Troubleshooting Carrier Aggregation or 4G+ doesn’t work properly on LTE Advanced Router
This Article Applies to
LTE Advanced Routers, including Archer MR600 and Archer MR500
Problem Description
We have received reports from some of our customers regarding issues with carrier aggregation or 4G+ not functioning correctly after updating to the 1.7.0 firmware on MR600 V2 or on MR600 V3. These issues include 4G+ never working or the 4G+ LED turning on and off every few seconds. While the symptoms may appear similar, the underlying causes could vary. To address these issues, we kindly ask you to follow the instructions in this article to troubleshoot and provide us with detailed information for further analysis.
If you are unfamiliar with carrier aggregation or 4G+, please refer to our guide on What is Carrier Aggregation and how it works on TP-Link LTE Gateway Routers/MiFi?
Troubleshooting Steps
1. Confirm with the ISP which band combinations the SIM card supports, then check if it matches with the LTE Advanced Router. You could check the supported bands and Carrier Aggregation band combinations on the specification page of the product.
Here is Archer MR600 V3 Specification. As you can see, not all combinations are supported, for example, even though it supports 4G band 1 and also band 40, it doesn’t support band 1+band 40 for carrier aggregation.
2. Make sure the band is set to be “Auto” on Advanced->Network->Internet page, then check band information on Advanced->Status page, record the band(s).
Then insert the same SIM card into another LTE Advanced device at the same location and check if it works on 4G+ all the time, if so, check the band as well for comparison.
If you have no other LTE Advanced router, please try your smartphone, and you could refer to How to check the 4G band working on our smartphones to check the band working on your smartphone.
After finding the band combinations working on another device, please try to select 4G bands manually on the TP-Link device and make sure same bands are selected:
How to select 4G band manually on the web interface of LTE Gateway Routers
However, if your another device or phone shows 4G, no 4G+, please contact your ISP.
3. Please try to download large files or run Speed Test to see if TP-Link router will show 4G+, some ISPs might allocate more resources when there is high-traffic operation.
If the above troubleshooting still cannot locate or solve the problem, please leave your comment and provide the following information.
1) Model number, hardware and firmware version of your TP-Link LTE Advanced Router
2) Your country and ISP
3) Detailed problem description, band information on Status page, and you are using auto band or manually selected band
4) Brand & model No., of your another LTE Advanced device. Network Type and Band information on it with the same SIM card at same location.
5) Specifically, do you have XiaoMi phone for comparison?
6) Will 4G+ show up when you download large files or run Speed Test
7) System Log file of TP-Link device, you could save it on Advanced->System Tools->System Log page
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Is this issue still ongoing? Want to purchase a mr600 v3 but won't until the CA issues are resolved.
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@Smartmove It would appear that nothings fixed yet. I'm still operating on beta software for version 1. Haven't seen any firmware updates for version 2 or 3 that sorted it out.
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@Smartmove They haven't updated V3's firmware in almost a year, and they know this issue has been happening for ages now but do nothing about it. Spend your money elsewhere, this brand does not deserve a single dime.
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@Sunshine and @TP_LINK support, could you pls explain why this issue has still not been fixed?
For me it has been more than 6 months since I have first been in direct contact with your support team by private email, and others seem to have reported the issue some 3 years ago or so. If necessary pls coordinate with Qualcomm on the X12 side, if that causes the issues. And it would be helpful if you can also provide an OpenWRT or DD-WRT version.
Unless this gets fixed quickly I obviously cannot recommend to anyone to buy any TP-Link hardware - it is a waste of time and money. It seems much better to use an old smartphone as a permanent hotspot, or buy a proper 4G+ router (e.g. Netgear LBR20), or even 5G (e.g. Mikrotik Chateau) - even though they cost more, in the end you save money if you apply an hourly rate to your own time spent on trying to find solutions for the MR600...
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problem that cant be solved 😂😂
better buy Huawei (black mamba) 4g with CA 💪💪💪 my gaming experience is great, unlike this tplink mr600👎👎👎
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Ask the ISP about the band combinations the SIM card supports. Then, make sure it matches the LTE Advanced Router. Look at the product's specification page to see the supported bands and Carrier Aggregation band combinations.
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@Jeebrinternet45 Using a SIM card from a mobile provider rather than an ISP rather limits what they can do or want to do to assist.
You make a fair point though and it was something i looked at quite carefully early on. In the end it came back to firmware and the most practical step was to roll back the firmware which worked for me.
In the end, I sold my Router on Ebay and have moved to Virgin Media. So far, it's proved to be the best thing I could have done.
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@Jeebrinternet45 I have done the necessary with the ISP . They even sent me a different make router that supports CA and it works perfectly. The problem with the TP link MR 600 is that CA works but two things happen firstly the 4G led switches constantly on and off about 2 sec intervals . At the same time the log file shows the switching between Lte and Lte plus relecting the two sec switching and fills up the log file within a few minutes. The advanced status screen will show 4G+ switching to 4G following the 4G+ LEd switching on and off. Now this happens with the latest versions of firmware for v1 v2 and V3 of the router. the original firmware the 4G+ led is stable and no swamping of the log files. To go back on the v1 brings back the original errors with the firmware and if you have V1 there were many and many single betas issued to correct these errors in a piecemeal fashion. Then last year September a beta that included all the corrected firmware betas was issued promising that an official would be offered. It was this beta that introduced the strange 4G+ switching which was passed onto V2 and V3 firmware upgrades. Its this strange switching users want fixed as it has to be a firmware error but we cant get TP to resolve it. We know it can be stable but somehow TP won't spend any time to resolve it
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im facing the exact same issue after the Jio 5g sim issue fix, carrier aggregation keeps losing and only when I do Speedtest the CA kicks in and this is really annoying as during meetings the 4g+ won't trigger and gives less speeds and this was not the issue in earlier firmwares, I have tested the same sim in same place in other 4g devices and the 4g+ remains constant , please fix this issue
carrier : jio
India
postpaid sim
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Surajgowda wrote
please fix this issue
lol
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