried that, saved config, rebooted, but no difference, still dialup speed.

[Dazzled]

Worth a try, but all my networked computers run at MTU=1500, and my gateway router which was once lower has been at 1500 without incident for a couple of years now. No change was made for those times when I've used a Huawei modem.

[petemoss]

Thanks Dazzled. I had it at 1500, but speed still an issue.

I see one Billion whiz on Whirlpool suggests this to 'debug' ..

Login via consol, run the following commands & email logs, ensuring that issue is captured.

- system trace enable usb_host debug
- console enable
- ppp event 4
- event show

I think I just telnet in, from memory, rather than via a browser.

Pete

Edit later: Hmm, ... when I ran the above commands, nothing much, then ran the Exetel speed test, and it jumped up to 650.80kbps ?

[jokiin]

Thanks Dazzled. I had it at 1500, but speed still an issue.

I see one Billion whiz on Whirlpool suggests this to 'debug' ..

Login via consol, run the following commands & email logs, ensuring that issue is captured.

- system trace enable usb_host debug
- console enable
- ppp event 4
- event show

I think I just telnet in, from memory, rather than via a browser.

Pete

Edit later: Hmm, ... when I ran the above commands, nothing much, then ran the Exetel speed test, and it jumped up to 650.80kbps ?

worth doing a hard reset of the router and reconfig from scratch you think?

[petemoss]

I have been doing many router restarts, which would no doubt equate to a hard reset.

This problem now appears to be more reception related, and possibly it is pure coincidence that the speed dropped when the new router was added.

[petemoss]

The speed actually picked up for some reason this afternoon, here are some results from Exetels speed test

2:24 pm Your current bandwidth reading is: 388.10kbps which means you can download at 48.51 KB/sec. from our servers.
2:26 pm Your current bandwidth reading is: 937.20kbps which means you can download at 117.15 KB/sec. from our servers.
2:44 pm Your current bandwidth reading is: 873.50kbps which means you can download at 109.19 KB/sec. from our servers.
2:51 pm Your current bandwidth reading is: 817.70kbps which means you can download at 102.21 KB/sec. from our servers.
5:16 pm Your current bandwidth reading is: 515.90kbps which means you can download at 64.49 KB/sec. from our servers
6:00 pm Your current bandwidth reading is: 593.60kbps which means you can download at 74.2 KB/sec. from our servers.
6:42 pm Your current bandwidth reading is: 624.40kbps which means you can download at 78.05 KB/sec. from our servers.
7:10 pm Your current bandwidth reading is: 242.80kbps which means you can download at 30.35 KB/sec. from our servers.
7:25 pm Your current bandwidth reading is: 785.30kbps which means you can download at 98.16 KB/sec. from our servers.

It has moments of no response and timeouts though, which is the nature of mobile broadband, but the speed has not been this slow for a long time.

When the speed picked up, I noticed it was very sunny, however it got very cloudy and the speed was the same, so seems sun/cloud have no bearing on reception. I may have to get someone out here and have a good look at it. We have a Yagi and I do want to use VoIP one day, and it would be nice to some degree of bandwidth consistency.

Pete