Question TP Link Archer MR400 problems

[Razor3]

Hi people,

I have a problem that needs expert knowledge exceeding mine by light years.

I have a TP Link AC 1200 Dual Band Wi-Fi, 4G LTE Router, Archer MR400 which is being used as the main device for accessing internet. It is placed in the living room, far away from any metallic objects and high enough to receive coverage between 75 and 100 percent. Because we live in a place where landline connection is not available, we need to rely on wireless, which is why we bought this router as it also supports connections through SIM cards.

Now, we have 3 SIM cards from the same ISP - two are used in mobile devices (one is in mine, the other is being used by my partner) and the third SIM card is being used with the TP Link. The connection through our phones is normal and when I tried connecting my laptop through my phone using Mobile Hotspot (the phone was placed at the exact same place the router is at), the average DL speed I achieved was 40 mbps and UL was 10 mbps. However, when I tested the connection through the router, the avg DL/UL speeds were 4.50 and 1.30. This is an insane difference.

I did the same test with my wired desktop computer (Ethernet cable between the computer and the router) and the speeds were very like the DL/UL speeds of the wireless connection. So I'm guessing the problem is not with wireless, but with the router itself.

I looked at the router settings but whatever I did, nothing changed. The speeds remained the same.

What I did was:
- Advanced - Operation Mode - tried "3G/4G Router Mode" and "Wireless Router Mode", the results were the same, though I do see that "3G/4G Router Mode" has less YouTube buffering
- Update device firmware and ISP firmware, no change
- Wanted to turn on NAT Boost, however I cannot find that function (the menu option System Parameters under Advanced - System Tools is not there, not in "3G/4G Router Mode" and not in "Wireless Router Mode", nor when I turn off Traffic Monitor and QoS)
- Turned off the firewall under Advanced - Security - Firewall & DoS Protection and under Advanced - Security - IPv6 Firewall, no change
- Changed the Band from Auto to Manual and setting it to 1 (6 and 11 are not there) under Advanced - Network - 3G/4G (I had to turn off Mobile Data before doing this because it gave me an error), this made speeds drop even further.

What am I missing?

 

[kanewolf]

Hi people,

I have a problem that needs expert knowledge exceeding mine by light years.

I have a TP Link AC 1200 Dual Band Wi-Fi, 4G LTE Router, Archer MR400 which is being used as the main device for accessing internet. It is placed in the living room, far away from any metallic objects and high enough to receive coverage between 75 and 100 percent. Because we live in a place where landline connection is not available, we need to rely on wireless, which is why we bought this router as it also supports connections through SIM cards.

Now, we have 3 SIM cards from the same ISP - two are used in mobile devices (one is in mine, the other is being used by my partner) and the third SIM card is being used with the TP Link. The connection through our phones is normal and when I tried connecting my laptop through my phone using Mobile Hotspot (the phone was placed at the exact same place the router is at), the average DL speed I achieved was 40 mbps and UL was 10 mbps. However, when I tested the connection through the router, the avg DL/UL speeds were 4.50 and 1.30. This is an insane difference.

I did the same test with my wired desktop computer (Ethernet cable between the computer and the router) and the speeds were very like the DL/UL speeds of the wireless connection. So I'm guessing the problem is not with wireless, but with the router itself.

I looked at the router settings but whatever I did, nothing changed. The speeds remained the same.

What I did was:
- Advanced - Operation Mode - tried "3G/4G Router Mode" and "Wireless Router Mode", the results were the same, though I do see that "3G/4G Router Mode" has less YouTube buffering
- Update device firmware and ISP firmware, no change
- Wanted to turn on NAT Boost, however I cannot find that function (the menu option System Parameters under Advanced - System Tools is not there, not in "3G/4G Router Mode" and not in "Wireless Router Mode", nor when I turn off Traffic Monitor and QoS)
- Turned off the firewall under Advanced - Security - Firewall & DoS Protection and under Advanced - Security - IPv6 Firewall, no change
- Changed the Band from Auto to Manual and setting it to 1 (6 and 11 are not there) under Advanced - Network - 3G/4G (I had to turn off Mobile Data before doing this because it gave me an error), this made speeds drop even further.

What am I missing?

The first question I would ask is what speeds do you get with a wired connection to the MR400 ?

 

[Razor3]

The first question I would ask is what speeds do you get with a wired connection to the MR400 ?

The same as through wireless, less than 5 mbps.

 

[bill001g]

Mobile broadband stuff is so difficult because there are so many variables.

A simple example can you tell if the phone might be using what is commonly called a 4G connection and the router maybe using a 3G. This though is actually a very complex question because what you really need to find out is the radio frequencies being used.

So if well pull the specs for a mr400 you find this information.

4G: FDD-LTE B1/B3/B7/B8/B20 (2100/1800/2600/900/800 MHz)
TDD-LTE B38/B40/B41 (2600/2300/2500 MHz)
3G: DC-HSPA+/HSPA+/HSPA/UMTS B1/B8 (2100/900 MHz)

Yes you roll your eyes even when you know what this all means.

You would need to get a similar list for your phone but more important you need to see if the phone is using something different to connect than the router. If you get lucky you can dig around the phone and the router and see if they have a display. There are apps for the phone that help if you dig around you can find it on most phones.

BUT this mostly doesn't matter. You do not have much option to choose how your device connects. Now this also assume you are using the same ISP and plan. Even if you were to swap the sim from the phone to the router the ISP can tell the difference and may change the rates based on what type of device you are running it in. There are people that think they are cleaver and buy a cheap unlimited cell plan and then put it in the router thinking the ISP can not tell.

What I would first try is something simple like take the modem outside and see if you get a large improvement. If it is the it is something simpler like running antenna or something. If it run pretty much the same then you are back to the mess of trying to find out what bands it is using and why it is choosing to use those bands.

 

[Razor3]

Mobile broadband stuff is so difficult because there are so many variables.

A simple example can you tell if the phone might be using what is commonly called a 4G connection and the router maybe using a 3G. This though is actually a very complex question because what you really need to find out is the radio frequencies being used.

So if well pull the specs for a mr400 you find this information.

4G: FDD-LTE B1/B3/B7/B8/B20 (2100/1800/2600/900/800 MHz)
TDD-LTE B38/B40/B41 (2600/2300/2500 MHz)
3G: DC-HSPA+/HSPA+/HSPA/UMTS B1/B8 (2100/900 MHz)

Yes you roll your eyes even when you know what this all means.

You would need to get a similar list for your phone but more important you need to see if the phone is using something different to connect than the router. If you get lucky you can dig around the phone and the router and see if they have a display. There are apps for the phone that help if you dig around you can find it on most phones.

BUT this mostly doesn't matter. You do not have much option to choose how your device connects. Now this also assume you are using the same ISP and plan. Even if you were to swap the sim from the phone to the router the ISP can tell the difference and may change the rates based on what type of device you are running it in. There are people that think they are cleaver and buy a cheap unlimited cell plan and then put it in the router thinking the ISP can not tell.

What I would first try is something simple like take the modem outside and see if you get a large improvement. If it is the it is something simpler like running antenna or something. If it run pretty much the same then you are back to the mess of trying to find out what bands it is using and why it is choosing to use those bands.

Thank you for the reply.

The thing is, I made the ISP aware that this is exactly what I am going to use the SIM card for. Because we do not have an option of having a landline connection, I asked them via e-mail if this is going to cause issues and they assured me in writing that it wouldn't. The only downside is that every time I exceed an X amount of transferred GB, my speeds are automatically dropped to a few kbps and I need to send an SMS to a specific phone number in order to re-activate the normal speeds again. Until I exceed those GB again. I can do this as many times per day as I want, as per their Terms and this is also what they confirmed via e-mail. My router allows me to send SMS messages, so that's no issue for me at all.

What I can say is that, based on Traffic Monitor, all my wireless devices have a 5 Ghz connection type when they connect to the router, as opposed to my smart TV which connects through the 2.4 Ghz option. The speeds for both are relatively the same, though. But this doesn't matter because even if I try connecting through an Ethernet cable, I'm getting the same speeds of less than 5 mbps.

I tried moving the router around the living room and the speeds deviated a little bit, though not much. If the wireless was the only connection type causing problems then at least I would know where to start. However, since the same problems are also occurring with the wired connection, there must be some settings on the router itself that are throttling those speeds for some reason.

 

[bill001g]

You are correct it is the wireless connection between your router and the cell tower that is causing the problem.
This is extremely complex issue.

The details of this are going to depend on the country you are in. I am no expert in this so I maybe wrong but I will give a example.
From a first look that router appears to be a model that is not designed to run in the USA but I will give a example of what would do if you attempted to use it.

The main bands most US carriers use are 2 and 4. The router you have uses 1 & 3 and some others mostly used in other countries.
It does though also run on band 7 which is supported by ATT.

Band 7 though is slower than band 2 or 4. So if your phone is connecting using band 2 but your router is connecting using band 7 they will get different rates.

There are many other possibilities I am only looking at the fastest for of LTE called FDD. If you look at the table I posted your router also supports TDD and varius 3G options.

Now I strongly suspect you do not live in the USA beause of this router. The tables of what device and ISP use what radio bands in what countries is massive. This is made even harder if you are using one of the smaller ISP that just uses a larger ISP cell towers.

I strongly suspect your problem is your phone is using a different radio band than the router. The problem might be that the router you have does not function on the correct radio band to get high speed....just like if you attempted to use that router in the USA.

 

[Razor3]

Apologies for the late reply, this has been a hectic week and this is really the first day that I was able to get back to troubleshooting my problem.

I live in Central Europe and after digging around a bit, I found that my ISP uses bands B3-1800 and B20-800. Oddly enough, my router already chose band 20 when it was set to Auto, but the speeds were slow, as mentioned above. So I went to Advanced - Network - Internet, turned off Mobile Data, switched the Band mode to Manual and chose Band 3, then turned the Mobile Data option back on. After performing 10 speed tests in the span of two hours, my average DL speed is at approx. 30 mbps and UL at 3.50. Very far from the advertised speeds and still some mbps away from the speeds I'm getting through Mobile Hotspot, but still, this is a massive improvement compared to the previous settings. So, thank you for your help!

Off-topic as I'm a bit of a layman here, but why do ISPs hate it when people transfer huge amounts of data over their mobile network instead of landline? Why do they throttle their connections?

 

[bill001g]

Off-topic as I'm a bit of a layman here, but why do ISPs hate it when people transfer huge amounts of data over their mobile network instead of landline? Why do they throttle their connections?

So I would try moving the router to get better signal. You might be able to see the signal level on one of the screens. Phones for whatever reason seem to most times get better signals. Some routers have the ability to add external antenna. Best to place the router in a window on the side of the house you think the cell tower is one.

The reason ISP play stupid games with bandwidth and rates is there is still extremely little bandwidth using radio compared to the bandwidth on a fiber. You also have say 100 houses sharing the 2.5 or 5gbit total on a fiber where you might have 500 device on larger cell towers. In addition they do not actually run a fiber to every cell tower. They are cluster of cell tower interconnected with other type of radio links. Only 1 central tower has fiber that is then shared between all the towers.

A cell phone has a tiny cpu and almost no storage compared to a computer. Sure you can get big speed test numbers but there is no application that will really use bandwidth. You are not going to download a 60GBYTE game onto a phone. In addition the screen is so small it really doesn't pay to watch 4k video even if the the screen is in theory 4k. You have to hold it inches from your face to see it. BUT this ability to watch 4k and even a lot of 1080p is why some cell plans have exceptions to the so called "unlimited" bandwidth for those types of applications.

It all comes down to they really do not have enough bandwidth on the cell tower to really deliver what they advertise so they put lots and lots of fine print in the agreements. It mostly doesn't matter you average person is stupid they think paying for a better plan will make their web surfing faster or their music sound better on their phone. They are happy and the ISP laughs all the way to the bank. Only the people trying to get true performance out of cell networks knows the truth.