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Official Magic Box discussion thread


lilotimz

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any traction on the ethernet backhaul on the Magic Box Gold?  still trying everyday on mine and no luck =(
There is no time frame. They're making progress and having it being field tested though.

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Looks like we may have fallen into the "Have magic box, used to work well when it would get B26 backhaul, but now has intermittent issues as it has been forced to connect to B41 backhaul, and we are now also in the coverage black hole for MB support (where it is 'available for subscribers' via the MB address website)."

We are 2.24 mi from the donor site, and as I understand it, Sprint reduced the radius to within 2 miles of the donor site for elegibility for a MB. Additionally, we do not have complete line of sight to the donor site.

We have NOT received any requests from Sprint asking us to return our MB. We get 30-50Mbit downlink but only maybe 500-1Mb uplink, and SpeedTest will sit there for 10-20 seconds and sometimes error out on the uplink test.

I think almost all the issues we have on our phones at home relate to the uplink issue.  We have to reboot the MB sometimes as well (it is on a UPS, we don't like outages!).

Any chance that we might get a MB Gold, or at least some way of getting the 1xRTT addon for our 3 iPhones?   Or even an internet connection?   We do not have broadband available at our home.

Addendum: I have Calling+ enabled on my S9+. and experience no issues at all while connected to the MB with calls.

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Handyman said:

Looks like we may have fallen into the "Have magic box, used to work well when it would get B26 backhaul, but now has intermittent issues as it has been forced to connect to B41 backhaul, and we are now also in the coverage black hole for MB support (where it is 'available for subscribers' via the MB address website)."

We are 2.24 mi from the donor site, and as I understand it, Sprint reduced the radius to within 2 miles of the donor site for elegibility for a MB. Additionally, we do not have complete line of sight to the donor site.

We have NOT received any requests from Sprint asking us to return our MB. We get 30-50Mbit downlink but only maybe 500-1Mb uplink, and SpeedTest will sit there for 10-20 seconds and sometimes error out on the uplink test.

I think almost all the issues we have on our phones at home relate to the uplink issue.  We have to reboot the MB sometimes as well (it is on a UPS, we don't like outages!).

Any chance that we might get a MB Gold, or at least some way of getting the 1xRTT addon for our 3 iPhones?   Or even an internet connection?   We do not have broadband available at our home.

Addendum: I have Calling+ enabled on my S9+. and experience no issues at all while connected to the MB with calls.

 

 

 

Request the magic box gold, and ask for the voice amp add-on.  They are both available, we just ordered and received both for a friend.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 6/12/2019 at 2:52 PM, alphaalphagamma said:

Request the magic box gold, and ask for the voice amp add-on.  They are both available, we just ordered and received both for a friend.

Having some pushback from Sprint on this: "It's only being offered for business partners."  Hmmm.

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Having some pushback from Sprint on this: "It's only being offered for business partners."  Hmmm.
I've heard that now that the Airave 4 is released, they intend for Magic Boxes to be used for businesses, and Airaves for home users. So I guess they're finally starting to implement this policy.

You could possibly claim that you don't have home internet, or that your internet is WiFi only provided by a landlord and you don't have access to a router to plug the Airave into. So then the Magic Box would be your only option.

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8 minutes ago, ingenium said:

I've heard that now that the Airave 4 is released, they intend for Magic Boxes to be used for businesses, and Airaves for home users. So I guess they're finally starting to implement this policy.

You could possibly claim that you don't have home internet, or that your internet is WiFi only provided by a landlord and you don't have access to a router to plug the Airave into. So then the Magic Box would be your only option.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk
 

3Mbit/0.6Mbit DSL is my only option, so let us say that, for now, WiFi backhaul would be preferable, but it is unavailable. :)

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Does anyone have any pull to get a Magic Box Gold w/ voice amp? I have a gen 2 which works great for LTE but could really use the voice solution. The Airave doesn’t work for me as I don’t have a internet connection for it. I was promised by care like 5 times and then finally informed they are only for business accounts now. 

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Have there been any comments about VoLTE or WiFi/Ethernet backhaul?  I feel like it's the missing piece for networking at my condo.
I don't recall if I mentioned it here but major updates like those above features are usually sent out each quarter so it's not ready as I last checked a few weeks and they don't expect it til at least fall at the earliest.

They've been doing field tests on the alternative backhaul mode but it requires network configurations and hw deployments out of the hands of the MB team.

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Anybody had any issues with their Magic Box recently?  I got the Gold version, but my Note 8 will not connect to it when it used to connect to it very easily all the time.  I mean every few weeks I had to restart it or factory reset it to get it to connect but not very often.  Now it won't connect to my phone no matter what I do with the magic box (factory reset or restart).  The magicbox is connected to the LTE backhaul with Good signal.  

I have cycled airplane mode and restarted my phone over and over again.  That doesn't help either.

 

Help from sprint on Magic Boxes are a joke.  There isn't a specific person that is really knowledgeable on them, and now that supposedly they are for businesses only, I'm not sure they would send me a replacement.

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On 8/19/2019 at 6:48 PM, lilotimz said:

I don't recall if I mentioned it here but major updates like those above features are usually sent out each quarter so it's not ready as I last checked a few weeks and they don't expect it til at least fall at the earliest.

They've been doing field tests on the alternative backhaul mode but it requires network configurations and hw deployments out of the hands of the MB team.

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk
 

Thanks.  Can you share what kind of updates were pushed to MB Gold boxes over the past quarters?  How do you get this info?

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On 7/31/2019 at 1:37 PM, Handyman said:

3Mbit/0.6Mbit DSL is my only option, so let us say that, for now, WiFi backhaul would be preferable, but it is unavailable. :)

 

Well, just like that we now have 400Mbit Cable Internet in our area.  Unfortunately, the ping times/latency seems rather high at 50+ms, but the speed is 100+x what we had before.  I would consider hooking the Airave3LTE back up if it were able to do live handover of active data sessions, at least on the LTE side.  The MagicBox doesn't even do that.

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Thanks.  Can you share what kind of updates were pushed to MB Gold boxes over the past quarters?  How do you get this info?
- literally nothing has been sent out in 2019.

- asking the right people Ofcourse!

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No Airaves/MBs support VoLTE right now.
The MBs will one day, no idea when that day will come.
They technically do if it hands over from WiFi calling, meaning they are capable of it.

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They technically do if it hands over from WiFi calling, meaning they are capable of it.

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Yup. They also work fine when forced (with a Magisk module to basically ignore the VoLTE enabled flag). Same for Airave 4.

The issue is that the relay connection from the MB to the donor is a single EUTRA session, with no way to prioritize VoLTE calls. If the donor is congested, then VoLTE call quality goes to crap and no one can understand each other (I know from experience). That's why it's behind held up I assume.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 8/28/2019 at 9:15 PM, ingenium said:

Yup. They also work fine when forced (with a Magisk module to basically ignore the VoLTE enabled flag). Same for Airave 4.

The issue is that the relay connection from the MB to the donor is a single EUTRA session, with no way to prioritize VoLTE calls. If the donor is congested, then VoLTE call quality goes to crap and no one can understand each other (I know from experience). That's why it's behind held up I assume.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

The things Sprint literally inflicts on customers with low signal.

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