Nighthawk M1 - selection of LTE Frequency/Band

[Mapcoo]

Don't work for me on MR1100 with firmware NTG9X50C_12.04.02.00

isn't possible to connect to 5510 telnet port.

I had scan with nmap I see this port too but don't work for me.

But with dc unlocker with a simcard in to the router works fine 🙂

[olkitu]

Do you have connected Netgear MR1100 to your computer with USB-cable. 

You cannot connected to 5510 port via Ethernet or WiFi.

I think that dc unlocked use same AT-command terminal as my instruction. This terminal support AT-commands. 

[Mapcoo]

Yes didn't work for me connected with USB cable directly.

with nmap I found :

Scanning 192.168.1.1 [65535 ports]
Discovered open port 53/tcp on 192.168.1.1
Discovered open port 80/tcp on 192.168.1.1
Discovered open port 57371/tcp on 192.168.1.1
Discovered open port 5510/tcp on 192.168.1.1

[olkitu]

That 5510 TCP is correct port for Telnet. You do no see any output after connected but also no any error. You can then start type AT-commands. 

[Kuba76]

Thanks for this. Works great with the ATT version of this hotspot. Is it possible to group bands together? I would like to do band 4,12,30ca. I thought by having it locked on band 66 it would ca that band but it’s just locked on it and I get no carrier aggregation.

[Smog]

@Mapcoo make sure that Use USB port for is set to "Charge + Tether". Also check if you are not connecting through Wifi even when the cable is connected.

Last idea, if you previously tried to set webd.ownerModeEnabled=true from a config backup file, set it back to false. I couldn't connect through telnet on port 5510 while this setting was set to true on my MR100-EUS.

Regards

[olkitu]

---

@Kuba76 wrote:
Thanks for this. Works great with the ATT version of this hotspot. Is it possible to group bands together? I would like to do band 4,12,30ca. I thought by having it locked on band 66 it would ca that band but it’s just locked on it and I get no carrier aggregation.

---

Yes it's possible. You have to then calculate with NV-calculator. 

[MAJOR-z-BOMBASU]

If you are struggling of how to add custom bands, here is the step by step guide: how to create custom bands (carrier aggregation included)

[GetItSet]

I’m new here, but I am considering buying the Nighthawk M1 for use with AT&T in the USA. Before I do, questions like what you have been discussing are important to me. Call me dumb, but I thought that the concept of carrier aggregation was to COMBINE 3 or 4 frequency bands seamlessly and share data between them. From the discussion here, it sounds like that is not what is happening. Instead, it sounds like the M1 hotspot is still picking a particular frequency band to use that it likes. For some people, it sounds like it is picking the wrong one, so they want to lock in the frequency band that works better for them. If that’s the case, then this expensive hotspot is no better than the one I already own, because it already works the same way. I thought the whole idea of CA was not to have to pick one band, but to simultaneously use several of them instead. What am I missing here?

[W1lliam]

Band locking is not intend to enable CA, as you said it is capable to do so already, but picking up bands that is working better in your area (it might vary from time to time though). M1 would stay on a band where it sees better signal but not always with better bandwidth, you can't decide which band to land on without band locking (picking up bands that you prefer to stay).

William

[GetItSet]

So it sounds like band locking is useful for reception areas in which carrier aggregation is either not working properly or else not available at all. If it is working properly it shouldn’t need to stay on a band that performs better, because it should be using a combination of several at the same time. I now notice that this thread started about a year ago, possibly before some telecom companies even made carrier aggregation available from the towers at all.

[JSchnee21]

Kind of, but not exactly.  Not every carrier band is created equal, and the carrier provisioning profile "guides" the connected device as to which bands it can use, and their preferrential connection order.  There are four key factors:

1) Carrier provisioning profile which dictates which bands are available for use from the carrier, which are primary bands (for connectivity) and which are secondary bands (for capacity/throughput)

2) Band propagation and RF characteristics.  E.g. lower frequency bands (which are used for connectivity as a "primary band") travel further (aka 600, 700, 850 MHz) than so called mid-frequency (usu ~1.8 to 3.5 GHz) which are used for carrier aggregation together with the primary band to add bandwidth (throughput and capacity)

3) The RF sensitivity characteristics of your wireless device, antennas, and amplifier (if applicable).  Most notably the receive and call back signal and noise levels for each of the bands on each of the towers near your device.

4) The baseband modem firmware of the connected device makes decisions around -- which bands can I select from (hidden by the device firmware on USA devices in most cases) as well as how to choose the "best" signal.  Where, depending in the device, some heuristic is used to select based on signal strength, noise, etc.  BUT NOT THROUGHPUT.

Carrier aggregation does not provide redundency, only capacity.  And carrier aggregation only works in mid to strong signal cases where you are fairly close <2 to 3 miles from the mast.  Assuming the carrier even has mid band frequency on the mast.  There are a few exceptions (Band 30, etc.) where there are some lower frequency CA bands and well as some "intra band" CA configs, but there are not ubiquitious deployed nor are supported by every device.

Where this becomes a significant issue is in rural settings where the device is >2 to5 miles from the mast.  Here usually only primary bands can be seen.  Often this requires external antennas and amplifiers which tends to exasserbate the problem as signal amplifiers are band centric, not carrier centric, and the hardware hasn't been able to keep pack with the rapidly changing RF landscape.

Don't get the wrong, the MR1100 is not a bad device.  I have one.  It is probably the best hotspot (out of 5) that I've had and definately the best on AT&T right now.  But it's not great.  It's not the fast (in the USA).  My iPhone XSM runs circles around it in strong signal areas.  But the XSM has poor RF sensitivity and the Intel model exasserbates this issue.  in low to week signal areas the MR1100 performs better and gets better reception.

What speeds are you getting on your current hotspot.  My MR1100 maxes out at ~90-110Mbits/sec down in the Philly/NJ/NY metro area.  In contrast my iPhone XSM routinely gets 110-180Mbit/sec in the same areas, and I've seen it peak up to 180-280Mbit on at least on mast almost everyway.

The MR1100, like all hotspots on AT&T it seems, is crippled in some way by the AT&T/Netgear/FCC combination.  The non US versions perform much better in Austrialia and especially Europe.  So the MR1100 may not perform much better than your current hotspot.  Also, expect the new MR2100 to be out in Q4.

[GetItSet]

Ah, that explains a lot, thanks. I live in a rural area here in Texas and have been fighting for years to get better internet service. Right now I have AT&T cell phone service, but a T-Mobile hotspot for house internet. I am transitioning from the T-Mobile house internet to AT&T, because the AT&T tower is only a mile away (although there is a band of trees in the way). The AT&T tower has always been much closer to us than any other carrier, but the data plans have never been competitive until now. So, right now I am waiting for the unlock code for the T-Mobile hotspot to see how it will perform on AT&T, at least on a trial basis. After that I can see what the speed looks like. In the meantime, my Galaxy S5 AT&T phone gives me as much as 70 Mbit download and 20 upload in the house, but only at 5:00 in the morning. At popular times it is more like 15 Mbit download, and barely 10 upload, so I would love to see the speeds you are getting. Both my phone and hotspot are capable of LTE Band 2, 4, and 12/17 operation (also Band 5, but that doesn’t count for LTE). Our tower has LTE Band 2, 12/17 and 30, but for some reason doesn’t have Band 4. I am close enough to the interstate highway that I expect further tower upgrades in the next year or two.

[JSchnee21]

Gotcha,

I also have a Tmo hotspot (ZTE-917, unlocked) and two AT&T hotspots (MR1100 Gen1, and ZTE Velocity 2).  It's hard to beat the Tmo plans with Binge on.  But when AT&T offered unlimited plus in early 2018, I took the opportunity to consolidate all of my devices before AT&T discontinued unlimited.

Unfortunately, there is not a lot of overlap between the Tmo and AT&T bands, and the ones that do overlap are for coverage not capacity.  My Tmo hotspot does "work" on AT&T but not well.  You'll definately want to invest in either an AT&T branded hotspot or one of the more "industrial" 3rd party hotspots (Mofi, etc.).  The MR1100 is a decent device.  It has Ethernet which is huge, and the internal antennas have decent sensitivity.  With the tower being 1 mile away, you should be in good shape without a amplifier.  You can pickup the MR1100 new (gen 2 $200 from AT&T) or there are lots of used Gen1 models on Ebay for less.

The congestion you describe on your S5 is common.  Newer devices (MR1100, S7, etc.) support more / better / newer band configurations in general (and for CA) and should hopefully help you over come some (not all) of the congestion issues you are seeing.  As would tower upgrades as well -- ASSUMING the back haul is not the issue (fiber?  microwave?).

Are you able to get an unlimited plan from AT&T these days?  how many GB per month are you planning to use?  I routinely use ~100GB per month (in total) across my 5 AT&T devices.  But I have FIOS for broadband and generally use ~1TB per mo with all of the internet streaming the kids and I use.

Best,

Jonathan

[GetItSet]

There are two different kinds of AT&T “unlimited” plans I was going to try:

1. Pay somebody on E-bay a small charge to set up my SIM for an actual AT&T $35/month plan, which is probably an unlimited tablet plan. Not technically meant for hotspots, but it is advertised on E-bay that way. The E-bay charge is only for the SIM. After it is set up, I sign up for the plan with AT&T. This plan is subject to a “possible” slowdown at 22GB usage due to network management.
2. There are some 3^rd party companies that sell “enterprise” plans that are supposed to be truly unlimited, with no 22GB slowdown. Examples of these would be NetBuddy and OTR Mobile. Prices start at about $60/month with those two. There are other companies that have higher prices. With this type of service, you pay monthly to the 3^rd party company, not AT&T. rvmobileinternet.com is a good resource that lists these companies.

This is why I wanted to get my Z915 hotspot unlocked and working on AT&T just enough to get started, first to see whether option 1) above works at all for very little risk of money, and if not, option 2) could work for me also. If at least one of those is to my liking (and not just hype), I would probably go to Best Buy and get the MR1100 Gen 2 new for $200. Either generation is selling so hot on E-bay right now that the used devices cost almost that much anyway. A person has to look very specifically at the model numbers of the used ones because there are several of them that sell low priced, but they are the wrong model numbers for AT&T.

I’m so used to being stingy on usage, it’s hard to say how much we would use if I got the chance. It’s just the wife and I, so initially we may be using less than 30GB/month. If we get used to streaming a lot and uploading to the cloud, we could go higher I’m sure. BTW, my cell tower is in the middle of somebody’s farm and has a microwave horn, so the backhaul is microwave.

[JSchnee21]

Good plan.  I've never tried SIM's of that type, but many folks claim they are just fine.  IMHO the Tmo 6GB and 10GB BingOn plans are a pretty good deal, though the video quality for streaming is poor (ok on phone, tolerable on table, poor on TV).

My AT&T unlimited account is "de-prioritized" at 22GB per device.  But I've never had an issue.  Maybe I've seen one or two slow downs in the past year, but it could have just been a slow tower.  I'm over the 22GB on my phone every month (usually after the first two or three weeks).  I've never seen anything like the hard throttling I used to have on my original "unlimited" iPhone data plans.

I'm not sure what the bandwidth of Microwave is these days.

It took Tmo a while (4 weeks in all) to unlock my hotspot.  They "lost" the first request.  After 2 to three weeks of back and forth I finally submitted a new ticket.  Within a week or so after the first request I had the unlock code and proceedure via email.

[GetItSet]

I also like the T-Mobile plans, and I hate to lose the Binge-On. Everything would be great if I were closer to one of their towers. The closest one to me is at least 4 miles away through some trees. Now that they are in full leaf, the slow internet speed is just intolerable. I also asked T-Mobile for the unlock code for my hotspot. They said that for that kind, they have to refer the request to the manufacturer. After waiting a week, I just found an outfit online that did it for me for $4.00. I had the unlock code within hours, not days. I got the Z915 to work with AT&T, but not automatically. In Auto mode it natively went to some Cingular APN. Once I put “nxtgenphone” or “broadband” as the APN it worked fine.

I paid about $5 to have somebody on e-bay set me up a SIM for a $35/month AT&T unlimited plan. I’ve tried it and so far so good. When I pop the SIM in my phone I’m getting speeds up around 70 Mbit download in town. Not quite as good from my rural tower – maybe 40 or so at the tower, but no more than 20 at home using the Z915. Still not bad though, compared to what I had put up with before to get T-Mobile. I haven’t used 22 GB yet on the AT&T unlimited, but when I do I’ll see whether there is any slowdown I can notice. Meanwhile, I checked to make sure the video streaming is not limited. Some other unlimited plans state that they limit video streaming to 1.5 Mbit (equivalent to 480p). I checked the YouTube player “Stats for Nerds” and it said I was getting at least 720p in Auto resolution mode, but I changed it from Auto to 1080p and it accepted it just fine and stuck with it. From what I can see, the resolution is full 1080p.

[olkitu]

I have discovered LTE CA combinations for Netgear MR100 and MR2100 devices (EU-models). This would help you to know supported CA-combinations: https://mt-tech.fi/en/netgear-nighthawk-mr1100-and-mr2100-supported-4g-ca-combinations/ . 

[Sebastiii]

Thanks, now we have ability to add band to lock, it could be nice to have a working solution with external antenne, all frequency over 1800 use the internal antenna and not the external.

It could be nice to have an option to add selection of antenna (internal / external etc.)

Maybe this could be performed with an AT command ?

Thanks.

[SirCosmin]

Good news folks, there's a firmware update available now, I just installed it and can say its big improvement.

The update can be made from router control panel at 192.168.1.1.

New firmware number is 12.06.07.00

Enjoy.

[JSchnee21]

Really?!?

For which market? USA/AT&T?

-Jonathan

[SirCosmin]

I got the MR1100EUS version -Europe

[JSchnee21]

Thanks for confirming. Alas that was my suspicion as I’ve seen that version number before for the EUS edition.

The USA edition is dead in the water. No updates for more than a year. Fingers crossed the MR2100 gets released soon.

[Sebastiii]

Hi,

Thanks for the message, i have apply the firmware update too. EUS version.

I did notice maybe a less speed on my aggregation but this need to be confirmed in time because something speed is less from my provider.

I did notice also that ethernet standby option is removed (or I have done a bad search in the settings)

What change did you notice on your side ?

Cheers.

[SirCosmin]

After I made the upgrade my connection is much stable and much faster, I don't know based on what criteria this has improved because there is no info anywhere at the moment to see what Netgear did with this upgrade. My internet was not that fast before and I was a bit disappointed with this product. Now after this upgrade definitely I like it more, need to wait a bit longer until I get fiber optics in my area. Until then I'll use the LTE connection with the M1. Just to give you an idea, usually the speed test results were 20mb download vs 50mb now.

Much better results!! 

Cheers.