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Forum Discussion
Nighthawk M1 - selection of LTE Frequency/Band
Hello there,
is there any way to select the LTE Band/Frequency the router should log on to? This would really help to avoid switching from a "good" cell to a bad one. With Huawei Routers I can do that using a third party tool. (LTE Watch). Unfortunately this is not available for Netgear Routers.
Thanks for your comments!
77 Replies
Hi Glocknerblick,
Unfortunately, the M1 does not provide the selection of LTE Band/Frequency. This idea has been forward to the internal team and they are looking into it.
Thank you for your post. :]
- Jason N
"is there any way to select the LTE Band/Frequency the router should log on to?"
this has been previously requested. for me personally, i don't care about signal strength meters or signal bars. all i care about is the most stable, highest performing experience.
for example, a "one bar" high performance band can easily out perform a "five bar" low performance band. for most end users the best bet is to let the Nighthawk LTE hotspot make the band decision based on real-time actual data throughput. things get more complex when we start talking about multiband CA. complexity beyond what a normal user is going to want to decipher.
a concern that been raised multiple times is the current Nighthawk LTE hotspot rapid unwanted switching back and forth between bands. "Excellent" signal one minute, "poor" signal next minute, "Excellent" signal the next. This causes unnecessary confusion for end users looking in the Nighthawk GUI interface. There are better ways for Netgear to communicate what is happening on the LTE hotspot.
End users are looking at this signal strength info, bars info, "Excellent" vs "Poor" trying to dial in their Nighthawk LTE hotspot to the best performance. That said why not just show end users the performance numbers they are really interested in to begin with. Skip all the signal bars and other stuff that is causing the confusion.
Average Download Mbps Last 10 minutes = 55.90
Average Download Mbps Last 5 minutes = 64.33
Average Download Mbps Last 1 minute = 5.90
Average Upload Mbps Last 10 minutes = 12.71
Average Upload Mbps Last 5 minutes = 31.39
Average Upload Mbps Last 1 minute = 3.32
This tells us the real world info we need. A few minutes of data is all that is needed if the Nighthawk is light on resources. Why AT&T cell towers constantly flip end users between Excellent and Poor signals is an interesting technical discussion, but we can't control that. What we as end users can control is moving our Nighthawk LTE hotspot around until we get the highest Mbps readout possible. This real world Average Mbps data would allow us to do that with high confidence.
Hi nhantenna,
Thank you for providing that for the thread. :]
- Jason N
Hi Glocknerblick, the only theoretical way to do that is described here: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Mobile-Routers-Hotspots-Modems/What-is-the-AT-entercnd-password/m-p/1427204
But it is not possible since Netgear blocks the use of extended AT commands.
Did the firmware for the M1 ever get updated to include band selection?
I am trying to get Netgear to do the same for the LB2120 (which doesn't even have type selection 3G/ 4G) that we currently rely on exclusively for cellular internet access. It would be useful if someone could tell me how Netgear will resolve this situation.
Nope. Sorry, that will never happen (Netgear/AT&T updating the firmware to permit band selection). Carriers in the USA don't want to permit that much control They don't want end users being able to camp on specific bands and avoid their load balancing, failover, and CA algorithms.
I've generally only seen this capability on Asian products (Samsung, Huwei, ZTE, etc.). Even then, for many (like the Galaxy S series), I believe you have to boot the phone in a special service mode to limit the range of bands you allow it to select. Huwei is one of the few that seems to proactively let you choose which band(s) to use.
But didn't one of their representatives say that the "idea has been forwarded to the internal team and they are looking into it"?
If they aren't going to address this problem they should have simply stated that the idea was declined.
Unless we get the password to telnet in and force a band via command, we will never have that ability.
Nothing is perfect, some people will say "let the network manage it" or "the algorithm knows best".
That is simply not true in some specific use cases. I am sure some netgear engineers know this, but their hands are tied im guessing.
I live in a rural area and the Nighthawk M1 just doesnt cut it, bouncing between band 30, 12 and 2.
I bought a Mofi 4500 so I could lock onto bands and guess what, it works. Drove up to a tower, line of site. Nighthawk M1 7mbps down on band 30. Mofi 4500 locked to Band 2 - 45-50 mbps down.....
In some scenarios automatic band selection just does not work. The nighthawk REFUSED to get off band 30.
2.5 Mbps download, 17.6 Mbps upload on band 20.
39.7 Mbps download, 11.9 on band 3.
Download speed is generally more important than upload for most conventional applications.
Edit: 39.7 Mbps download, 11.9 Mbps upload on band 3.
Just to add a little context, while the device was connected using band 20, the signal strength indicator was showing 4/5, whereas while connected using band 3, the signal strength was showing 2/5.
So the connection using band 3 was actually yielding a substantially superior download speed despite the fact that signal strength was apparently half that of the connection using band 20.
Tired of waiting, I already sold this piece of **bleep**. Netgear sux and community like this is just a big joke.
Wherever I go I advise everyone to not buying any Netgear products.
Way to go guys!By which exact model did you replace the Netgear router?
While I don't disagree. Unfortunately, there aren't really any better choices. My ZTE Velocity 2 (discontinued) is almost as good. Certainly was cheaper (only $79) but no Ethernet and much shorter battery life. Download speeds slightly slower than MR1100 but upload speeds much better.
I wish Samsung or Apple would make a carrier unlocked dedicated hotspot device.
MR1100EUS Firmware Version 12.06.08.00 is available for Europe version.
Sometime in late 2019, an outfit on E-Bay started selling refurbished AT&T (USA) MR1100-2A1NAS Band 14 hotspots – and people bought hundreds of them. I finally bought one. I had hesitated to buy an MR1100 before because of problems other people had when trying to select frequency bands or trying to use the Ethernet connection. I tried it out and it just simply worked – very well. Within hours after I set it up, it notified me that a firmware update was pending. I postponed it but it didn’t do any good – it installed itself anyway the next time I rebooted it. The firmware version now is NTG9X50C_12.05.05.12 (dated 2019/11/26), and it is working fine. The previous firmware on it was dated in the summer of 2018 I believe. I am able to Telnet into it via USB on port 5510 and it allows me to add frequency bands without asking for a password at all (this was after the firmware update – I didn’t try Telnet before the firmware update). Thanks to Olkitu for the Telnet information! I did mess it up the first time I tried it by overwriting the existing setting for “LTE ALL,” but hitting the factory reset button (near the battery) removed that mistake and I was able to try again.
Using the AT!GSTATUS? command on Telnet, it tells me that the MR1100 is doing CA, using Band 30 as primary, and Bands 12 and 2 as secondary bands. With this combination, it is giving me speeds of 50 – 150 Mbit/sec download, and usually 4 - 10 Mbit/sec upload. Typical download speed in the evenings is about 70. If I need to upload Gigabytes of information, I can force it to select Band 14 only. That improves the upload speed to about 20 or so, but the download speed is “only” about 30. Most of the time I just leave it set to LTE ALL so it can do carrier aggregation. For some reason it won’t include Band 14 in the CA though. I’m guessing it’s because that band is shared with first responders, so including it in CA wouldn’t be appropriate. Still, by itself Band 14 does pretty well. I would expect Band 4 or Band 66 to be involved in the mix, but my tower doesn’t support either of those bands (yet).
I connected the Ethernet port to the WAN port of my home router and it just simply worked without hassle. The only change I made was to disable ETHERNET STANDBY (so that it was always working). Other than that, I didn’t need to enable IP PASSTHROUGH or disable the MR1100 as DHCP server. I did try to disable its DHCP server function once to try something different, but that was a bad idea. After that I couldn’t get into its menu to correct that mistake, even if I connected up via USB. A factory reset and restoring my backup configuration file took care of it. I had to Telnet in again to recreate all the frequency band menu selections because a factory reset wipes those out.
