WHOA!!!!!! You ARE THE MAN!!!! I did this kind of detailed testing (SW & OS) testing in my career. I respect/identify with anyone who can do multi-variate analysis and have the concentration to test Option x Option to the fullest extent. That's why I love your channel man. Best Regards and Best Wishes for 2023!
BUY Chester 5G Gateway: chestertechrepairs.com/products/wifi6-industrial-lte-5g-nr-wireless-modem-router-unlimited-hotspot-rv USE COUPON CODE for $45 OFF : NaterTater Get 5% off Waveform antenna and signal booster products with this link: www.waveform.com/natertater or just use code "NATERTATER" at checkout. Then go here for the 4x4 kit: www.waveform.com/products/4x4-mimo-panel-kit or go to the Peplink BR1 5G Pro product page: www.waveform.com/products/peplink-max-br1-pro-5g?variant=39840236535911
Hello Nater - FYI, the key difference in speeds from the Peplink 5G routers to the Chester 5G router is the modem hardware. The current Peplink 5G routers only use the Qualcomm X55 modem, whereas the Chester router uses the improved Qualcomm X62 modem. While both can do 5x Carrier Aggregation (Cat 19/20), the X55 modem can only do 1x 5G Carrier Aggregation (e.g. ONLY xSA 25/41/71). The X62 modem can do 2x 5G Carrier Aggregation (e.g. xSA 25 + 41, 41 + 71, etc.). Your video does show the 2x 5G CA in the Chester router, and thus the reason only 1x 5G option with the Peplink routers. Hope that helps with better understanding of what band options are available with each router in your testing. Also to note: Nokia Gateway = 1x 5G CA | Sagecom/Arcadyan = 2x 5G CA
Bought the Chester device with your code. It arrived the next day. I went to a T-Mobile store and picked up the $50 internet plan and after a few hrs of testing, I'm pretty happy so far. Can't wait to tell Comcast where to put their equipment. $3600 a year to watch 5 channels and surf the internet + a phone line we never used.
@@tolust About 200, but I had to test inside a metal pole barn today cause it's raining outside. Just got the modem yesterday and the sim today. An outdoor antenna should be great as I'm not far from the source.
You are THEE MAN! With all the work that went into this video, you deserve a medal. Your videos present MORE information than all the T Mobile tech support staff COMBINED lolol. I can see the fantastic results with speeds from the Chester, but I'm wondering how are the wifi coverage and the other options like static IP addresses, Guest network etc? Like you, I have another router connected and the wifi turned off of the T Mobile Trash can. I'm wondering if the WIFI coverage is good ( my home is 2300 sq ft -one floor) then I could just purchase the Chester and run that for my wifi and modem. Many thanks again!! Anthony
Seems like n25 + n41 5G SA 2CC and then B4 + n41 + B2 5G NSA are the best options for network speed in your location. n71 seems to be your worst band there, aside from contributing well for upload speed and coverage. The carriers need to add band selection to their included routers. It could probably save them from customer churn. Those Peplink devices are very neat!! Great video. 👍🏻
They don’t add that extra stuff because they’re telling the government and the FCC that these are hotspot devices, which with how they’re configured is true. Verizon has the upper hand there because of their spectrum agreement they can tell the manufacturer to add no restrictions because of their different Quality of service guarantee that’s entirely separate from their cell phone data. On c band you’re already locked to their best bands in that area, on mmWave they give you an entirely different box cuz the tower is right under you.
Hey! Great video! I was just wondering how you can reduce the ping on the tmobile home internet. Do you know what cell metrics to look for when trying to get the ping reduced? I'd much rather trade off great speeds for consistent ping. I've⁷ found that my ping is very inconsistent.
That's some good testing. I do think if you focus on improving your SINR. You'll see your speeds increase. SINR without a doubt most important cell metric
Great video! I recently bought a 4x4 and the Chester device for my T-mobile service. My tower is very close even in the rural location I am. The stock gateway gave me 280D and 25U, so curious to see what I’ll get with that new setup. Look forward to the next video with the antennas attached.
@@NaterTater I did some testing today with the Chester device. With the device alone it didn’t perform as expected. I was seeing much higher ping that my Sagercom from T-mobile. Sagercom: 38-44 ping average on N41/B66 with 340D and 30U Chester: I couldn’t get above 200D and 30U. On average it was even with the 4x4 Waveform Mimo, around 160D and 25U with 70-80 ping. 🤔 I made sure it was in the same location, same band, but couldn’t get more. Was kinda surprised. Will be curious to see your results and others as well. Seems like a packet issue? 🤷🏻♂️
@Ler9 was the 340/30 with the stock Sagemcom or with 4x4? Did you test the Chester stock, what was that speed? Did you look at packet loss on the speed test, it should be zero. If it is not zero with the 4x4 then you likely have the antenna hooked up incorrectly, the order does matter.
The Chester doesn’t have any documents to reference. But on the Chester side I started with #1 and worked left to right (looking at the Chester from behind). But I did have the 4x4 hooked up on its end correctly. It’s marked 1-4 and all were connected accordingly. But the 340D 30U was the stock Sagecom, no 4x4. The Chester stock set to the same bands was the 170 average download with much worse pings. 70-80 with the Chester but 38-40 with the stock Sagecom 🤷🏻♂️. With the Chester and 4x4 it was similar but only minor improvement on the download to about 188-200 but still 70-80ms ping.
I own the Chester. Great product. I have an external waveform 4x4 panel antenna. I have it hooked to the back of the router (left to right) 1,2,3,4. Is there a better sequence? Thanks.
Nate thank you very much for the video It was great comparison. I have the MIMO antena 4x4 and will be waiting to see the speeds using the Chester device. Thanks again.
Once again, wonderful and informative video with such level of details. Thank you! I just ordered Cheater gateway and should be here in couple days. My question for you is: if I am currently getting in average 200 to 300 down and 15 to 25 up with ping around 20, would Chester gateway still be able to make the double even better in terms of band aggregation? From KVD21, right now I can see it on b2 and n41 with so so signal quality…. Thank you again for your knowledge and efforts.
It really depends on your exact situation but in general it should improve your speeds. You might have to mess with band locking to find the magic combo.
It's interesting how someone with a crap signal can learn and share so much information trying to increase their bandwidth. Unfortunately we can't all have symmetrical gigabit fiber for under $50 a month.
Again another great informative video. Thank you!!! Curious if you could make a video to explain best set up of e.g. the Chester device if it used just as a modem with an additional router behind?
The Chester unit looks to be made by Suncomm? Which has an office here in the U.S. Do you know what model it is? These are being sold elsewhere, some with the addition of SIM cards added.
The housing is Suncomm. The router board and modem are Mediatek and Quectel unless you configure a different one from Chester Tech Repairs. They also add other components inside to aid robustness. So not the same as available directly from Suncomm.
@Nater Tater - Update: I picked up one of these for testing as well - extremely impressed(!!) with the performance combined with the Waveform 4x4 antenna. [2-3x performance increase over stock paddles]. After testing multiple antenna configurations (for T-Mobile), this is the best performance antenna connection order I have discovered: Looking at the back (metal panel) of the Waveform 4x4 antenna from left to right [to identify/number the output cables]: P1, P2, P3, P4 Looking at the back of the Chester router from left to right, connect the cables in this order: P4, P2, P1, P3 Would be interested to hear if you get the same maximum throughout results as well with that connection configuration.
Great testing Nate! Just one question, can you use the T-Mobile gateway sims on the Chester? I missed that bit of info or do I have to by another sim or plan?
Hey, Nater Tater! I've been following and enjoying your videos for a while, now. Thanks so much for the helpful content. To start, my apologies for reaching out here with my questions that are unrelated to your video's topic. Couldn't find an alternate source to reach you. I'm wondering if you have any experience with wifi extenders that plug directly into a wall outlet? I've tried 2 different extenders that I purchased on Amazon, but could not get them to connect to my TMobile Home Internet Arcadyan router. So, I returned both. Can you provide any advice or suggestions for specifics I should look for in a wifi extender that will work with my TMobile router? Kind regards! -Rod-
@@NaterTater Can't believe I missed that video. Thanks for sharing. Sorry, but I have another question. My TMobile Arcadyan router does not have a WPS button. Will this cause a problem with connecting to the wifi extender that you recommend in the video? Trying to avoid returning a 3rd wifi extender. Hope you understand. Thanks, again.
@@NaterTater I bought the TP-Link AX1500 WiFi Extender Internet Booster you recommend in the video. It was delivered today. Hopefully, I can get it connected to my TMobile router. Thanks for the suggestion.
My number one question is same band signal metrics - Chester vs KVD21. First floor KVD21 bands showed B2 & N71. That is what my KVD21 shows. My signal varies considerably with LTE better than 5g (2.1 miles from the nearest tower). So will the Chester receive a better signal? For a reference my only internet option before I finally was able to sign up for T-mobile was a local provider, 5M down and 1.5 up for $65/month. But that was a blessing after 28k with a modem over POTS. Thanks for all the videos.
Hey Ken, I specifically opted for "same location" not signal metrics as I think its more applicable to an end user. You aren't going to drive towards your tower to get the same signal metrics with a device. You're going to place it in/near the same spot of your house. The real speed difference with the Chester or other 3rd party devices is the ability to band lock, 5G SA and multiple band 5G CA.
@@NaterTater Same location is exactly what I was looking for. If I were to replace my gateway with the Chester unit in the same location will I have better reception is the question. Stability and reliability and latency are more important to me than raw speed past 25-30 M. I do not know if other bands are available from the tower besides the 2 shown on the T-mobile app. Please pardon me if I was unclear.
@@stillhere153 the software on these custom router have come a long way. I remember you had to reboot them still in late 2020. 2021 really picked it up
I would LOVE to buy Chester but NOT at $500+ . If he would sell it at $200-300 then myself and others would purchase it in a heart beat. Also please do a video on how to setup/settings this as a "modem" (turn off wifi ,etc. act like tmobile modem) use our own routers.
I think they get them near that price range and then modify them (adds/upgrades components so they are robust), does testing/dev with them and then ships them out to customers quickly for that price. Still not cheap but as they say you gotta pay to play! 😆 more videos coming and I think your exact need will be answered soon!
In terms of improving speed / quality what would you recommend to look at first, second, etcc based of your experience? I am thinking external antenna first and then a 3rd party modem if necessary. Curious what everyone else has done!
I've seen folks go either way there. First step is moving your gateway around to different locations of your house and making note of the best speed. Is it on certain bans? Consistent schedule? If its tied to a certain band then an external antenna might not help. But a 3rd party gateway could let you band lock specific good bands.
Hey Nate I noticed that your MTU was setting at 1420. I ran several MTU settings for T-Mobile and found that 1428 seemed to be the one to use. Mind you that this was on the MoFi5500 and the MoFi 4500 SIM7. This may have something to d the area maybe. I am in Florida in ZIP CODE 34433 which in Citrus County. I am very tempted to try the Chester 5G Gateway though. As I said in another post that my MoFi-5500 EM9191 will not connect to 5G at all. Though I have 2 phones, a Tablet, and another phone that gets 5GUC. This mades be think the EM9191 module is bad. What in your opinion is the better of all of them? Is it the Chester 5G Gateway Cheata? Thanks Dave
Yea the Chester Cheetah has shown the best performance for me. The theoretical best MTU for tmobile is 1420. Verizon is 1428. But you might see different results, i have also ran tmobile at 1428 and saw effectively no change in performance.
@@NaterTater I sent him a email and he responded very fast. I will call him later today and the one you have. I have a few questions about it and couldn't find the answer online. Thanks Nate I will keep you posted..
Curious about the tmobile business plan. I was told by a support person that it was an additional $50 a month and that I would get a more stable /priority connection and no throttling. Was wondering if that has been your experience? As the crow flies our tower is about 1/2 mile away but is in the middle of 4 truck stops just off the highway. In addition to using the gateway for my home, I stream races at a dirt track in the same location that can go anywhere from 5 -9 hours. Add to that all the spectators that constantly have cell phones going on occasion I see signal strength dropping to the point of the stream disconnecting. Wondering if I should just go to the business plan or invest in one of these pricey modem/antennae setups. I thought about adding the pigtails to my trash can but think they might be a bit too fragile since I have to move the modem from the rv to the control tower every week. Any thoughts?
The business plan is the same price as home, same unlimited data, same deprioritization and slow downs during congestion. However you can use a 3rd party gateway without any tricks.
@@NaterTater Thanks for the reply. I went on the site a little earlier and saw that. I did see they have an enterprise or some such plan with a $1000 Cradlepoint modem and a "Contact us for more details" You know that's not going to be inexpensive. I do like the idea of the Blackhawk 6500 pro but can't seem to be able to find the difference between it and the 6500 pro -too many model #s and not enough details
My Centurylink DSL is 25 down and 8 up. Haven't used my TMHI enough yet to remember the speeds but much better. Can you list what the actual modem is in each one?
so if you need to you can band lock only the 4g lte bands and not the 5g ones on the chester router? The 5g bands in my area have been having trouble but the 4g seems to be working fine from what I can tell on my phone so i'd like to try that if it's possible. Would it work?
Thank you so much for your videos. I work remote from an RV and have been churning through devices. I purchase one of the Chester Tech router you shared in this video. I emailed Alfredo at Chester Tech asking if he has the correct cable diagram for the Waveform 4x4 MIMO antenna. He mentioned you may have them. If so, would you have them online? I'm not sure which wiring combination to use. Any help is appreciated! Thank you for your content and help!
I'll be doing some testing to confirm but my understanding is the middle two antenna ports and outer two are pairs. Each pair would want a +/- pair from the antenna.
@@NaterTater Thank you! I will be doing some testing this weekend as well. I find that my T-Mobile fluctuates daily. My biggest problem is network latency. I do a lot MS Teams call and screen sharing. I cannot do screen sharing with voice. I have to dial in with my phone if I do any screen shares. Voice just drops. WiFi calling too. I hope this router will help with some of these issues, but believe it may not be the silver bullet. Thanks
I turned on QOS with the Chester Tech router. I have the waveform antenna installed using the pairs you mentioned above. I'm not seeing a great improvement compare to the base setup. I have a sagemcom router that is actually getting higher speed that the Chester Tech. I need to do more testing. I realize there are many variables. I'm interested in your results. Thanks again.
what asre these 4 i mean i have speeds 300 on band 66 with 3 bars i keep seeing band 71 is better ? mines dnt want to connect to that band . so im confused is band 66 good or not
I'm in a Tacoma Washington and I barley get signal 🚦 with TMobile 5g. Tacoma is a dense population area, write down the corridor Seattle.... Can't seem to ( turn off my WiFi on TMobile 5g)
OK. I now have the Chester Router with Quectel CAT19-RM520N-GL modem. Alfredo was great with helping me do some tweaking. For my situation I enabled NSA and unchecked B2 per Alfredo's suggestion. With B2 checked it was worse. I played around with some changes and went back to this as this seems to be the best right now. Speedtest: DOWNLOAD 61.21 Mbps Idle latency 73 Load latency 129 UPLOAD 13.13 Mbps Load latency 73 Latency is EXCELLENT! This is good considering the unit is inside on the first floor (I am singles story and there is my house and the house next door between me and the tower located a half mile away. I can see the tower from out front so I'll be adding a 4x4 MiMo shortly. Unit is aggregating LTE66, LTE 71, 5G 41. AT+QCAINFO +QCAINFO: "PCC",66786,100,"LTE BAND 66",1,230,-77,-15,-42,18 +QCAINFO: "SCC",68886,50,"LTE BAND 71",1,383,-82,-12,-63,12,0,-,- +QCAINFO: "SCC",520110,12,"NR5G BAND 41",191 5G info BAND 41 RSRP -69dBm RSRQ -11dBm SINR 30dB This thing should scream when I have the external antenna installed.
Advice on how to lower latency with T-Mobile home internet? While the speeds are excellent, our ping sits at a lovely 250+. Online games are unplayable, and video/phone calls over wifi frequently drop. I’ve already followed your guide to optimize the packets size.
Unfortunately thats a hard one to solve on your end. Did you try QoS on a personal router to make sure its not bufferbloat? If your devices can do IPv6 that can help some but cellular has lots of "hops" and slows things down.
Not a straightforward answer. Band locking and carieer aggregation is very helpful with speed increase which only these 3rd party routers offer. But so is an outdoor 4x4 mimo. For best performance you get both!
Hi nate that was awesome.. quick question I used AT+QNWPREFCFG= "mode_pref",NR5G on my router.. but my speeds dropped down how can deleted from AT command so I can get back 4G/5G ?? I just bought a cudy p5 router im having a hard time setting it up
i'd caution use of commands if you dont know how to reverse them. you may be able to reverse that in the gui settings on network mode as i show in this video. otherwise go to resort factory default settings.
I know it’s a long shot, but I can only get T Mobile Internet Lite. I tried the sim in an external router with no joy. Any chance you can dig into this service and see what we can do to get the sim working in another router?
@NaterTater sigh... it's sad to see speed dropping to 5mbps or 10mbps... but more importantly, ping is so high, making zoom/shared screen impossible for work... So for deprioritization, there is nothing we can do about it?
@@omarflzmna8270 Nate THE MAN tater is going to to make a video on how to turn The chester Device into "T-mobile modem only" and use our own routers (AP ? ) with the correct settings
yes and no. you need tmobile business 5g internet for the peplink and you can pay $3tmo for a static IP to allow it. or do it thru VPN or reverse proxy or other ways.
I just ordered the business gateway to replace one of my home gateways, going to see if the sim is hot swap able. The Chester device looks really similar to the wg1608d with a 502q-ae modem running a custom version of golden orb. Ive been interested in the peplink products for awhile. What do you think is a better product, the balance 20x with the 5g flex mod or the max br1 5g? I am currently running my home version on an mr6150 and see speeds of 300-500 all day long in the rural country, only thing i got going for me currently is a highway tower about a mile away with decent line of sight.
At current time I can't recommend the Balance 20x due to it being slow relative to it's peers (significantly so!). I think its firmware or perhaps even defective but the MAX BR1 Pro 5G is great and fast so I can recommend that. The Chester 5G Router so far has tested even faster the MAX BR1 but it does lack some of the other features the Peplink offers (but it is 1/2 the price...). If buying new, consider using my coupons!
BUY Chester 5G Gateway: chestertechrepairs.com/products/wifi6-industrial-lte-5g-nr-wireless-modem-router-unlimited-hotspot-rv USE COUPON CODE for $45 OFF : NaterTater
Anyone know if the Chesters device can be used in a bridge mode? More so using their newer modem with a different router on a home network with multiple ISPs.
@@NaterTater Interesting. Do you see anything that would support multiple wan connections on that device's os? I wanna say I read somewhere about it having fail over, but I didn't see anything about load balancing two connections. Thanks either way!
cool for nerds or ppl without spending limits or isp options, but for me the whole point of being on tmo is its cheap. i already have better more expensive isp options here (cable, supposedly fiber coming soon) so spending 600 on a antenna is def defeating the point lol
A one time payment for a device you get to keep is far different from paying double every month in perpetuity to simply use a service.... and you spread the equipment cost over the length of time you use t-mobile
Peplink offers that, I've tested the Balance 20x (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-b-X4v0CEhVk.html) and if you add the expensive 5G Flexmodule you get 2 built in cellular modems. It can then do bonding with their SpeedFusion service. However I was disappointed in the speed of those modems on 5G (it should be addressable with firmware as the hardware is good). Their BR1 5G Max provided faster results (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mErn0bERoj0.html) but it only has one modem (2 SIM slots), BUT you can hook in a usb, ethernet or WAN over wifi to another cellular modem and speedfusion bond that.
So I tested my Waveform 4x4 quickly. looking at front of waveform = P1 - P2 - P3 - P4 Tmobile device = M - D - M2 - M1 Chester device looking at back left to right hooked up WF = P1 - P2 - P3 - P4 all test were slow today chester with standard paddles avg speed = 36/16 - Yesterday = 230/90 chester with waveform avg speed = 61/40 bands are +QCAINFO: "PCC",2300,100,"LTE BAND 4",1,371,-87,-11,-55,4 +QCAINFO: "SCC",1100,100,"LTE BAND 2",1,371,-87,-10,-68,9,0,-,- +QCAINFO: "SCC",501390,12,"NR5G BAND 41",814 Will do some more testing this coming week.
