• I need help tuning my 3G antenna!
    11 replies, posted
Long story short we live in the boonies with a very limited selection of ISP's. Since the first of the year, the internet quality has gone down the shitter until about a week ago it stopped working completely. I bought an antenna, and it got a lot better, but not as good as it used to be, and after looking into it, I can see why it still feels sluggish. [img]http://i.imgur.com/Lc87xg7.jpg[/img] (Top: before antenna in January) (Bottom: Today) The upload speed is bottlenecking the connection speed. But whats more interesting is how I somehow moved the connection from being <50mi from Nashville, to being >150mi from Nashville, and every time I start speedtest, it keeps putting me in Kentucky, although I live in the Nashville area. I have gone into the router and updated the Perfered Roaming List several times with no different results. The card is a Sierra 250u and the antenna is a standard TS9 antenna with 9dbi advertised boost. Can anyone help me with this?
Is it a directional antenna? If so, look up a map of the towers and aim it at the closest one. If it's not, look into getting a wireless router that supports your 3G card so you can keep it in the same spot, then mount a directional yagi antenna to point at the nearest tower. I've looked into it for our cottage and generally you want a directional antenna if you can't pick up more than one or two towers anyway.
[QUOTE=aPanzerIV;45182864]Long story short we live in the boonies with a very limited selection of ISP's. Since the first of the year, the internet quality has gone down the shitter until about a week ago it stopped working completely. I bought an antenna, and it got a lot better, but not as good as it used to be, and after looking into it, I can see why it still feels sluggish. [img]http://i.imgur.com/Lc87xg7.jpg[/img] (Top: before antenna in January) (Bottom: Today) The upload speed is bottlenecking the connection speed. But whats more interesting is how I somehow moved the connection from being <50mi from Nashville, to being >150mi from Nashville, and every time I start speedtest, it keeps putting me in Kentucky, although I live in the Nashville area. I have gone into the router and updated the Perfered Roaming List several times with no different results. The card is a Sierra 250u and the antenna is a standard TS9 antenna with 9dbi advertised boost. Can anyone help me with this?[/QUOTE] You're using it on EvDO 3G right? I hate to say it but 1.48 / 0.21 is hardly bad for Sprint's EvDO, the maximum theoretical you could ever possibly get on EvDO Rev. A is 3.1Mbps down and that's like, when you're next to the tower with nobody else on the network anywhere.
Top is pretty standard for Sprint EvDO.
I think your forgetting EvDO is from like, 2002. I'm surprised you pulled even pulled 1.5 mbps.
Yes, this is EvDO x1 I am using. If I setup speedtest to ping nashville, download speed increases to 1.78mbps, and ping is even lower to 64ms, but the upload is even slower to 0.18mbps. [b]I'm trying to improve upload speed here, because I beleive it is bottlenecking the connection[/b] [url]http://www.ebay.com/itm/HD-9dBi-Novatel-Wireless-Verizon-USB727-3G-4G-LTE-External-Antenna-/360464631132?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&var=&hash=item53ed5dc55c[/url] This is the antenna I bought. I beleive my grandparents, who have a similar setup, bought a directional antenna/amplifier (looks like a black plate with a copper speaker in the middle of it). It appears to work better. Edit: this is litterally what they have. A slightly different card than us(Sierra 598?), but the same data plan/tower/etc. They are approx. 1 mile closer than we are too. [img]http://www.evdoinfo.com/images/stories/598u_ctr350_booster.png[/img] Is it possible I could make a metal box or pole and use the magnetic base to set it on its side and point the antenna at the tower?
I really don't think you understand, Sprint EvDO is slow as fucking shit. I really don't know how you are even getting speeds as crazy as you are. Your speed/ping changes are because Sprint is upgrading networks most likely for their Spark implementations and changing the routing. If you had done a traceroute prior to the difference and after it would show they are simply routing your connection across different networks. ISP's change their peering all the time and with something as volatile and changing as a mobile network it's basically expected. I did a few speedtests for you, my GF doesn't even get LTE here so these are the pretty generic speeds for her here while I can turn around and get 50mbps+ on T-Mobile. Although it seems to only be my small section of town which doesn't have Sprint LTE, their LTE is generally somewhere around 7-10mbps anyways. CDMA only [t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5601782/LG_G2/download_20140624_202349.png[/t] CDMA/EvDO [t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5601782/LG_G2/download_20140624_202352.png[/t] CDMA/EvDO/WCDMA(3G) [t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5601782/LG_G2/download_20140624_203447.jpeg[/t]
[QUOTE=slayer3032;45206204]I really don't think you understand, Sprint EvDO is slow as fucking shit. I really don't know how you are even getting speeds as crazy as you are. Your speed/ping changes are because Sprint is upgrading networks most likely for their Spark implementations and changing the routing. If you had done a traceroute prior to the difference and after it would show they are simply routing your connection across different networks. ISP's change their peering all the time and with something as volatile and changing as a mobile network it's basically expected. I did a few speedtests for you, my GF doesn't even get LTE here so these are the pretty generic speeds for her here while I can turn around and get 50mbps+ on T-Mobile. Although it seems to only be my small section of town which doesn't have Sprint LTE, their LTE is generally somewhere around 7-10mbps anyways. CDMA only [t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5601782/LG_G2/download_20140624_202349.png[/t] CDMA/EvDO [t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5601782/LG_G2/download_20140624_202352.png[/t] CDMA/EvDO/WCDMA(3G) [t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5601782/LG_G2/download_20140624_203447.jpeg[/t][/QUOTE] Is the last one on Sprint? Sprint doesn't have any WCDMA network, and I can't believe even the most basic 3.6Mbps WCDMA network would get a ping that high.
Yeah they are all Sprint, I was just selecting networks to connect to. It was set to CDMA/EvDO/GSM/WCDMA I believe. It's whatever their 3G is considered to be since it's not their LTE. Sprint is really beyond garbage in all of Oregon, their coverage is decent but the quality in comparison to other carriers is laughable. It also seems like my area finally got a Sprint LTE tower, news to me since I haven't checked in a couple months and this is 2014 :v: The speeds are still slower than T-Mobile's HSPA network has been since it was initially deployed in 2010..
[QUOTE=slayer3032;45206204]I really don't think you understand, Sprint EvDO is slow as fucking shit. I really don't know how you are even getting speeds as crazy as you are. Your speed/ping changes are because Sprint is upgrading networks most likely for their Spark implementations and changing the routing. If you had done a traceroute prior to the difference and after it would show they are simply routing your connection across different networks. ISP's change their peering all the time and with something as volatile and changing as a mobile network it's basically expected. I did a few speedtests for you, my GF doesn't even get LTE here so these are the pretty generic speeds for her here while I can turn around and get 50mbps+ on T-Mobile. Although it seems to only be my small section of town which doesn't have Sprint LTE, their LTE is generally somewhere around 7-10mbps anyways. [/QUOTE] I don't understand, up until this year the internet has always been half-decent. Always about 1mbp/s down, 1/2 mbp/s up, and about 150ms latency. This has been since we used a Pantech PX-500 in 2006. It has never changed. [t]http://i.imgur.com/AB0Zqdx.jpg[/t] These numbers are the only ones I give two shits about right now. I plug the antenna in and it gets worse. Why?
[QUOTE=aPanzerIV;45219158]I don't understand, up until this year the internet has always been half-decent. Always about 1mbp/s down, 1/2 mbp/s up, and about 150ms latency. This has been since we used a Pantech PX-500 in 2006. It has never changed. [t]http://i.imgur.com/AB0Zqdx.jpg[/t] These numbers are the only ones I give two shits about right now. I plug the antenna in and it gets worse. Why?[/QUOTE] Because EVDO is not very consistent. Modem might be going bad too. The network might be under more load then it was a few years ago (with smartphones being so popular, this is probably the case). There are way too many variables to give a hard answer.
It rained, and I moved to Kansas apparantly. [img]http://www.speedtest.net/result/3593997450.png[/img] I looked up sprint tower locations and apparently there are no towers south of the house, which is what we have the antenna pointed at. I moved it to another room with a big window and it started working, which it ussually doesn't do when its raining. I will write back when I see if this fixed it.
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