Hello,

Due to slow ADSL speed from TalkTalk (2Mbps) I have started using a 3 dongle (ZTE MF730M) in WAN3. With this I can now get speeds up to 20Mbps when I carry out a speed test, although the ping time is somewhat longer.

I note that the TalkTalk connection still does the main work, for example I have at this moment a radio player on, and from looking at Online Status/Physical Connection the bulk of data is on WAN1. Not much at all on the Three dongle.

This in itself is not a problem to me. The problem I have is with downloading large files.

For instance, when I start a download a large file (in GByte range) with Firefox I note that the initial download speed is slow as it is being downloaded via TalkTalk. If I pause and then restart the download the speed jumps up as the download is now being delivered via the Three dongle.

The worst issue is with downloading large game files via Steam which I have just started using.

Last night I downloaded my first game which was over 30GByte in size. As above, I noted that the initial download speed was slow as it was being delivered via TalkTalk. I paused the download and re-started it and speed went up as now the Three dongle was being used as well as the TalkTalk connection.

However, after a short while the speed dropped and a look at Online Status/Physical Connection showed that no data was being transferred via the Three dongle. On the odd occasion the Three dongle would start transferring data again, but most of the time the data transfer would remain at a slow speed.

A pause and restart resulted in the Three dongle being used again, but again, after a short while the speed dropped again resulting in another pause/restart of download being required. This was happing constantly, and I spent 6 hours in front of computer pausing and restarting the download to finally obtain it.

To be honest, most of the information in the manual is over my head. I expect (hope) that it is just something I have set wrong in it that is causing this issue.

Some of the settings I have are:-

WAN/General Setup.
The Load Balance Mode is set to Auto Weight, Session Based.

WAN1 & 3 Settings. Enable - Yes, Active Mode - Always On, Load Balance is Ticked.

Can anyone offer any advice on this issue ?

Regards,

Nick.

I think you will find this is just the way it is with Three nowadays, sell it cheap and who cares what the service is like.
I had two 3 connections for just over a year and they started out great, was getting almost 80-90Mbps on just one of them at off peak times, probably 40-50 at peak times.
Towards the end in Feb I could hardly get them to work at all, dismally slow and really useless. Lucky for me I got FTTP, then the fun started trying to cancel these two sims while they had no staff available on the phone.
Three are shocking, really bad - I would never use them again regardless how cheap they are.

Nick-G wrote:
Due to slow ADSL speed from TalkTalk (2Mbps) I have started using a 3 dongle (ZTE MF730M) in WAN3.

If this is because FTTC is not currently available in your area, are you aware that you can now demand a decent connection?

Unfortunately, decent is defined as 10Mbps (so an upgrade from pathetic -> dismal :wink: )

See: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/advice-for-consumers/broadband-uso-need-to-know