Today, knowing I'd be in a place with less-than-excellent connectivity, I came prepared.

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

Today, knowing I'd be in a place with less-than-excellent connectivity, I came prepared. I brought two MikroTik 4G routers with me (one, an old friend; the other, new and ready to be tested). I also have my smartphone with two SIM cards from two different mobile providers.

I noticed something extremely curious: the fixed FTTC connection sometimes has extremely strong drops or speed reductions (from 100 mbit/sec to 1 or 2). Knowing this, I brought the 4G routers on purpose to compensate. But I realized that when the FTTC connection fails, all four mobile providers also fail. The phenomenon is therefore correlated. This leads me to believe that, not being in a big city, there is a single (or multiple, but malfunctioning) point of connection that all providers, both fixed and mobile, connect to.
Note for the future: don't trust the mobile providers here.

#Networking

[mitch@hoagie.cloud]

@stefano where ya at?

I've heard that in certain parts of West Virginia, the schist-lined hollers cause any RF signals to bounce endlessly in a parabolic bowl and can jam itself.

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@mitch Northern Italy

[mkj@social.mkj.earth]

@stefano You'd think something like that would set off all kinds of alarm bells. I mean, even a *cursory glance* at a data transfer rate diagram would show a >>95% drop in throughput pretty clearly, even if it is brief in duration.

Maybe they have a problem that needs solving? ;-)

#networking

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@mkj I think they have. But I won't be involved in it 😉

[seiz@mastodon.social]

@stefano i had a similar experience in our house in Umbria this year. It's in a rural area with no cabled Internet at all. So i came well prepared, bringing with me an LTE-Fritzbox and huge external antennas from Germany (tested there prior leaving). All i got was 1-2 Mbit down, but 15 Mbit upload speed. This told me, the service (TIM) was seriously overbooked. I do get >200 Mbit down on 5G in the near city. But not on LTE in our village.
I bit the bullet and got Eolo which works nicely so far.

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@seiz same there. The upload was over 20 it's maybe also related to overbooking.
I've had Eolo for some years as FTTC wasn't covering my house, at that time. It was decent.

[jaap@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@stefano This is a pretty curious case. Which Mikrotik model are you using? Not that it seems relevant for the problem, I’m just always interested in 4G routers.

If you want to uncover more of the problem, this community can likely help: https://www.itnog.it/
But I bet know your way better around the scene in Italy than me.

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@jaap the old one is...I can't remember at the moment (it's from 2020). The new one is a hAP ax lite LTE6

[recoveredexpert@mastodon.social]

@stefano Where I live we had the incumbents fibre being cut twice in the past 6 years or so. Effects: DSL from that incumbent and resellers using their infrastructure were down. Card payments at many retailers were down and the incumbents mobile network was dog slow b/c they seemed to fall back to a microwave link with a lot less bandwidth and a lot more mobile traffic now.

It‘s one reason why I maintain 2 links w/ different tech/infrastructure at home. Not everybody can/has the option though.

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@RecoveredExpert I have two FTTC connections at home, but they're both connected to the same cabinet, so it's not a hard failover.
I also have a 4G failover link - it's connected to a distant provider antenna, so the signal is quite weak but it appears to be connected via radio - so cable problems won't affect it and it's a slow but reliable emergency connection