Hello,

First I must say that I using your equipment for last 15 years (allmost from your start).

I wondering how you people in Mikrotik designd a products?
How you choose a feature that your product should have?
I ask because I can not understand that you design LTE equipment with 10/100Mb Ethernet port!?!?!?!
Today, even equipment with 1Gb Ethernet ports are considered a slow, and nobody make new equipment with 10/100 Ethernet ports anymore!

But, OK, I can understand that you have bunch of MIPSBE chips in warehouse or you have supply line for 1$ price so you force MIPSBE architecture with 10/100 Mb Ethernet ports even if that architecture is slow and outdated for modern Wifi!

But guys, for god sake, how you end up with an idea that you design a devices for LTE (150/50 mb) and LTE6 (300/50 mb) with 10/100 mb Ethernet port?!?!?
Where your engenieers been high on marijuana or drunk dead when they come up with a such stupid idea?

If I try very hard, I can understand for 4G / LTE devices (Cat 4 and lower) that you got unprepared for new technology, but designing a LTE6 devices with 10/100 Mb Ethernet port, really?
What is the point having an LTE6 device if you can not send/receive data from/to your network on the same speed as your mobile (LTE) network because of using an outdated 10/100 Ethernet port?

So, can someone from Mikrotik explain how to use full potential of these devices:

Without LTE modems
..................
wAP R
SXT R
LtAP mini
LHG R

4G / LTE ( 150 / 50 Mb )
........................
wAP LTE kit
LtAP mini LTE kit
SXT LTE kit
LHG LTE kit

wAP 4G kit
LtAP mini 4G kit
SXT 4G kit
LHG 4G kit

LTE6 (300 / 50 Mb)
..................
SXT LTE6 kit
LDF LTE6 kit
LHG LTE6 kit

Why and with what purpose you designed these devices?

Please advise me how to use these devices in full!
How I can use LTE6 with 300 Mb download with 100 Mb Ethernet port?


Very disappointed user!

1st of all an LTE CAT 6 (300Mbps) device will NEVER give you actually 300Mbps. This is the maximum throughput
you can get if you get all your channels assigned.

In reality you will be extremely lucky if you get something above 100Mbps. I have CAT6 outdoor mounted and get.... 35Mbps.
I tried with many products (LHG etc.) and was never ever be able (with various carriers) to go over 60Mbps!
If you test with your phone, you probably have a much better LTE modem inside than CAT6!!! (I can get over 100Mbps).

So using 100Mbps port is not that bad idea with CAT6 and more than sufficient on CAT4. For most cases having 1G port would
not show any benefit.

If you want to go for higher performance you can use for instance CHATEAU (indoor), which has CAT12
or use WAP R ac (indoor or outdoor) with 1G port and mini PCIe slot for LTE modem (Quectel EP06 modem).

WeWiNet,

You seem to very knowledgeable in regards to mikrotik's LTE line of products and performance.
I have been experimenting with following products and services;

Both At&t and Verizon are located on the tower that is 300' from my office so testing is easy and pretty much controlled.

SXT LTE Kit US - At&t 30mbps down x 25mbps up
Verizon nothing because it's on 13 and none of the devices out of the box from Mikrotik support 13
Netgear Mr1100 - At&t 90mbps down x 80mbps up

Verizon Mifi Hotspot - Verizon 45mbps down x 30mbps up

LtAP Mini is equipped with the external mANT LTE series antenna so it should work with Verizon and At&t
LtAP Mini - At&t 5mbps down x 2.5mbps up
Verizon 6mbps down x 4mbps up

My question is simple, will the CAT 12 Unit really perform better? I also get drastically different results when I try each of these devices at different locations around South Florida. I understand that the tower and what it is capable of delivering is a major factor. My cell phones always show speeds upwards of 75 mbps at every site even when all of these units will show 5 mbps. Is there a real solution that will perform more like the cell phone?

Thanks for your time I know it's valuable.

Freedomwifi,

To be honest, it is impossible to anticipate such performance.
I do not know what exact features and bands and aggregations schemes per channel for each carrier are supported in the location you are,
what is the network load etc.

Couple of comments from experience:
- All my comments apply to the "normal country". There are some countries where you can get incredible mobile speeds
as their network is newly deployed, over designed (?), no customers around you etc. (Actually Latvia seems to be a bit like that)
But in general, mainland Europe, US etc. mobile networks are design to handle "on-average" each customer but not to give each the max perf.
You mention the US, so you are probably in such a case. You will not get the theoretical speed, no way, but the higher catergory you use the
higher the chances are you can get good data speeds and on average you can keep that speed (the load is averaged over many RF channels).
Also in such situation, if you life in town or urban area, adding better antenna (using LHG /LTX) will not give you much gain.
It is better to increase the category supported than spending money on better antennas. (if you life on the country side miles away from the base station and no neighbors, this would be different).

What you can do to "roughly" know what you could get is:
- test with the target carrier SIM on your phone what speed you get ( I think you made this already) at the location you would put the device in.
- Check what category your phone supports to see if its close to the LTE router you buy (check phone specs on internet)
- The Chateau is CAT 12 , and has Quectel LGA product inside https://www.quectel.com/product/eg12.htm
Check that the supported frequencies of this module are the ones used by the carrier in your location
( I would asusme it supports the Verizon frequency, but please check).
If that matches, you should get similar performance than on the phone with Chateau... but nothing guaranteed, sorry.

PS: All devices you tested from Mikrotik are CAT4 (Ltap-mini kit, LHG Kit) and based on a less good modem (in my opinion) than chateau which is based on Qualcomm
and really offers superior performance compared to others. So I am not surprised about the perf. you get.
CAT 6 will give you alredy a bit more.
PSS: The PCIe slot devices (wap R ac for example) are nice as well, but PCIe modems today are limited to CAT6. Higher order have different form factor
and do not fit easily. Another option would be to use a hap-ac2 and a USB LTE modem that is supported (look at the Wiki).
I use wap R ac outdoor fixed with Quectel EP06, link it to the indoor AP via Wifi (Audience device) which is my GW. And use the Wpa R Wifi as well to cover outdoor area.
If you do not want to do such complex setup, Chateau would be probably better.

I gave up on Mikrotik LTE (I have two), and found Netgear to perform better. I don't know why but I had to go with what worked.

Absolutely agree with irdanet!
In my country (IT) i can get peaks of 97 down / 37 up Mbps with SXT LTE (not cat 6) on Vodafone BTS at approx 1,7 mile.
So, it's not rare to reach ethernet port saturation on cat 6 devices (LTE BTS can have a > 200 mbps)
100 mbps ethernet port in a cat6 LTE modem it is a real technical mess!

I just got my hands on an SXT... and the first thing I noticed and didn't like was the 100 MBit Ethernet... it's 2023 for Cthulhusake

In reality you will be extremely lucky if you get something above 100Mbps. I have CAT6 outdoor mounted and get.... 35Mbps.
I tried with many products (LHG etc.) and was never ever be able (with various carriers) to go over 60Mbps!
If you test with your phone, you probably have a much better LTE modem inside than CAT6!!! (I can get over 100Mbps).

If you want to go for higher performance you can use for instance CHATEAU (indoor), which has CAT12
or use WAP R ac (indoor or outdoor) with 1G port and mini PCIe slot for LTE modem (Quectel EP06 modem).

Very interested to read this so thanks. A friend is looking to use an externally mounted LTE device, probably Mikrotik, and I assumed LTE6 was fine to get ~100Mbps. Second thoughts now. Fortunately, haven't bought the kit yet. They're currently using a Teltonika RUT950 and that struggles to get >50Mbps whereas my 3-year old mobile was regularly getting over 100Mbps.