WE826GO-U how to see my signal strength?

[RuralinternetSucks]

How do I check my signal strength on this router software?

I go to Modem>Network Status and under signal information it shows

Network FDD LTE
Signal Strength 48%
RSSI -83 DBM
CSQ 15

Problem is it never changes. No matter where I put antennas or move the router. Am I in the right spot? I have the refresh rate set to fast.

[gscheb]

Highlighted one is the signal stength.

Signal Strength.PNG

[RuralinternetSucks]

Those are blank and the one above it

[RuralinternetSucks]

Well I'll be going out to the house this morning in a couple hours to try and fix this. If anyone will be around then that can help that'd be great.

Also I notice after getting on my roof and physically holding the Yagis and pointing them, I saw no increase in data speeds at all(I'm hitting max 2mbps and it's typically in the 500-800kbps range). Kind of disappointing since I was hoping for at least a little increase. Maybe it has something to do with the router not showing my signal strength information? Dunno. I may try my verizon SIM instead and see if that does anything since I'm using Visible.

[RuralinternetSucks]

Ok so this is what my window looks like

But I am getting signal. Problem is I can't test with my phone because my phone will either give me my phone's cell signal or my signal to wifi.

Any ideas? I'm wondering if this is somehow tied to the fact that I get zero change in data rates when pointing my Yagis. Even with tree blockage I thought I would get something

[gscheb]

Go to
Modem
Network Status
General Information
Show us what it has there

[RuralinternetSucks]

Here

[RuralinternetSucks]

Ok so real quick. Strange thing is I brought it to my current house now and it's showing it's working. So I'm not sure what's going on.

[gscheb]

Typically been told that visible likes mbim mode not qmi.
Do you see where it says qmi mode?

[RuralinternetSucks]

Typically been told that visible likes mbim mode not qmi.
Do you see where it says qmi mode?

Under General Information? Yes

[RuralinternetSucks]

Ok so testing Verizon in the modem I followed the guide here https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=32 ... lit#p11658to get it to connect. Worked fine. I didn't add the last AT command for ipv6 since that was based on visible and not verizon. So it's working but not.

In the first pic is Verizon in my phone

Screenshot_20201014-091808.png

In the second is in the router, which has a huge decrease in mbps

Screenshot_20201014-100624.png

This pic is the router info for verizon showing good signal strength so that shouldn't be an issue.

Screenshot_20201014-091509.png

Why is it so much slower in the router? If anything I assumed the router would be faster than my phone.

[gscheb]

Your phone is probably a higher category modem than the router.

[RuralinternetSucks]

Your phone is probably a higher category modem than the router.

Moto g7

Networks + Bands - Carrier Aggregation, 4G LTE (DL Cat 7/ UL Cat 6), CDMA / EVDO Rev A, UMTS / HSPA+, GSM / EDGE 2G: GSM band 2/3/5/8 CDMA BC0/BC1/BC10, 3G: WCDMA band 1/2/4/5/8, 4G: FDD LTE band 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/13/17/20/25/26/66, TDD LTE band 38/40/41

And I have an ep06 which is a cat 6 so the d/l on my phone is a cat 7, would that really make that large of a difference? If so I need a better modem lol

[gscheb]

Good point
Check with Ethernet wire then not thru WiFi on router. See if that is closer to your phone. WiFi on these things are not the best. Allot of people use a secondary router plugged into the lan port.

[RuralinternetSucks]

Good point
Check with Ethernet wire then not thru WiFi on router. See if that is closer to your phone. WiFi on these things are not the best. Allot of people use a secondary router plugged into the lan port.

All I have is my phone or a laptop which doesn't have an ethernet port

[gscheb]

So you going to use Verizon instead of visible then?
What kind of Verizon is it?

[RuralinternetSucks]

I was just testing with Verizon since I seem to get better data rates because if I'm getting good speed on my phone and slow in the router it would be more obvious since visible seems to have lower data speeds. I'm on a family plan on my in-laws plan. I think it's $40 a line? Whatever that is.

I put the visible SIM back in the router and after testing Verizon on my phone again I'm getting the same speeds as the router was now. So maybe that 25+mbps was a fluke? Dunno. Now I'm getting 7-10 on my phone.

Don't forget this is at my current rental where I get really good signal. I brought it back here to test vs what I was getting at the new place. Trying to figure out why I'm not getting any improvement with the Yagis over the antennas the router comes with.

[Adm1jtg]

Numbers look pretty good. Is that with antennas?

Just learned something that might prove to be useful. Everyone says you really need LOS (line of sight) to the tower. Well I dont have direct LOS, far from it. But I did a little digging as according to the link gsceb posted in another thread I am going through a mountain, which obviously cant be the case. What I discovered is that my antennas are actually pointed about 24 degrees east of the actual tower. So I am LOS to the signal path not to the tower. This also explains why the bigger/stronger more restricted beamwidth antennas never helped at all. With some a 24 degree variance is beyond their beamwidth range. With others I am guessing my current setup pulls in almost all the signal thats available. Between the wierd aiming and the dense trees that might just be all there is at that location. Rememebr the farther you are from the tower the weaker the signal gets. I am almost 3 miles from the tower and with my aiming maybe as much as half a mile to a mile east of it where i pick up signal.

Also noticed with it being colder and the leaves falling off the trees my signal is getting better and better. Said another way your setup right now is likely close to best case when it gets warmer again with humidity and tress in full bloom you likely wont get nearly as good results.

[RuralinternetSucks]

Numbers look pretty good. Is that with antennas?

Just learned something that might prove to be useful. Everyone says you really need LOS (line of sight) to the tower. Well I dont have direct LOS, far from it. But I did a little digging as according to the link gsceb posted in another thread I am going through a mountain, which obviously cant be the case. What I discovered is that my antennas are actually pointed about 24 degrees east of the actual tower. So I am LOS to the signal path not to the tower. This also explains why the bigger/stronger more restricted beamwidth antennas never helped at all. With some a 24 degree variance is beyond their beamwidth range. With others I am guessing my current setup pulls in almost all the signal thats available. Between the wierd aiming and the dense trees that might just be all there is at that location. Rememebr the farther you are from the tower the weaker the signal gets. I am almost 3 miles from the tower and with my aiming maybe as much as half a mile to a mile east of it where i pick up signal.

Also noticed with it being colder and the leaves falling off the trees my signal is getting better and better. Said another way your setup right now is likely close to best case when it gets warmer again with humidity and tress in full bloom you likely wont get nearly as good results.

Yea I'm pretty much surrounded by trees (no terrain obstruction though). Even so I was still hoping the dual Yagis would pick up better signal than my phone or router which really bummed me out. I'm just going to have to mount them and hope for the best. I hope when I take it back to my new house the router will cooperate and show my signal information.

[Adm1jtg]

Yea I'm pretty much surrounded by trees (no terrain obstruction though). Even so I was still hoping the dual Yagis would pick up better signal than my phone or router which really bummed me out. I'm just going to have to mount them and hope for the best. I hope when I take it back to my new house the router will cooperate and show my signal information.

In my experience the phone will always be equal to or better then a router. A few reasons.... First most newer phones support 4x4 mimo, your router is 2x2. Second most phones are many cat levels higher then the router, I think mine is like cat18, meaning higher speeds and more levels of CA.

Don't get to discouraged with tweaking and hand picking bands for best performance you will be fine.

[RuralinternetSucks]

In my experience the phone will always be equal to or better then a router. A few reasons.... First most newer phones support 4x4 mimo, your router is 2x2. Second most phones are many cat levels higher then the router, I think mine is like cat18, meaning higher speeds and more levels of CA.

Don't get to discouraged with tweaking and hand picking bands for best performance you will be fine.

Do you mean my factory antennas with the router are 2x2 or the router itself will only pick up 2x2? Then does that mean my dual Yagis in a MiMO config are pointless?

[Adm1jtg]

No your mimo is what gives you 2 one for each Antenna. You phone has 4 antennas more then likely.

[gscheb]

The way your router can beat your phone is thru good outdoor antenna if your signal is weak. My router is 10 times the speed of a phone because of the parabolic grid antenna it is connected to.
Now if was in the city setting in great service a phone would more than likely whip the router all day.

[RuralinternetSucks]

The way your router can beat your phone is thru good outdoor antenna if your signal is weak. My router is 10 times the speed of a phone because of the parabolic grid antenna it is connected to.
Now if was in the city setting in great service a phone would more than likely whip the router all day.

Yea I didn't go parabolic because that's another $150ish compared to two Yagis. I'm thinking about climbing one of the pines out there and seeing what I get. What adapter would I need to connect those two 50ft lmr 400 cables together? I'm assuming something like this?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V2DPXDT/re ... HFb1BSYQ9P

[gscheb]

Yea I didn't go parabolic because that's another $150ish compared to two Yagis. I'm thinking about climbing one of the pines out there and seeing what I get. What adapter would I need to connect those two 50ft lmr 400 cables together? I'm assuming something like this?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V2DPXDT/re ... HFb1BSYQ9P

Yes as long as it is N Female both ends and 50 ohm.

[RuralinternetSucks]

Yes as long as it is N Female both ends and 50 ohm.

Hey real quick..I'm literally standing on my roof right now adjusting these things. They were stuck on band 5 so I wanted to test 13.

I typed in

AT+QCFG="band",0,1000,1

And it connected me to 13. All my signal stuff looks better than 5 but I have no internet. Any ideas?

[gscheb]

Hey real quick..I'm literally standing on my roof right now adjusting these things. They were stuck on band 5 so I wanted to test 13.

I typed in

AT+QCFG="band",0,1000,1

And it connected me to 13. All my signal stuff looks better than 5 but I have no internet. Any ideas?

Reboot it now. Usually have to reboot with Quectel modem after setting bands. Can do it from Rooter too under System Reboot

[RuralinternetSucks]

Ah cool thank you

[Adm1jtg]

Reboot it now. Usually have to reboot with Quectel modem after setting bands. Can do it from Rooter too under System Reboot

Have you checked if you get band 66?

AT+QCFG="band",0,20000000000000000,1

This will lock it to 66 ONLY but 66 has the added benefit of being able to carrier aggregate to itself. 13 does not aggregate well with other bands.

2×CARRIER AGGREGATION (“CA”) BANDS:
B2+B2/B5/B12/B13/B26/B29;
B4+B4/B5/B12/B13/B26/B29;
B7+B5/B7/B12/B13/B26/B29;
B25+B5/B12/B13/B25/B26/B29;
B30+B5/B12/B13/B26/B29;
B66+B5/B12/B13/B26/B29/B66;

Best combinations I have found
band 66+66
band 2+5
band 2+2 (This combination never aggregates for me)
In your case I would compare the above combinations with a lock to band 13 alone

I always exclude band 4 as 66 is a superset of it so anything good band 4 could do 66 would do equal or better

Also keep in mind when testing its not all about signal strength. Thats only one part , if you have a strong signal but poor quality (called RSRQ) you may end up better with a weaker signal and better quality. Also CA only kicks in under heavy use, so when testing CA combinations download a huge file.

Lastly I I have found speedtest to vary greatly. You need to try speedtests on a few different servers and at different times to get a real feel for what works best.

This is the playing and testing type stuff I was referring to

[RuralinternetSucks]

Ok so I'm not sure if something is wrong with my setup or if I expected too much. But I was on my roof messing with this thing for hours. And it's done next to nothing in terms of getting me better data. My best signal with my phone was -105 and I was able to hit -98 with the Yagis. My rsrq usually was between -12 and -16 But they did nothing for data speeds. I get exactly the same with or without them. I mean I would have expected something. My average out there is 1-3mbps. Occasionally I'll hit 5-10 but that usually only lasts a split second. I would think having that thing 15 feet above my roof would do a little more.

I turned those antenna about an inch at a time for three different bands (2, 5, 13) in a full circle. Stopping each time to let the router refresh the signal information. Band 13 has the best signal but the data rate was garbage which was surprising. Band 5 gave me the best data but that's not saying much when it's 3down.

What baffles me is I can go a tenth of a mile down the road and hit 20mbps on my phone.

Here is my setup. You can see the router sitting on the table (it's actually a wooden spool reel for electrical wiring that the electric company left).

https://imgur.com/a/wVRS1BA

I just can't fathom that I don't see an increase at all. I could put another 10ft pole in but that would end up causing too much sway. I just feel like I'm doing something wrong and it's driving me crazy

[Adm1jtg]

Lets go back to basics. I saw your pics of the antennas and they look fine. Is your setup that you have a long lmr400 cable running from the yagi, into the house and then converted on a pigtail to sma which then plugs into the routers 4g antenna ports? No adaptors or extra connectors right? Make sure your plugging into the 4g ports and not the wifi ones. Meaning there are 4 antennas on your unit if I recall. 2 are for wifi and 2 are for 4g. I would assume you got that part correct as you did see a change in the signal strength but want to be complete in helping you diagnose the issue.

So assuming your hardware is good, and it seems it is, maybe its your plan or the areas utilization of that tower. Your low speeds could be that your tower is saturated with users and thus you are being de-prioritized aka throttled. The second possibility is that verizon is still seeing you as a hotspot device and thus your using hotspot data as opposed to regular data. This could also be capping your speeds.

Did you play with the ttl settings (network/firewall/custom ttl settings tab)? I cant tell you what works as while I am on verizon I am setup a little different then most, aka a somewhat unorthodox method but 64 and 65 seem to be the ones most use. Would be curious to see what kind of speeds you get from a device hooked to your phone in hotspot mode. You did say the entire setup worked well at your old house... right? I wonder if that test was run BEFORE you hotpot data cap was hit and now you have it it so your being depriortized.

Also I see you tested 2, 5 and 13... Did you test either 4 or 66? Or did I confuse you about 4 in my earlier posts? 4 and 66 tend to be higher bandwidth. Meaning when you look at the bands in rooter modem/network status it has next to the band a () that will say like 5, 10 or 20 MHz, 4 and 66 tend to be the wider bandwidth aka mine is 20mhz meaning more available bandwidth.

So where do we go from here.... I would try a few things

I woudnt mess with the antennas anymore. Sounds like you got them aimed really well based on your process.

Test band4 and/or 66 if you have 66 no need to mess with 4. See if the signal strength and quality are reasonable.

If you can test with your router back at the old house to see if my theory about hotspot data depriotziing due to hitting the cap might be valid. If its still works great the the old house then thats likely not the issue. Alternatively if you really dont wana bring it all to the old house or cant mess with the ttl settings and see if that helps at all.

Try testing with different servers on speedtest, for me the veriizon test server always shows me crap never more then like 1 meg down, but if i use the NationalNet server i can get anywhere from 20 up to almost 50.

Test at like 6am you work swing shift if I recall, early morning is usually best case for speeds. Again playing with different serves on speedtest. Just randomly pick like 4 or 5 and run tests on each.

If all else fails I can let you know my unorthodox setup and see if it will work for you but would do that in a private message as I would NEVER recommend my solution as something for the average user to try, only ones that like me and it seems you have difficulties like we are seeing here.

[RuralinternetSucks]

Lets go back to basics. I saw your pics of the antennas and they look fine. Is your setup that you have a long lmr400 cable running from the yagi, into the house and then converted on a pigtail to sma which then plugs into the routers 4g antenna ports? No adaptors or extra connectors right? Make sure your plugging into the 4g ports and not the wifi ones. Meaning there are 4 antennas on your unit if I recall. 2 are for wifi and 2 are for 4g. I would assume you got that part correct as you did see a change in the signal strength but want to be complete in helping you diagnose the issue.

Yup all good there

So assuming your hardware is good, and it seems it is, maybe its your plan or the areas utilization of that tower. Your low speeds could be that your tower is saturated with users and thus you are being de-prioritized aka throttled. The second possibility is that verizon is still seeing you as a hotspot device and thus your using hotspot data as opposed to regular data. This could also be capping your speeds.

It's possible perhaps. But I've driven closer to the tower and gotten 30+ down when I was in town. That was with Verizon, not visible. Ironically I seemed to get better rates with visible out there at the new house than verizon. Which is odd.

Did you play with the ttl settings (network/firewall/custom ttl settings tab)? I cant tell you what works as while I am on verizon I am setup a little different then most, aka a somewhat unorthodox method but 64 and 65 seem to be the ones most use. Would be curious to see what kind of speeds you get from a device hooked to your phone in hotspot mode. You did say the entire setup worked well at your old house... right? I wonder if that test was run BEFORE you hotpot data cap was hit and now you have it it so your being depriortized.

Yea it was suggested the main carriers run off 65 and visible on 64 so depending on which I was testing I changed it accordingly. I could try 64 on verizon and 65 on visible. The entire setup at my old house was just the router with the antenna it came with. But I get much better signal here and data speeds. As for hotspot, I'm not sure. Iirc I don't even have hotspot with Verizon. That would require me to upgrade the line for another $5 which I may do for emergencies. Edit: It's called Start Unlimited.

Also I see you tested 2, 5 and 13... Did you test either 4 or 66? Or did I confuse you about 4 in my earlier posts? 4 and 66 tend to be higher bandwidth. Meaning when you look at the bands in rooter modem/network status it has next to the band a () that will say like 5, 10 or 20 MHz, 4 and 66 tend to be the wider bandwidth aka mine is 20mhz meaning more available bandwidth.

I did connect to 4 briefly and it was bad. So I didn't check much until I came off it. I've never connected to 66 out there so I didn't even try that. Could try it when I get there tomorrow morning.

So where do we go from here.... I would try a few things

I woudnt mess with the antennas anymore. Sounds like you got them aimed really well based on your process.

Test band4 and/or 66 if you have 66 no need to mess with 4. See if the signal strength and quality are reasonable.

If you can test with your router back at the old house to see if my theory about hotspot data depriotziing due to hitting the cap might be valid. If its still works great the the old house then thats likely not the issue. Alternatively if you really dont wana bring it all to the old house or cant mess with the ttl settings and see if that helps at all.

Try testing with different servers on speedtest, for me the veriizon test server always shows me crap never more then like 1 meg down, but if i use the NationalNet server i can get anywhere from 20 up to almost 50.

Test at like 6am you work swing shift if I recall, early morning is usually best case for speeds. Again playing with different serves on speedtest. Just randomly pick like 4 or 5 and run tests on each.

If all else fails I can let you know my unorthodox setup and see if it will work for you but would do that in a private message as I would NEVER recommend my solution as something for the average user to try, only ones that like me and it seems you have difficulties like we are seeing here.

I will test 66 tomorrow. I'm also going to test other areas on the roof to be sure. I work 7-7. So I get to the house by about 8am. No matter what I need something up by Monday morning because we move in on Saturday.

Edit: if you want to look up the tower the enbID is 154093

[gscheb]

Verizon TTL is 117
Visible TTL is 64

Also with Verizon want to add custom rules for TTL. Add this.
#start TTL rules
iptables -t mangle -I POSTROUTING -j TTL --ttl-set 117
iptables -t mangle -I PREROUTING -j TTL --ttl-set 117
ip6tables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -o wwan0 -j HL --hl-set 117
ip6tables -t mangle -I PREROUTING -i wwan0 -j HL --hl-set 117
#end TTL rules

[Adm1jtg]

I had my antenna planned based on signals strength. Aka had them pointed where they could get the absolute strongest signal. I think they used band 13 as that was what their meter picked up. You should do the same but monitoring the signal on your router. Once you find the strongest signal and tighten down your antennas then you test which band or bands work best. Take time with your Antenna placement and pointing and you can use online resources to help as well but basically tweak antennas first and with an attitude of never having to touch the antennas again. After that it's all messing with rooter/router settings.

[Adm1jtg]

Verizon TTL is 117
Visible TTL is 64

Also with Verizon want to add custom rules for TTL. Add this.
#start TTL rules
iptables -t mangle -I POSTROUTING -j TTL --ttl-set 117
iptables -t mangle -I PREROUTING -j TTL --ttl-set 117
ip6tables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -o wwan0 -j HL --hl-set 117
ip6tables -t mangle -I PREROUTING -i wwan0 -j HL --hl-set 117
#end TTL rules

I cheated and didn't do any of that and I use 64 but my setup is far from standard

[RuralinternetSucks]

I had my antenna planned based on signals strength. Aka had them pointed where they could get the absolute strongest signal. I think they used band 13 as that was what their meter picked up. You should do the same but monitoring the signal on your router. Once you find the strongest signal and tighten down your antennas then you test which band or bands work best. Take time with your Antenna placement and pointing and you can use online resources to help as well but basically tweak antennas first and with an attitude of never having to touch the antennas again. After that it's all messing with rooter/router settings.

This was the best I've gotten. Wanna know where the antenna were pointing? The pole was leaned up against the house with them pointing at an angle down into the thick trees and the ground. This is the type of crap that makes no sense to me lol (even tho data rate was garbage. Was worse than when I had them pointing toward tower).

[Adm1jtg]

Ok lets take a step back.... In general the higher the better, so the roof is the right place. You should always keep the antenna parallel to the ground, though a few claim aiming it a degree or 2 upwards works better for them.

I assume you know roughly which direction the tower you want is in N, S, E or W and with a compass can find that direction from the roof of your house.

In my case, and mind you I am majorly OCD, I found the tower I wanted and got its address (lots of googling) then driving to confirm the tower location. Then I pulled up google maps with satellite view, my house on one end and the tower on the other. Right click on my exact spot on the house and choose measure, one point being the part of the house my antenna was on and the other point being the tower. This will tell you how far away your tower is but also something else. after connecting the two points you then zoom in to max on your house and you can kinda see where to aim the antenna. Thats your starting point Then start rotating the antenna right up to about 90 degrees away from your starting point and do the same for left. The actual location on your roof probably wont make a huge difference but its always better to NOT cross over your roof. So like in my case my tower was almost due north, thus I mouted my antenna on the roof at the north corner of the house. This may or may not work for your specific situtation but you get the idea.

Now here is what I learned about my setup that I didnt know. I actually do NOT have line of sight to the tower. In fact not only do I have dense trees in the way but also small mountains and large hills. To get direct line of sight calculations tell me I would have to mount my antennas at least 105 feet off the groud or higher. Obviously thats no feasible.

So here is what I did, I found Line of sight to an area the tower broadcasts to. Let me try and explain as I am not sure that makes sense initially. The tower as I said is due north. The towers main purpose is to give coverage on a windy podunk road that runs east/west. There really arent any residences in the area so I knew the towers broadcast was almost exclusively east/west. So I moved the antenna around up to about 90 degrees west of the tower and then did the same east of the tower. My current setup that works well for me is actually pointed about 25 degrees east of the actual tower. Had I used some of the more powerful antennas I likely wouldnt have been able to do this as their beam focus is much narrower. This avoids all the hills and mountains and gives me line of sight to the signal. Of course it not as strong as if I could hit the tower directly but trying to shoot a signal through dense trees and a mountain just wasnt going to work. If you like to play with maps you can also use this link that gscheb posted in another thread
https://link.ui.com/#
Be aware it does NOT show all towers when I played with it I had to manually enter my tower address then move the "aim to" point around manually till it said I have Line of Sight. I didnt have that link when mine was done (I hired someone to actually go up on the roof) so we just manually kept adjusting as stated above.

One more thought, again following the KISS procedure, since your not having the easiest time with this just use a single antenna the vertical one for aiming, lock your target in then mount the other one and like I said earlier the idea is once you have the antenna pointed you lock it down and never mess with it again.

Yet another long winded post. Hope it helps. Let me know how you make out.

[ylrkdr]

Ok so testing Verizon in the modem I followed the guide here https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=32 ... lit#p11658to get it to connect. Worked fine. I didn't add the last AT command for ipv6 since that was based on visible and not verizon. So it's working but not.

In the first pic is Verizon in my phone
Screenshot_20201014-091808.png

In the second is in the router, which has a huge decrease in mbps

Screenshot_20201014-100624.png

This pic is the router info for verizon showing good signal strength so that shouldn't be an issue.
Screenshot_20201014-091509.png

Why is it so much slower in the router? If anything I assumed the router would be faster than my phone.

Did you do this test from your rural location? If so, it's picking up a different tower in that test(In Batesburg-Leesville, #154029) than the one in your last post (near Harmony, #154093). Have you checked out tower locations in cellmapper yet?

The only other bit of advice I can give is to separate your yagis a little bit. My Iskra P58 set are 42 inches long, and they had to be between 26 and 38 inches apart for best reception.

[RuralinternetSucks]

Ok lets take a step back.... In general the higher the better, so the roof is the right place. You should always keep the antenna parallel to the ground, though a few claim aiming it a degree or 2 upwards works better for them.

I assume you know roughly which direction the tower you want is in N, S, E or W and with a compass can find that direction from the roof of your house.

In my case, and mind you I am majorly OCD, I found the tower I wanted and got its address (lots of googling) then driving to confirm the tower location. Then I pulled up google maps with satellite view, my house on one end and the tower on the other. Right click on my exact spot on the house and choose measure, one point being the part of the house my antenna was on and the other point being the tower. This will tell you how far away your tower is but also something else. after connecting the two points you then zoom in to max on your house and you can kinda see where to aim the antenna. Thats your starting point Then start rotating the antenna right up to about 90 degrees away from your starting point and do the same for left. The actual location on your roof probably wont make a huge difference but its always better to NOT cross over your roof. So like in my case my tower was almost due north, thus I mouted my antenna on the roof at the north corner of the house. This may or may not work for your specific situtation but you get the idea.

Now here is what I learned about my setup that I didnt know. I actually do NOT have line of sight to the tower. In fact not only do I have dense trees in the way but also small mountains and large hills. To get direct line of sight calculations tell me I would have to mount my antennas at least 105 feet off the groud or higher. Obviously thats no feasible.

So here is what I did, I found Line of sight to an area the tower broadcasts to. Let me try and explain as I am not sure that makes sense initially. The tower as I said is due north. The towers main purpose is to give coverage on a windy podunk road that runs east/west. There really arent any residences in the area so I knew the towers broadcast was almost exclusively east/west. So I moved the antenna around up to about 90 degrees west of the tower and then did the same east of the tower. My current setup that works well for me is actually pointed about 25 degrees east of the actual tower. Had I used some of the more powerful antennas I likely wouldnt have been able to do this as their beam focus is much narrower. This avoids all the hills and mountains and gives me line of sight to the signal. Of course it not as strong as if I could hit the tower directly but trying to shoot a signal through dense trees and a mountain just wasnt going to work. If you like to play with maps you can also use this link that gscheb posted in another thread
https://link.ui.com/#
Be aware it does NOT show all towers when I played with it I had to manually enter my tower address then move the "aim to" point around manually till it said I have Line of Sight. I didnt have that link when mine was done (I hired someone to actually go up on the roof) so we just manually kept adjusting as stated above.

One more thought, again following the KISS procedure, since your not having the easiest time with this just use a single antenna the vertical one for aiming, lock your target in then mount the other one and like I said earlier the idea is once you have the antenna pointed you lock it down and never mess with it again.

Yet another long winded post. Hope it helps. Let me know how you make out.

Ironically I did do the terrain thing and measurements with google maps. Unfortunately my house is brand new so google maps just shows thick dense trees where my house is currently . However I'm approximately 4.25 miles from the tower and it sits S/SE of me direction wise(from the previous pic it's pointed in that direction).

Actually had a guy do it for me awhile back when I was first considering this. He said this

> 33.803330,-81.832823

Tower is approximately 250ft tall. Equipment is usually within 20ft of the top in most cases of a tower that's this height. I searched around a 4mi radius, not many directions have much to worry about for terrain obstruction. So the good news is, MOST of the terrain between you and the tower is actually lower than you or the tower, which means you're not beaming directly through a ton of foliage.

I think if you can get over or to the top of your trees (no idea how big they are) you'll be in pretty good shape with that angle to the tower.

Obviously getting over the pines isn't feasible. Some of these suckers are 100ft tall (part of the reason why we love it out there tho). I tried every which way I could think of setting the yagis up. Problem is I'm holding a 30ft+ pole and turning it by hand standing on a roof when I'm terrified of heights lol. Gah the things we do for love.. err internet.. lol

Mounting them separately wouldn't work. Once I find a spot I would have to remove the top portion of the pole to get to the antennas(which would defeat the purpose). Otherwise I'd have to sit on the peak of the roof with a ladder.

[RuralinternetSucks]

Did you do this test from your rural location? If so, it's picking up a different tower in that test(In Batesburg-Leesville, #154029) than the one in your last post (near Harmony, #154093). Have you checked out tower locations in cellmapper yet?

The only other bit of advice I can give is to separate your yagis a little bit. My Iskra P58 set are 42 inches long, and they had to be between 26 and 38 inches apart for best reception.

No I currently live in batesburg-Leesville. Moving to Johnston (not sure why it says Harmony?). That's interesting on the yagis. Every depictions I see seems to have them maybe a couple inches apart. Do you have a pic of yours?

[Adm1jtg]

Mine is only about 25 feet TOTAL, meaning its on the roof, one story house with attic on a 2 foot pole. If your trees like mine are that tall it might be better and easier to use a short 3 or 4 foot pole mounted directly onto the roof or into the facia. I think mine is called a Jbar mount. This makes it way easier to adjust (just tighten and loosen the clamp) and might even give you better signal as your not anywhere near the leafy part of the trees and no matter how high you go as you said you will never get over the trees. Just so you know I tried the pole trick as well just like your doing though mine was more like 15-20 feet and never got any REAL or decent results either. Had to actually mount the damn things stationary then minutely adjust before I got anything I could use.

Not sure how high your roof peak is off the ground but with this setup if it works you may even be able o replace your 50' cables with shorter ones.

[gscheb]

In theory if these antennas are 90° apart should be able to be touching and wouldn't matter.
Now with that said have heard allot of people say they worked better with some space between.
Can read these reviews for spacing people used when The Wireless Haven used to sell these kind of antennas.
https://thewirelesshaven.com/shop/antennas/4g-lte ... l-antenna/

[RuralinternetSucks]

Mine is only about 25 feet TOTAL, meaning its on the roof, one story house with attic on a 2 foot pole. If your trees like mine are that tall it might be better and easier to use a short 3 or 4 foot pole mounted directly onto the roof or into the facia. I think mine is called a Jbar mount. This makes it way easier to adjust (just tighten and loosen the clamp) and might even give you better signal as your not anywhere near the leafy part of the trees and no matter how high you go as you said you will never get over the trees. Just so you know I tried the pole trick as well just like your doing though mine was more like 15-20 feet and never got any REAL or decent results either. Had to actually mount the damn things stationary then minutely adjust before I got anything I could use.

Not sure how high your roof peak is off the ground but with this setup if it works you may even be able o replace your 50' cables with shorter ones.

I didn't think of that

I realize now all I ever tested was either hold it it up high while standing on roof, on the pole, or holding it while standing on the ground.

I bought the wilson mount. I was going to attach it to the fascia and slip the pole through it since the pole I have the Yagis on is a tiny bit smaller than the pole mount so it was going to work as a stablizer after I concreted the pole into the ground. (The pole is actually three (and 1/2 cut one) top rail fence poles I attached together. Leftover from building my chain link fence)

I think I'm going to go ahead and put the mount on regardless if I don't get better signal anywhere else on the roof. I'm gunna test the other end either tomorrow or this weekend. I have to get the fence finished tomorrow because we move in on Saturday. If I have extra time leftover after that then I will do some more testing.

[gscheb]

This can be this aggregating process getting antennas right. Higher isn't always better.
https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=588#p3516

[ylrkdr]

Google maps says the tower is near Harmony(there's a church near the tower); it's probably a former settlement where only the locals call it that.

I don't have a pic of my antenna installation, but here's the antenna set I bought. I need to do a write-up on them in the antenna section; I bought them on ebay for $110, shipped(from Latvia, took 10 days). They have done well for me. Like I said, Iskra recommended that I set the antennas ideally 38 inches apart, at least 26 inches. Your yagis are shorter, so they could be set closer, I imagine. If I had to make a guess, separate them by 12-18 inches. I'm no expert at this stuff, just making a guess. No idea if it will overcome your tree issues.

[RuralinternetSucks]

In theory if these antennas are 90° apart should be able to be touching and wouldn't matter.
Now with that said have heard allot of people say they worked better with some space between.
Can read these reviews for spacing people used when The Wireless Haven used to sell these kind of antennas.
https://thewirelesshaven.com/shop/antennas/4g-lte ... l-antenna/

I will have to try that. Most people seem to suggest around 16-20inches apart. I was hoping this process would have been a simple point and shoot but that's never my luck lol.

[RuralinternetSucks]

Google maps says the tower is near Harmony(there's a church near the tower); it's probably a former settlement where only the locals call it that.

I don't have a pic of my antenna installation, but here's the antenna set I bought. I need to do a write-up on them in the antenna section; I bought them on ebay for $110, shipped(from Latvia, took 10 days). They have done well for me. Like I said, Iskra recommended that I set the antennas ideally 38 inches apart, at least 26 inches. Your yagis are shorter, so they could be set closer, I imagine. If I had to make a guess, separate them by 12-18 inches. I'm no expert at this stuff, just making a guess. No idea if it will overcome your tree issues.

Yea I checked and harmony is correct but it doesn't seem to exist as a city. Must be an old settlement like you said or something. Now that's considered Johnston I believe. The tower is at 53 W D Herlong Dr. I will have to separate the yagis and see if that has an effect. If it's something as simple as that I'll be a happy camper.

[Adm1jtg]

I will have to try that. Most people seem to suggest around 16-20inches apart. I was hoping this process would have been a simple point and shoot but that's never my luck lol.

Antennas are never easy, and also realize you have the easiest to aim ones. The bigger yagis and the parabolic antennas are even harder to lock on as they have a smaller beam width.

[RuralinternetSucks]

Let there be light!

Sort of.

Okay soooo. Went out to the house and finally finished putting up the fence so I go to tackle my internet issue. First, this is with my verizon SIM which I upgraded to Go Unlimited (I think that's what it's called. Gives 15gb hotspot, 5g access etc.)

First try, separating the Yagis by about a foot. Didn't seem to do anything. Then I removed them from the long pole and attached them to a small 2ish foot pole(station 40 PVC pipe) which I mounted to the side of the house near the peak. No change in signal really. (Although I must say the wilson mount is very flimsy. The Yagis practically lean towards my roof. I was able to bend the mount back a bit to straighten them out.)

So last but not least, trying band signal 66. From all the signal information (strength, dbm etc) it looked like a bust. But figured what the hell, try a speed test.

50-65ping and consistent 10-20 down. I almost shit myself lol. But there's a small issue. When I first did the test I was getting about 3-4 up. I decided to try and see if I could get better with adjusting the Yagis but couldn't find it. So I put them back to where they originally were (I think), but now my up is only doing like 0.5mbps. No matter where I move it, I can't get a decent up signal back. What gives?

Well regardless we move in tomorrow. It will give me this weekend to attempt to tweak it more but I'm very happy with my down speed. It's plenty for my daughter's school needs.

[Adm1jtg]

Finally some good news

A few more thoughts on your upload speeds:

1) Time of day and weather can make a huge difference on both upload and download. For me 6am is always far better then lets say 7 at night

2) Speedtest.net and others like it can be REALLY unreliable. Try 3 or 4 different servers, likely at least one of those 4 will give drastically different results then the other 3. On speednet for me personally the verizon test server always gives me extremely low stats and nationalnet seems to be more accurate.

3) Most important, you are paralleling me on most of your issues and concerns... so most important of all, set a goal for what you want/need your internet to do. In my case it was stream 2 sd movies at the same time one for me and one for my gf and still be able to browse the net. Once you can do whatever your goal is, and here is the hard part, forget all the numbers and tweaks and all and just enjoy your internet. Does it really matter if your 100 down or 20 if it does everything you need it to? I am incredibly OCD about this stuff and I have to keep telling myself what good would extra speed really do, it does what I need.

[RuralinternetSucks]

Finally some good news

A few more thoughts on your upload speeds:

1) Time of day and weather can make a huge difference on both upload and download. For me 6am is always far better then lets say 7 at night

2) Speedtest.net and others like it can be REALLY unreliable. Try 3 or 4 different servers, likely at least one of those 4 will give drastically different results then the other 3. On speednet for me personally the verizon test server always gives me extremely low stats and nationalnet seems to be more accurate.

3) Most important, you are paralleling me on most of your issues and concerns... so most important of all, set a goal for what you want/need your internet to do. In my case it was stream 2 sd movies at the same time one for me and one for my gf and still be able to browse the net. Once you can do whatever your goal is, and here is the hard part, forget all the numbers and tweaks and all and just enjoy your internet. Does it really matter if your 100 down or 20 if it does everything you need it to? I am incredibly OCD about this stuff and I have to keep telling myself what good would extra speed really do, it does what I need.

1. This was done around peak hours I would assume? So like 6-7pm. I had practically been at it until dark. I'm going to test visible and if I don't get the same or better results then I will toss visible and get another verizon line added to our family plan.

2. Yea I have the speed test app on my phone. It actually seems the best for down speed so far. Everytime I try Fast.com I get garbage speed. Google's speed test seems to be hit or miss. I always try multiple servers. A few on there gave me 2-3 down but most were 10-20.

3. Yes I could give a rats sphincter what speed I get as long as it does what I need. Most importantly for my daughter to be able to do live google meets. According to Google it's recommend 5 down 3 up. As for home stuff, at night we watch Netflix/hulu etc and my daughter will watch a little until it's time to turn TV off. So 2 TVs at once. Otherwise my kid plays youtube/roblox on her tablet and my wife and I will browse on our phones or watch random videos. That's about it. Occasionally I'll play my ps4.

I was moreso making sure there wasn't some issue with band 66 up speeds lol. However I'm really surprised it works. My signal strength is about 50% and roughly -110 at best. However my quality is around -10 to -12 which is a slight improvement from the other band which was -14 to -16.

[Adm1jtg]

Ok as far as visible I will save you the time... It's always a little less then Verizon, the advantage of visible is they have no caps on hot spot data, only a cap on speed.

With Verizon you almost always have a cap on hotspot data, usually after 22gb you get slowed. So be sure in your setup your using regular data or your setup or you will go down to 500k or so after you pass 22gb. Playing with ttl and imei settings can get you around this.

As far as your upload speeds, when I use band 66 I get almost the same.. about 500k. If I change to band 2 I get lower download speeds (about 2/3 of band 66 speeds) but uploads go to about 2-3. I go back and forth as to which to use. Band 66 aggregated to itself or band 2 aggregated to band 5

[RuralinternetSucks]

Band 66 aggregated to itself or band 2 aggregated to band 5

What does band 66 aggregated to itself mean? For video chat google meet recommends 3 up. So how would I obtain that but keep my download speed? Not possible? I will have to dink with the position more this weekend. Literally packing up my house right now.

[gscheb]

2. Yea I have the speed test app on my phone. It actually seems the best for down speed so far. Everytime I try Fast.com I get garbage speed. Google's speed test seems to be hit or miss. I always try multiple servers. A few on there gave me 2-3 down but most were 10-20.

Hello,
Fast.com is a different kind of speed test than speedtest.com. Fast.com is owned by netflix and is testing your video resolution speed. So if you have a plan that caps video speed to 480p Fast.com is going to reflect that slower speed. That is why is is so much slower on there. If you had a plan that included HD streaming you would see about the exact same speed on Fast.com.

[Adm1jtg]

What does band 66 aggregated to itself mean? For video chat google meet recommends 3 up. So how would I obtain that but keep my download speed? Not possible? I will have to dink with the position more this weekend. Literally packing up my house right now.

Carrier aggregation. Is when the tower combines 2 or more lte bands to make a stronger connection. Your modern only allows certain combinations. When I said band 66 aggregates to itself I meant that it can combine 2 band 66 connections.
Bands 2 and 5 can also combine on our modem.

Better upload speeds... I had written earlier that I also got 500k up on band 66 but retested after I posted and got almost 3 on band 66. Not sure if that's due to the weather changing or to the fact I am now using an archer c8 for all the wifi. You can find an archer c8 for $40 used (amazon) if you wanna test

Once your done messing with antennas I would run some tests on you Google meet as 3 meg is probably recommended not required. Usually video chat services can get away with about 1 meg or so for upload. Speed test isn't 100 percent actuate so you might be at about 1. Again depends on many things. Test your Google meet and see if it's ok. Upload means what you look and sound like to the recipient. If 66 doesn't work well enough you will need to test the other bands again. You can also try visable again but I highly doubt you will get better results then on Verizon.

Update: from the Google meet site:

SD video quality bandwidth requirements
Latency should be less than 100 ms when pinging Google's public DNS server at 8.8.8.8.
Outbound signals from a participant in all situations must meet a 1 mbps bandwidth requirement.
Inbound signals depend on the number of participants:
1 mbps with 2 participants
1.5 mbps with 5 participants
2 mbps with 10 participants

Sd quality should be fine for school and is likely the resolution they use anyway as the requirements are much lower

[RuralinternetSucks]

Carrier aggregation. Is when the tower combines 2 or more lte bands to make a stronger connection. Your modern only allows certain combinations. When I said band 66 aggregates to itself I meant that it can combine 2 band 66 connections.
Bands 2 and 5 can also combine on our modem.

Better upload speeds... I had written earlier that I also got 500k up on band 66 but retested after I posted and got almost 3 on band 66. Not sure if that's due to the weather changing or to the fact I am now using an archer c8 for all the wifi. You can find an archer c8 for $40 used (amazon) if you wanna test

Once your done messing with antennas I would run some tests on you Google meet as 3 meg is probably recommended not required. Usually video chat services can get away with about 1 meg or so for upload. Speed test isn't 100 percent actuate so you might be at about 1. Again depends on many things. Test your Google meet and see if it's ok. Upload means what you look and sound like to the recipient. If 66 doesn't work well enough you will need to test the other bands again. You can also try visable again but I highly doubt you will get better results then on Verizon.

Update: from the Google meet site:

SD video quality bandwidth requirements
Latency should be less than 100 ms when pinging Google's public DNS server at 8.8.8.8.
Outbound signals from a participant in all situations must meet a 1 mbps bandwidth requirement.
Inbound signals depend on the number of participants:
1 mbps with 2 participants
1.5 mbps with 5 participants
2 mbps with 10 participants

Sd quality should be fine for school and is likely the resolution they use anyway as the requirements are much lower

Thanks Today is her first day of using it for school so we will see how that goes. Has her first google meet in an hour. The up is still pretty bad. Occasionally hit 1mbps but averages around 0.5mbps. I'm going to dink with the antennas another time to hopefully find a slightly better spot. But as long as this works I will be a happy camper. We've been able to stream Netflix on three devices at night so it works better than i was expecting after getting to such a rough start.

[Adm1jtg]

.

[Adm1jtg]

Thanks Today is her first day of using it for school so we will see how that goes. Has her first google meet in an hour. The up is still pretty bad. Occasionally hit 1mbps but averages around 0.5mbps. I'm going to dink with the antennas another time to hopefully find a slightly better spot. But as long as this works I will be a happy camper. We've been able to stream Netflix on three devices at night so it works better than i was expecting after getting to such a rough start.

So how did it go?

[RuralinternetSucks]

So how did it go?

Good! It's working just fine for her google meets. So far so good. Im letting visible go and just using Verizon. I upgraded the plan to the Do more to get the most out of it. I seem to get more priority for my data than I did before.

When using for netflix/videos you can tell that the signal fluctuates at times because it will bog down momentarily and then pick back up. I have had this weird issue occasionally where I will somehow "desync" from the tower and lose all signal and it will affect every line on my plan. But all I have to do is go into my reset settings and reset my network/wifi/bluetooth option and it starts to work just fine again. Not a big deal but I'd like to know why it's doing that.

I still haven't had a chance to mess with the antennas. I've had so many problems the last two days with moving I'm about to rip my hair out lol. But it's mostly sorted out now. I'll likely be able to mess with them(antennas) tomorrow or Thursday to see what I can get. I really wanna climb this tree that would likely give me a killer LoS to the tower but I'm not an expert at it and don't want to break my neck lol.

[Adm1jtg]

Good! It's working just fine for her google meets. So far so good. Im letting visible go and just using Verizon. I upgraded the plan to the Do more to get the most out of it. I seem to get more priority for my data than I did before.

Visible is definitely a little slower especially in ping times, As far as verizon make sure your setup isnt using hotspot data or you will get throttled at like 22gb until the next month. Also I have found that the higher level verizon plans are only needed if your tower is very busy. I am on a 55+ loyalty plan which equates to the lowest of the low in unlimnited plans on verizon. This plan woks great, I used about 450gb last month. Now again this plan working well is based on 2 premises:
1) Your using phone data (not hotspot)
2) Your in an area where your tower is not used heavily (otherise you can get depriortized when its busy)
for #2 you can do like I did and call verizon and ask if the line has been depriortized in the last 30 days. I have called in over the last months a few times and NEVER once been depriortized. My tower serves a podunk road with basically nothing but cows around it.

When using for netflix/videos you can tell that the signal fluctuates at times because it will bog down momentarily and then pick back up. I have had this weird issue occasionally where I will somehow "desync" from the tower and lose all signal and it will affect every line on my plan. But all I have to do is go into my reset settings and reset my network/wifi/bluetooth option and it starts to work just fine again. Not a big deal but I'd like to know why it's doing that.

How often does this happen? Was that on verizon or on visible or both? I had an issue a while ago where my router would lose its IP address and I would have to reboot. It would show on the staus page under external ip as blank when this happened where as usually you see a number.On your router you can play with connection monitoring (modem > connection profile connection monitoring tab).

I still haven't had a chance to mess with the antennas. I've had so many problems the last two days with moving I'm about to rip my hair out lol. But it's mostly sorted out now. I'll likely be able to mess with them(antennas) tomorrow or Thursday to see what I can get. I really wanna climb this tree that would likely give me a killer LoS to the tower but I'm not an expert at it and don't want to break my neck lol.

This is tricky, LOS is obviously better in most cases, however, adding length to your cables looses signal. An example is LMR-400 loses 0.04 dB / ft. at 900 MHz, so in this example you have already lost well over 50% of the original signal just due to cables of 100 feet (3db loss is 50% loss of signal). Now if your LOS is significantly stronger it might be worth it or you may end up losing more then you gain.

I think I mentioned to you my situtation where LOS is basically impossible. I would need to raise my antennas to a minimum of 105 feet, even if I could doing so would likely lose more then I would gain. I am actually aimed about 1/2 a mile east of the tower and getting my signal from there. LOL this is why I warned you that its very easy to always try for better and keep messing with it more and more

My advice is the same, leave the antennas alone, they work well enough. If you really want to tweak more play with the various bands and combinations of bands, the best combinations to try for our modem are:
2+5 (AT+QCFG="band”,0,12,1)
4+5 (AT+QCFG="band”,0,18,1)
66+66 (AT+QCFG="band",0,20000000000000000,1)

There are certainly other combinations but these match the carrier aggregation combinations that our modem supports using verizon lte bands. Personally I used 66+66 for a while but am finding 4+5 to give me better results. There is no logical reason band 4 should work better then 66 as 66 is just a superset of 4 but in my setup 4 seems better for download and upload speeds. Dont figure. Then of course 2+5 seems to be a better quality signal. I guess all I am saying is you really need to do a lot of testing to see what really works best.

Lastly a ways back we discussed using the built in wifi vs using a router for wifi hooked up via ethernet. I bought a cheap $40 router to test with and did see some improvement in download and upload speeds. So you may want to try that as well.

https://smile.amazon.com/TP-LINK-Gigabi ... ics&sr=1-3

If you look at the used ones in that link they can be had for like $30. There are a ton of routers out there and all will work about equally well. This one is just by a company I like, has been out for a while, is readily available, and is cheap but a good bang for the buck for an older router. It doesnt matter that its older as all you will be using it for is the wifi itself. All the features like dhcp and QOS and whatever else will still be done by the main unit.

Actually now that the The Wireless Haven store is open I found this note in the description of the wg3526 router:

Note: The WiFi capabilities on the WG3526 routers may be less than optimal for providing WiFi to a family with multiple devices. While some find it sufficient, home installations for family/multiple users/devices, may discover the WG3526 is best used strictly as the modem/gateway (to provide the internet) and connected to a quality dual band (2.4/5GHz) WiFi router or Access Point to provide the WiFi component. The WG3526 would be then be connected (via an Ethernet cable) from one of the LAN ports on the WG3526 to the WAN port on the WiFi router or Access Point.

[RuralinternetSucks]

This is tricky, LOS is obviously better in most cases, however, adding length to your cables looses signal. An example is LMR-400 loses 0.04 dB / ft. at 900 MHz, so in this example you have already lost well over 50% of the original signal just due to cables of 100 feet (3db loss is 50% loss of signal). Now if your LOS is significantly stronger it might be worth it or you may end up losing more then you gain.

I think I mentioned to you my situtation where LOS is basically impossible. I would need to raise my antennas to a minimum of 105 feet, even if I could doing so would likely lose more then I would gain. I am actually aimed about 1/2 a mile east of the tower and getting my signal from there. LOL this is why I warned you that its very easy to always try for better and keep messing with it more and more

My advice is the same, leave the antennas alone, they work well enough. If you really want to tweak more play with the various bands and combinations of bands, the best combinations to try for our modem are:
2+5 (AT+QCFG="band”,0,12,1)
4+5 (AT+QCFG="band”,0,18,1)
66+66 (AT+QCFG="band",0,20000000000000000,1)

There are certainly other combinations but these match the carrier aggregation combinations that our modem supports using verizon lte bands. Personally I used 66+66 for a while but am finding 4+5 to give me better results. There is no logical reason band 4 should work better then 66 as 66 is just a superset of 4 but in my setup 4 seems better for download and upload speeds. Dont figure. Then of course 2+5 seems to be a better quality signal. I guess all I am saying is you really need to do a lot of testing to see what really works best.

Lastly a ways back we discussed using the built in wifi vs using a router for wifi hooked up via ethernet. I bought a cheap $40 router to test with and did see some improvement in download and upload speeds. So you may want to try that as well.

https://smile.amazon.com/TP-LINK-Gigabi ... ics&sr=1-3

If you look at the used ones in that link they can be had for like $30. There are a ton of routers out there and all will work about equally well. This one is just by a company I like, has been out for a while, is readily available, and is cheap but a good bang for the buck for an older router. It doesnt matter that its older as all you will be using it for is the wifi itself. All the features like dhcp and QOS and whatever else will still be done by the main unit.

Actually now that the The Wireless Haven store is open I found this note in the description of the wg3526 router:

Note: The WiFi capabilities on the WG3526 routers may be less than optimal for providing WiFi to a family with multiple devices. While some find it sufficient, home installations for family/multiple users/devices, may discover the WG3526 is best used strictly as the modem/gateway (to provide the internet) and connected to a quality dual band (2.4/5GHz) WiFi router or Access Point to provide the WiFi component. The WG3526 would be then be connected (via an Ethernet cable) from one of the LAN ports on the WG3526 to the WAN port on the WiFi router or Access Point.

So are you saying if I went 200ft with cable i would lose 100% of my signal? Geez that seems extreme lol. I had heard about the wifi capabilities of the router. Do you disable that somehow? Or just ignore the wifi it broadcasts and use the router you have plugged into the lan port?

[Adm1jtg]

So are you saying if I went 200ft with cable i would lose 100% of my signal? Geez that seems extreme lol. I had heard about the wifi capabilities of the router. Do you disable that somehow? Or just ignore the wifi it broadcasts and use the router you have plugged into the lan port?

The cable loss is not quite like that. More like:
lose 3db lose 50% of original signal
lose another 3db lose 50% of the amount above (aka you lose half of the remaining half)
This is how it was explained to me.

As far as the router, there really is no need to leave the original running.

Since I have no other wifi networks around me i set the NEW router to 40mhz on the 2.4ghz and 80mhz on the 5ghz and disabled the wifi on the wg3526 completely.
Network > Wireless and disable both wifi networks there (3 is you have a guest network). Make sure you have an ethernet cable on hand just in case, if something goes wrong you can always cable into the wg3526