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Forum Discussion
New Firmware -- AT&T USA
Hi Everyone, There is in fact a new firmware for AT&T rolling out now. I'm trying to update, but first download attempt failed. I did two factory resets (one soft through the web admin, and the...
Ok,
Got my work laptop fired up with inSSIDer. From the negotiated PHY rates, it appears the MR1100 is in fact MIMO 2x2.
With 5.8GHz @ 40Mhz I get a max PHY rate of 360Mbit (aka ~216Mbit usable). At 5.8GHz @ 80MHz I get a max PHY rate of 866.7 Mbit (~520Mbit usable)
Signal (dBm) seemed to drop only ~3-5dBm with 80Mhz enabled. But this was by no means a scientific test. In general signal strength and useful range general decreases with wider channels. Which is why I want to use a 20MHz bandwith for 5.8GHz.
More info here
http://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/wp/WP_80211acInDepth.pdf
Not sure if the MR1100 does band steering or not. I don't see any settings. I typically run my 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz networks with separate SSID's.
-Jonathan
Battery usage seems somewhat higher with the new firmware. After ~10hours of light usage on both bands, not a single crash, reboot, or hang. Battery fells from 100% to roughly 30% in that time.
But this is not an apples to apple comparison. I had both bands enabled (long) with the wifi timeout disabled and the Ethernet timeout also disabled. Previously I only had a single channel enabled (5.8GHz) and the Ethernet timeout was likely set the default 2min time out.
So far this new firmware seems like a good improvement. Speeds still seem rather slow (slower than my iPhone 6s), but that will take some more testing to prove out.
Hi JSchnee21,
Thank you for doing the upgrade and informing the community with your test and comparisons. I can say as a community we are appreciated with your help. :]
- Jason N
Thanks Jason,
My pleasure. It would be really nice to get release notes so we could actually see what was changed / improved. This way we could actually test and verify that the change had the desired effect like we do for conventional home Wifi routers.
In particular, many of us doubt that carrier aggregation is working correctly on the MR1100. This might be an AT&T provisioning issue, but many folks on Howard Forums post 2x, 3x, and 4x CA speed tests of their iPhones and and Samsung Galaxy's with speeds in excess of 200Mbit DL so we know in certain areas that the AT&T network can do it. I've never seen speeds anything close to that on my MR1100. Maybe ~80-100Mbit at best. In fact my lowly iPhone 6s which has a decrepit Cat6 Qualcomm baseband (MDM9635M) usually bests its (MR1100) download speed when tested back to back.
So something about the CA or Cellular MIMO is not working right. Unfortunately the diagnostic pages on the Web Admin (or Mobile AP) don't really give us enough information to troubleshoot (or even tell when CA is being used -- if it ever is). Having the ability to control which LTE band(s) are used would also be very helpful for many stationary/broadband users.
Thank you!
Jonathan
Just a quick update. So far with two days of usage, I have had one random reboot. Hotspot just randomly restarted while out to diner. 4 devices connected via 5GHz Wifi with light to moderate streaming while on battery. 2.4GHz (off) and Ethernet (2min) disabled. 40MHz on 5.8GHz auto channel. Battery seems to last much longer in this config than with dual band and Ethernet timeout disabled.
Also it seems like on the new firmware the hotspot seems to jump back and forth between different bands very quickly. While stationary, I can see the signal strength meter (both on screen in and in the mobile app) jumping from 1 or 2 bars to 3 or 4 bars. Seems to bounce around between bands 2 and 12 here on AT&T.
Speeds are still mediocre from limited testing 15-50MBit. But this is likely a function of AT&T's network. Still, you would think that instead of jumping between bands 2 and 12 it would just use CA instead?
"Seems to bounce around between bands 2 and 12 here on AT&T. Speeds are still mediocre from limited testing 15-50MBit. But this is likely a function of AT&T's network. Still, you would think that instead of jumping between bands 2 and 12 it would just use CA instead?"
It's not just you. I have this same issue. I'm Band 4 ("Poor" one bar signal) on cell tower 1 and Band 12 ("Excellent" five bar signal) on cell tower 2. The Nighthawk constantly and routinely ping pongs back and forth between these two cell towers. It does not make sense. Why would AT&T intentionally, day in and day out, move a customer from a five bar signal to a one bar signal causing dramatic performance fluctuations from 0Mbit-50Mbit?