Extremely Slow & Variable Speeds on my GL iNet X750/Spitz After Firmware Updates

Technical Support for Routers
1

I really hope someone can help me, because I’ve scoured forums/google for a solution to no avail.

I purchased a x750 from a company called Travel Data who sent it to me with a Tmobile sim already installed & configured. The problem is that I’ve tried multiple locations but the speeds were 20-25mbps down/up at best, and <1mbps down/up at worst. I live in an RV, and our current location must be a deadzone because we’re lucky to get 5mbps, and often it’s much less. I also attempted to contact Travel Data for some assistance, but the only thing he recommended was purchasing 1 of 2 MIMO antenna’s that are pretty pricey, with mixed reviewed online, so I wanted to try everything else before splurging on them.

I’ve tried:

  • Band Locking
  • Switching Channels
  • Using Cloudflare DNS
  • Locking TTL to 65
  • Netgear Antenna (the black, flat looking, $50 one from Amazon, I’d look up the specs for you, but my internet is so slow the page won’t load)

I also tried getting a Visible phone and tethering it to the x750, and it was getting slightly better speeds, but still around 5mbps. After all those tweaks the highest I was able to achieve was 5mbps down, 13mbps up.

That was okay- but then I got greedy for megabytes… and now I’m paying for it.

I came across this forum showing significant speed increases using the goldenorb/ rOOter project firmware [Stock Firmware Slowing Things Down? - #21 by RichP]. So I installed it. I’m relatively tech-savvy but I’m no expert- and I didn’t realize updating the firmware totally changed the admin UI to rOOter- so that was my first surprise. Then unfortunately I was never able to get it to work correctly with my Tmobile SIM card. It would act as a repeater for my visible hotspot but that’s the best I could get it to do.

So, after trying to troubleshoot that all day I cut my losses, and reverted my x750 back to stock firmware. I originally saved my settings- but in doing so, I was completely out of storage and unable to access Luci for advanced settings.

So, I finally admitted defeat and restored my router to default settings/firmware.

After all of that- my speeds are terrible on both Tmobile & Visible, and I don’t know how to fix them. I saw a forum mention that certain versions of GL firmware caused slower speeds, so I reverted to 3.105 which is what came with the router- that didn’t make it worse, but it didn’t make it better either.

I’ve tried adding back all the settings I had tried before (band locking, channel switching, locking TTL, etc) but nothing has really had any significant impact on my speed.

I know higher speeds are possible, even in my location with low signal strength, because I’d achieved them just a few days ago. So what settings am I missing??

Please advise. Feel free to make fun of me, I deserve it for screwing up this bad- just please help me fix it. I’m paying quite a bit for 2 internet sources that are nearly unusable.

x750 Sys Info
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2

Can you give details of “Cells info”? You can find this info from router’s admin panel.

When signal is no good you cannot get higher speed. When you have low speed, also check with your phone in the same location, maybe the same carrier with the speed. The router may be slower than smartphone. But if smartphone also has bad speed, the router can make no better.

3

Visible is doing a better job of throttling to 5Mbps which you can sometime get around with ttl settings.

What is your signal strength at your current location?

I also live in an RV and have my X750 connected to an external Lippert antenna my RV came with. If you can use a Mimo antenna like this you’d definitely see better speeds: https://ltefix.com/shop/antennas/wifi-antennas/mimo-directional-w/adm-1dp738x7-nf-lte-7dbi-mimo-antenna/

That said, with the stock EC25(Cat4) modem I never saw higher than 40Mbps. I swapped in an EP06(cat6) modem and have seen as high as 66Mbps.

I run r00ter firmware on my X750. Right now I am in a spot with so-so Tmobile coverage and only getting 18Mbps down.

1 Like
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Here’s my cell info.

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According to my NetSpot app, my signal strength varies from 40%-65%

I’m guessing there’s just not much I can do. My cell phone & modem only get 1 bar, I think we’re just in a deadzone :frowning:

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I’ve updated my TTL settings to = 65, but I think my signal is so weak I’m not getting over 5mbps down or up in order to see if it’s working.

After sharing this post I did pick up this MIMO antenna… Unfortunately it’s not increased my bars/signal that I can tell- but it has helped somehow. I’m not seeing it in my speed tests much, but I am able to stream Disney+ without it buffering every 30 seconds like before- so that’s something (my 4yo is very happy about it :slight_smile:)

After this post I’ve been keeping a close eye on it- and all I can gather is that:
A): I just have a really weak signal for both Tmobile + Verizon and B): traffic is what seems to matter most in my speeds and connection quality. During the day the best I can get is 1-4mbps even after optimizing my channel and band. Late at night when most people are asleep I can get as high as 18mbps but it doesn’t last.

Thanks for the help all the same!!

1 Like
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-119 rsrp is not good signal

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Visible is starting to workaround the TTL, but these are the custom firewall settings that might work:
#Visible-TTL
iptables -t mangle -I POSTROUTING -j TTL --ttl-set 64
iptables -t mangle -I PREROUTING -j TTL --ttl-set 64
ip6tables -t mangle -I POSTROUTING -j TTL --ttl-set 65
ip6tables -t mangle -I PREROUTING -j TTL --ttl-set 65

2 Likes
8

Did you mount the MIMO outside the RV?

You might need directional antenna if you are far from the towers.

9

Hey I have the same router and provider and a few weeks ago was experiencing a very similar issue. We travel full time in our rv and while in jackson wy, we had 4 bars of service but vertually no data it was crazy slow. Travel data had no answers I sent them multiple screen shots from my location and nothing. A week later after leaving the area we had speeds back up to 60+ mbps. The last spot we were in had excellent signal but was super slow on band 4!which this router seems to default to. I’ve been band locked on 2 and 12 for 2 weeks now don’t have crazy fast connection 10-15mbps down and 5 up. But it works. Band 4 test at 25-50 but doesn’t work so again I think it’s tower congestion.
On the east coast there are tons more towers so much more bandwidth available now that we are out west a single tower on a hilltop serves a whole valley or 10 so the towers get bogged down with everyone on Facebook. I found that taping the router to a camera tripod and putting it on my roof really helps an average of 10bd increase in signal strength.

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so I have a few high gain antennas coming to build my own mimo array. I’d be curious to know where you were when you were having the horrible connection issues. We were near the tetons.

1 Like
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Quick question for you as my Google searches didn’t provide any decent results. In my research I’ve found the following lines and wondered if you knew why they used the “A” in the third line and why they used -j HL --hl-set 65 instead of TTL --ttl-set 65 of the ipv6 entries. Thanks!

iptables -t mangle -I POSTROUTING -o usb0 -j TTL --ttl-set 65
iptables -t mangle -I PREROUTING -i usb0 -j TTL --ttl-set 65
ip6tables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -o usb0 -j HL --hl-set 65
ip6tables -t mangle -I PREROUTING -i usb0 -j HL --hl-set 65

Edit: I did some Googling and think I found the answer to my questions.

A - append
I - Insert

And HL is the ipv6 equivalent to TTL for ipv4

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I’ve placed it flat on our roof- It might help if I were able to raise it higher. Someone mentioned below a camera tripod, so that might help!

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Yeah, nothing against Travel Data, as I know my problem is likely proximity to a tower, which they can’t control, but when I contacted support they were not that helpful either.

I love the camera tripod idea, I might have to try that!

We’re in Brooks, KY. I can seriously drive a mile away and get an extra bar, and service maps show this town having service, so I think it has to be our specific location.