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