Gigacube download speed low upload speed high?

[Jerubale]

Recently moved to a new area, installed gigacube. Had to find a good signal position as this seems to be a poor signal area. Finally find a 4G signal between 4 to 5 bar, or almost full signal strength! 

So, I was hooefull for a usable connection.

However, after various and many speed tests in various location I'm getting very poor download speeds, like dial up speeds of  0.45mb or less. For a split second or 2 it'll jump maybe to 2mb, I've seen 8mb but only for a fraction of a test! Very frustrating!

Yet, the upload speed is reporting between 8mb and 10mb standard, even as high as 12mb... 

This is obviously totally the wrong way round! What on earth is going on? Why can I barely browse an internet page but I could upload a 1080p video to Facebook in a few seconds? This makes no sense!

Area is near Arendsee!

[Jerubale]

A screen grab of the speedtests for reference:

[reneromann]

The simple explaination: You are using mobile services - this means that all the devices within a cell share the bandwidth of that cell. Depending on the technology and frequencies used at that cell, that bandwidth may be currently as high as 500 MBit/s - but it can also be only a part of that - usually only 75 or 150 MBit/s in rural areas.

And as you can imagine, if there are multiple users within that cell, the speed for each user will drop as consequence due to that physical limit of the cell.

If you need higher bandwidths or stable bandwidths, you should consider signing for a landline contract.

[Jerubale]

Seeing as this is a rural area, surely that would also mean less users in the first place. 

That also doesn't explain why I'm getting very high upload speeds, in comparison to download! If I was suffering from high user level speed throttling, wouldn't that also limit the upload speed. Plus wouldn't time of day probably apply for heavy traffic so at this time of night I'd expect higher speeds. Not the case! Still slow... I'm very confused by this, as I'm used to having much lower upload speed, like maybe 2 to 4mbs upload with 18 to 22mbs download! This is almost the total opposite extreme. This is practically unusable!

For reference, my mobile phone can quite happily get a 4g connection in the same location at the same time and draw over 20mb down to 6mb up! 

Hence my confusion. Why does my mobile contract work pretty normally, but my gigacube contract does not?

[reneromann]

The upload is not necessarily overcrowded in the same way that the download is.

Usually people need much less upload and thus the capacity in upload mostly is ok for more people than in the download.

[Gr3g]

Any chance for making speedtests through ethernet-connection?

[Jerubale]

No, I'm unable to do a wired test. No access to rj45 cables at mo... Plus my laptop has no rj45 socket, just WiFi 2.4 and 5ghz. Plus Handy also 2.4 and 5ghz WiFi.

I tested it many times across both connections and devices, with reboots all round. Manually tracking for best signal etc, etc. 

I went into a Vodafone store to see what's said. Apparently this area isn't covered at all, so the fact I'm getting anything seems to be a bit of a mistery to the guy in the shop. Any way, as a just in case measure they gave me another new SIM and a test unit gigacube to try out and see if that helps... I'd say it did for approximately 4 hours. I managed to get an average of 4 to 8mbs for those couple of hours with a strong 4bar 4G signal being report.

Same location, nothing changed, and now it's back to seriously low download speed again but still high upload. Except now the ping speed has dropped through the floor into the high thousands of ms ping return... I was getting a ping between 35 to 120ms ping, now it's dropped to anything +3000ms, basically pinging out, no response, no internet connection errors, etc. Whilst still showing a 4 bar 4G connection? This mystery just gets order!...

[Jerubale]

So, again...

At 2am I'm getting speed test results in the 4mbps range, with some peaks around 8mbps download, and around 4 to 5mbps upload.

At 2pm I'm getting closer to 0.4mbps download and 10 to 12mbps upload.

How does that make sense? 

I get faster upload at peak times and totally unusable download, but in off-peak times I'm getting usable download and average upload speeds?

[Ink1]

Hello Jerubale,

Without an exact address (postcode / street) or cell ID, I can't tell you more than general behavior on the Internet, which has already been mentioned here. Do you have other mobile numbers in the Vodafone network? And with which it works? And did you just get a new SIM card in the shop or was the Gigacube swapped?

regards

Inken

[Jerubale]

Location: Dorfstraße, 39619 Schrampe 

I have been given a new SIM card and a test unit gigacube whilst my original cube has been returned for checking. I doubt there is anything wrong it personally.

I don't technically have another Vodafone number, but I do have a roaming enabled SIM in my handy that can connect to any EU service provider including Vodafone.

My own tests have been inconclusive! At some points I've had data signal with high(ish) bandwidth, so far highest has been around 14 to 15 Mbps, but that was very late night/early morning. I'd say generally I'm averaging between 0.4mbps and just shy of 2mbps most of the time.

It's frustrating that I've seen okay speeds but not often. 

This area is, by my understanding, a high tourist spot but as things are at the moment there really isn't much in the way of tourists and local population density is low. The likelihood of sharing all the bandwidth with multiple others would seem low to me??.. obviously not impossible but...

As an aside, any recommendations for an external antenna for the gigacube, and would it be worth using one?