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Official Magic Box discussion thread


lilotimz

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I would not let these Magic Boxes collect dust, but rather put them to use somewhere that has RF shadows - work, charity, store, etc.  I have my Magic Box positioned to supply signal where I need it at a client.  Also serves a daycare and a shopping center across the street. 

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Call MB support yesterday after three days down.  According to the rep I spoke with, my magicbox died with a "known" issue and they are shipping me a replacement.  They did no troubleshooting, tried nothing, checked nothing...

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MB went down a couple evenings ago -stuck in reboot loop.  Checked here and no one had posted about the outage yet, so I performed a factory reset.  Back to the reboot loop.  It was up and running when I got up to go to work the next morning and seems to have been working ever since.

 

We live out in the country, found a prefect position for the MB.  3 bars at -112dbm connect.  Getting up to 20mbps down and  up to 8mbps up on devices.  The only internet we can get at our house is 3mb/0.6mb DSL, so we rely on this for our phones/data plans.  LTE signal is nonexistent otherwise in the basement, 1 bar lower floor, 2 bars upstairs and 2-3 outside.  With MB, it's 5 bars on our entire 2 acre lot.

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On 8/30/2018 at 11:49 AM, Handyman said:

MB went down a couple evenings ago -stuck in reboot loop.  Checked here and no one had posted about the outage yet, so I performed a factory reset.  Back to the reboot loop.  It was up and running when I got up to go to work the next morning and seems to have been working ever since.

 

We live out in the country, found a prefect position for the MB.  3 bars at -112dbm connect.  Getting up to 20mbps down and  up to 8mbps up on devices.  The only internet we can get at our house is 3mb/0.6mb DSL, so we rely on this for our phones/data plans.  LTE signal is nonexistent otherwise in the basement, 1 bar lower floor, 2 bars upstairs and 2-3 outside.  With MB, it's 5 bars on our entire 2 acre lot.

Sprint has been doing work for VoLTE/5G that has affected Magic Boxes for a night or two:

 

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Sprint Gen 3 announced (4th version).

http://newsroom.sprint.com/sprint-announces-faster-more-powerful-and-smaller-sprint-magic-box.htm

Highlights.

Quote

 

The newest Sprint Magic Box is a free-standing unit that dramatically improves data coverage and increases download speeds on average by 250 percent[1] to provide nearby Sprint customers a better data and customer experience overall. The LTE Advanced-capable device uses 4x4 MIMO, higher order modulation (256QAM) and three-carrier aggregation within Sprint’s licensed spectrum for a reliable, sustainable experience.

Sprint Magic Box has a color screen that clearly displays key information, two USB ports for charging devices, and an Ethernet port for future support of network devices.

 

Gen 3 can do 3 methods... Relay via 3CA 4x4 MIMO 256/64 QAM, WiFi, and ethernet.

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36 minutes ago, lilotimz said:

Sprint Gen 3 announced (4th version).

http://newsroom.sprint.com/sprint-announces-faster-more-powerful-and-smaller-sprint-magic-box.htm

Highlights.

Gen 3 can do 3 methods... Relay via 3CA 4x4 MIMO 256/64 QAM, WiFi, and ethernet.

Hopefully it ships soon!

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21 minutes ago, swintec said:

i suppose with the wifi backhaul option this will finally work in places like Maine where the relay stuff was not possible?

Could be especially since it can do a 10 MHz B41 carrier. That'll help out a lot in regions where Sprint can't do 20 MHz B41 carriers considering EBS BRS is licensed in 6 MHz chunks. 

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So if it's plugged into Ethernet and internet goes down, does it switch to the Macro automatically? Then switch back when Ethernet is back online?

Guessing ethernet or wifi takes precedence if they're set up and relay is used if those two are unavailable.

 

Now it switching back and forth automatically will be an interesting thing to see since initial relay setup takes many minutes....

 

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

 

 

 

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Guessing ethernet or wifi takes precedence if they're set up and relay is used if those two are unavailable.  
Now it switching back and forth automatically will be an interesting thing to see since initial relay setup takes many minutes....
 
Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk
 
 
 
Presumably it would keep the connection active but at a higher metric, so that it will fail over (like having wifi and LTE at the same time on a phone, or wifi and Ethernet on a laptop). It would just have to re-establish the ipsec tunnel when it changes backhaul. Or they could enable MOBIKE (since it uses IKEv2) to allow fast roaming without dropping any connections running over the tunnel. If setup properly it could fail over within seconds and no UEs will have their connections interrupted.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

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I chatted with support about wanting a Magic box and they had no problem ordering me one. They said I would have it in 3 to 5 days. Not sure what model it will be. I thought they were out of stock of all of the previous models and the new ones aren't available until November

 

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25 minutes ago, lilotimz said:

There's An additional product for the magic box that does cdma voice.

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk
 

What’s the additional product? Is it an internal or external add-on module?

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What’s the additional product? Is it an internal or external add-on module?
Seems to be an external module that connects to the Ethernet port. Unsure if the MB has 1 or 2 Ethernet ports; if it's just 1 then it would prevent you from using wired backhaul.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

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On 9/13/2018 at 4:17 PM, ingenium said:

Seems to be an external module that connects to the Ethernet port. Unsure if the MB has 1 or 2 Ethernet ports; if it's just 1 then it would prevent you from using wired backhaul.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
 

Do we have any documentation on this add on??? This would be a game changer for rural folks

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