MoFi4500 sim 7 questions

[DogTho]

Simple I'm sure. I know these devices are not much liked, but it's what I have and works, I get usually over 15Mbps down. Up is not that important. Good enough for Netflix and casual browsing.

Sometimes when I try to log into the MoFi, it takes forever for the page to load. I have the password saved and it a shortcut directly to the signal strength page in Firefox.

How do I reboot from a computer without wiping all the stored settings, that is pushing the button on the back, but I'd like to be able to reboot some times from a computer at the other end of the house. Once in a while the 'link' led goes out and I usually just unplug and replug the unit. That's happened maybe 3 times since I've had it since August last year.

Otherwise I really can't complain. I have the 2 mofi paddles on 50' of LMR400 maybe 8' above the roof peak, I get around -112dBm strength, RSRQ ±12. I've got a cheap LPDA coming to see if that helps. Tower is 7 miles LOS through about 200 yds of local oak stand. Past the trees it's a clear shot to the tower. I lock to B4 which is 20MHz wide. Most of the rest are 5 or 10 according to band scan.

I've never upgraded the firmware, is that suggested? I get my service through a local TMob MVNO.

[Tom franz]

From what i remember i had to do a reset for the auto sign in but I could be wrong, having the paddle antenna on that much wire you are dropping a lot on your signal, update the firmware would be good to do they give more improvement to the device, you can always roll it back if it does not work out and make a back for later use.

[DogTho]

Well, I'll tell you, if I use the paddles on the MoFi where it's located now in my room without the 50' of LMR400 on it, I get -120dBm or less, hardly a signal so it's much better with the paddles over the roof. Just tonight I got the $40 LPDA and measured the SWR on it. I have an AA-600 RigExpert analyzer and if I use it with the software that came with it, it will read to 1200MHz and the SWR on this cheap antenna is well below 2:1 from 700 to 1400MHz. If I have time tomorrow before the snow starts I'll put it in place of the main paddle and see what happens. Do a bandscan. Can't be any worse or could it? But on the other hand what I have now is completely acceptable for what I do. What's to complain if it's acceptable?

It's 10 times better than the Hughesnet I had.

[DogTho]

I put the cheap LPDA up this morning and signal went from -113 to -106, still 2 bars but download speed went up to 40Mbps. I could still get the antenna up another 5-8' with the run of cable I have. For $40 I may just buy another and put them both up at the 45° mimo thing and see what happens.

I'm going to do a band scan and see what I have now.

[Dr-BroadBand]

Adding another antenna would help to make your set up more dependable. Not sure if you will get better speed out of a MoFI SIM-7 it has NO Carrier arrogation.

For your speed test are you using WiFi??
A copper connection is twice as fast as WiFi

The MoFI only has WiFi-4

At one time the MoFI had a bug with band scan I would trust but verify each band take good notes!

Antenna placement is an art, higher is not always better. Spend the money and get a good antenna you get what you pay for. Keep the cable runs short

You may want to think about a Panel Antenna with MIMO they require less playing with.

[DogTho]

Well, actually when I got this mofi I was getting about 1-10max Mbps on B71 because that was what was recommended. After a bandscan a while ago, unknown to me it reset to auto select and linked on B4 which was giving me 15-20Mbps, Then I got this LP and now I'm getting 30-40Mb down on B4 or 66, they seem to be the same. Even my B71 is now at 15+Mbps. This is way better than I was hoping for. I was going to accept 10Mbps and even 3 if that was all I could get. B2 is also not bad at 20+Mbps.

I called AT&T this morning about data plans and they said I'd have to buy a new (their) device, like a nitehawk, not sure any of the AT&T gateways have any port for antennas and I would need that. Then I called TMob and they said they would sell me a data plan 100GB/mo, $50 introductory price, not sure what it goes to after intro. And I could use the sim in my MoFi. At least I know the MoFi works on TMob, I'm pretty sure AT&T would have bands on the same tower but not sure. I think for now I'll stick with my guy at $100/mo, 150GB/mo but secondary user on TMob, but so far after about 6 months, it's been working smoothly with no throttling that I can tell. Certainly better than Hughesnet. Just today the wife said she noticed the Internet was even faster after I put up the LP. I may just leave good enough alone. I could get it up higher, I just don't trust myself on the roof, at 77 I may need some help. LP is on an old RS metal pole that comes out of the lower one so if I could get it out and work on it on the flat part of the roof and put it back on that might work. I may be able to borrow a mimo panel to see if it works any better, but why? Just stability I guess.

[Dr-BroadBand]

Looks like you have done an Awesome job Sir!! Welcome to the 4G club.
I helped a friend get off Hughesnet so I understand.

[DogTho]

I told my provider guy about my experiments and he told me he would bring by one of the mimo panels he uses next week some time. But I need some nice weather, I'm not going on the roof in this 30° weather with ice and snow.

I was getting over 1s ping tests with HN. I would sometimes get 30Mbps downloads, but when things loaded up, especially weekends and in the evening when the west came on, speeds would drop down to the Kbps. Some pages never would load because of the latency.

Yes, ain't 4G wonderful. Now if I could get a phone to work out here. I'm less than a mile away from a Verizon tower and 90% of the time I have no signal. I'm going to switch it back to AT&T.

[Dr-BroadBand]

See Cell Mapper
It's a helpful tool, to know where cell towers are and what bands they are putting out
but things are changing very fast and it may not have the most up to date data.

https://www.cellmapper.net

[DogTho]

Yes, I've been to cellmapper, that's how I discovered where my tower is from the enb number 59771. And it makes sense. I do notice things are changing even from last August. But cellmapper is also anecdotal evidence. I have to treat it with a pinch of salt. It's too bad the FCC doesn't make the carriers admit their locations and frequencies. Finding something on the FCC site is a lesson in futility. And squeezing info from the carriers or even the carrier shops is idiocy. Once in a while you find someone that seems sensible, but mostly hype and evasion, or just downright stupidity (read salesman).

[Dr-BroadBand]