Spark Fixed Wireless Broadband - Recent Speed Increase to over 100Mbps

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sJBs

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#275989 20-Sep-2020 10:29

Just wanted to give a shout out to Spark guys and ladies that assisted me to resolve my connectivity issue a couple of months ago. It has been running very well since then. This is actually an understatement, it is running perfectly really, not even a single manual reboot.

Now this weekend I noted that Steam and Epic are updating at much greater speeds. I'm seeing speeds of up to 130Mbps, typically hovering around 100Mbps now! Previously I got around 60-80Mbps, which I thought was the limit of the Huawei 618B router. This morning I Googled the specs on the router and see it is rated at up to 600Mbps. This means I'm still only running at a 1/6th of the maximum rating of the router.

That made me wonder what are the maximum speeds currently being recorded by Spark Wireless Broadband customers? Am I already one of the privileged few in the 100Mbps plus range, or am I one of the poor guys still struggling along at "only" 100Mbps.

Also, now that I know that more speed may be possible out of these 4G routers, does anyone know the roadmap for the speed increase that they can share?

Linux Mint 19.3 (Yes upgrade is overdue) with ZFS and multiple replicating XigmaNas servers (BSD with ZFS) for storage, all connected via Mikrotik Routerboard (firewall) to a Huawei 618 for Spark Wireless Broadband...

keepexploringnz

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#2568598 20-Sep-2020 10:46

Totally agree with you :) the last few months get the feeling a lot of the sites have had some good TLC.

Upgraded to the same modem and seeing the average of 90Mbps during evening and weekends but also find 170+ Mbps very easy to be on most of the time,

What has been great for me is the upload speed always sits at 30+ now with a few times of 90+ :) so very happy to stay wireless as no problem with streaming or any heavy video use.

sJBs

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#2568601 20-Sep-2020 11:00

keepexploringnz:

Upgraded to the same modem and seeing the average of 90Mbps during evening and weekends but also find 170+ Mbps very easy to be on most of the time,

I have never seen speeds of 170Mbps+ before! Now I'm envious. Still amazed by this technology though.

Did you do any fiddling or tweaking with the modem settings, or just left it as per the default?

keepexploringnz

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#2568602 20-Sep-2020 11:04

:) think ive been just kind of lucky but was on the older version of the modem for a long time so kind of used to finding a good location at home.

No tweeking with settings, just playing around with where I put it and also I find im a bit of a night owl so one can get some very good speeds when people are either at work or asleep

hio77

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#2568636 20-Sep-2020 13:38

Really appreciate the feedback.

on a solid 4x4 site with multiple carriers it certainly can go higher, but that's all about having ideal conditions etc.

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lapimate

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#2568646 20-Sep-2020 14:03

We're down a concrete drive, so (B618) great not to have to bother with fibre.

1024kb

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#2568651 20-Sep-2020 14:26

I'm pulling 160 - 180mb/s almost every time I test. 180mb/s is the highest final result number I've yet had. My urban Skinny WBB has dropped below 100mb/s only once in the last 4 - 5 months when fast.com reported 70+mb/s. I rebooted the 618S & nothing changed, then figured that 70mb/s is still fully ok for all I do & got back to work.

Comparatively, my nearest neighbours are all on VDSL & have seen their connections decimate from 60-70mb/s down to 22-25mb/s over the last 6-8 weeks. For the pleasure of such performance, they get to pay more than I do for whatever the period of their contract is.

Chorus has invaded & are currently digging holes & generally making a mess all over town, preparing Te Aroha for UFB. As Skinny WBB customer getting substantially better performance than I anticipated - to the point where I'll require a premium UFB connection to exceed the current performance, I'm in no hurry to change my provider nor my service.

Megabyte - so geek it megahertz