Experimental setups?

[Ltebnb4]

Has anyone here used an inline booster aka iot booster or direct connect? Also has anyone used a normal booster(65db) as an inline? I want to try it with my M1 but all the signal booster companies say I’ll over load the system and I need to buy their 15db gain iot booster. Thoughts? Also wondering about 2x2 mimo with inline boosters? Seems like it would be the ultimate set up?

[Didneywhorl]

The issue with the boosters with modems is multiple.

First, I too have heard that the power output on the booster is too much for modems. Could burn the modem up.

Second, booster antennas are just LTE antennas, its using the extra "power" mostly to allow the use of way too long crappy quality cables. It doesn't really make the antenna itself any more powerful. Use a quality high end antenna and proper quality cables direct on the modem.

Third, and prob most important, they are usually single channel and don't allow the modem to detect all of the modems capable frequencies.

If you used one set per antenna port, you could still get MIMO, but you wouldn't be able to passively scan all available frequencies. Not a problem if you only want one band I guess.

Cool idea really, but not something I would do. Money better spent on antennas and cables.

If you give it a go, let us know what you find. I could be totally wrong.

[toddw]

Additionally - Boosters amplify everything, which includes signal noise which in my experience causes an erratic/less consistent data connection. There are high end boosters (3k plus) that have noise filters, but have never tested one.

[Ltebnb4]

Yeah at my location I’d only want one band, band 30... I have two phonetone 65db gain boosters at separate locations. Purchased them without really researching that much(they only amplify super slow band 12/17) and now I’m stuck with them. Most likely gonna do LTE antennas direct to TS9...
But I wanna mess with the stuff I have first, since I can’t find anyone who’s tried it before.
Will be posting speed tests next week when my cable adapters arrive:
-M1 with both phonetone yagis
-M1 direct connect to one booster, booster has auto gain control hoping this protects M1, if it successful I’ll try both direct connect
-M1/iPhone wirelessly with both boosters with antennas for 2x2 mimo

[Ltebnb4]

Okay so tried direct connect with 65db gain and it didn’t hurt my M1 seems to be a myth perpetuated by booster companies to get you to buy m2m boosters Idk... unfortunately got the wrong connectors so need to purchase more before further tests

[Adm1jtg]

I have played with a setup like the one you are proposing. I also tried a small mimo antenna and placing it right under the wireless broadcast panel.

I can give as much detail as you like but the short answer is 2 cheap yagi antrennas and some lmr400 cable converted into smc and feeding the router antenna ports gave much better more consistant results.

[Ltebnb4]

May I ask which booster(s) you were using? And feel free to post as much detail about your setups as u want this stuff is really interesting. And yeah with my booster only working in the 700mhz band, any antenna setup is gonna beat it hands down in a stationary location. Still want to see how it works in my car if I drive out to a dead zone since 700mhz travels further... Have also read about at&t BTS using a kind of low loss, relatively low gain inline amplifier and I’ve seen them going for 90-300$ used, which could be fun to mess around with.
Few more questions:
-has anyone here played around with 4x4 or 6x6 mimo?/how much of a jump have you guys seen with that?
-have been looking at telecom BTS sector/panel antennas, like the 4-6 ft ones... they only have 12dbi gain so not very good compared to some antennas for sale but afaik most online sellers inflate their dbi gain, anyone tried out the antennas I’m talking about?
-I’ve seen lmr400 mentioned a lot, I was planning on just decreasing the RG58 run to my nighthawk as little as possible, putting it in my attic then running Ethernet to load balancing router (I have starlink as well) Is LMR400 that much better for a 15 ft run?

[Adm1jtg]

May I ask which booster(s) you were using?

Hiboost 10k... Absolute requirement for making phone calls from my house (native signal without it was like a -116). So like you I already had the equipment in place and was like I wonder if I could use this to help my internet solution as well. For the internet solution side I purchased a wg3526 and ep06 modem. A dynamite combination for the budget minded. The wg3526 is a step up from the lower end units in 4 aspects, at least for me:
1) Its a larger form factor metal case so much less issue with overheating as larger means more air and metal means better heat dissapation.
2) It has both 2.4 and 5ghz wifi (turns out to be a non issue as i am using a dedicated c800 router now but even so)
3) Gigabit ethernet ports so when you do hook a dedicated router to it you have a 1000mb link instead of a 100mb one.
4) It runs the wifix opensource firmware (better support and configurability)

The EP06 modem was the cheapest solution that met all my requirements:
1) Must support carrier aggregation
2) Must suport band 66 (verizon user)
3) Must be common enough that support forums would be helpfu if I had issues

If I had to do it all over again I would get the same equipment but I would have likey just bought it all pre-assembled from The Wireless Haven. The Wireless Haven had shut down due to covid when I assembled all this so had to get parts from ebay and china.

And feel free to post as much detail about your setups as u want this stuff is really interesting. And yeah with my booster only working in the 700mhz band, any antenna setup is gonna beat it hands down in a stationary location. Still want to see how it works in my car if I drive out to a dead zone since 700mhz travels further... Have also read about at&t BTS using a kind of low loss, relatively low gain inline amplifier and I’ve seen them going for 90-300$ used, which could be fun to mess around with.

Booster works well for phone. My model is a 65db booster on all 4 main frequencies 700, 850, 1900 and 2100. My initial setup was just like your trying, I fed the output of the booster into one of the sma ports on my router with a pigtail adaptor. Found out after that is not recommended as booter companies say it wil burn out your router as they arent made to take that high level of signal. Also was told by The Wireless Haven that running only a single antenna on my wg3526 with ep06 modem was also not recommended as it might damage the modem. It wanted and needed 2 inputs/outputs. So I bought one of these off amazon for my next test.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07 ... UTF8&psc=1

and set it up like the attached picture. All my numbers for things like rssi and rscp looked great but the reality was a somewhat inconsistant expierence. Dropouts and slowdowns that were not shown by the numbers even when looking directly at the router as these dropouts and slowdowns were occurring.

So next I decided to try a dedicated non-powered yagi antenna run directly into one of the routers sma ports and the other router sma port hooked to the adaptor under the wireless panel like in the photo.

Yagi:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00 ... UTF8&psc=1
Cable:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00 ... UTF8&psc=1
Pigtail:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00 ... UTF8&psc=1

Still had a very jumpy signal, meaning it would vary about 10db up or down every second or 2. Again The Wireless Haven to the rescue, they recommended taking my exact setup and simply running a second antenna of the same type and cable to the secondary port of the router and not use the booster at all. Talking with both the The Wireless Haven people and the booster tech support both seem to agree that the booster does not put out a constant signal. It BOOSTS the signal then stops then boosts again very quickly. With the passive non powered yagis I use now the signal is very constant never varying more then a few db at most and stays at the same values for much longer.

Few more questions:
-has anyone here played around with 4x4 or 6x6 mimo?/how much of a jump have you guys seen with that?
Nope but my expierence going from non mimo to mimo was more about stable signal then about huge performance gains.

-have been looking at telecom BTS sector/panel antennas, like the 4-6 ft ones... they only have 12dbi gain so not very good compared to some antennas for sale but afaik most online sellers inflate their dbi gain, anyone tried out the antennas I’m talking about?

The yagis I use are about 7db to 10 db or so. The gain is based on what frequency your using. Also realize the higher the gain the harder it is to accurately aim the antenna. With mine I think you have to be within about a 30 degree arc of the tower your actually pointing at. With a parabolic that can be like a 20 db gain or so its like 8-10 degrees or less. That may not sound like all that much difference but even a 1 degree difference when your pointing over lets says 10 miles like i am is HUGE.

-I’ve seen lmr400 mentioned a lot, I was planning on just decreasing the RG58 run to my nighthawk as little as possible, putting it in my attic then running Ethernet to load balancing router (I have starlink as well) Is LMR400 that much better for a 15 ft run?

You be the judge:
https://www.qsl.net/co8tw/Coax_Calculator.htm
Again depending on the frequency your actively using it could be up to about a 3db difference. Again doesnt sound like a lot but I seem to recall someone saying a 3db change is something like a 50% difference overall. But honestly for me it was simplier then loss and calculators and all, LMR400 is simply the best bang for the buck loss vs cost cable I could find. I knew I NEVER wanted to run cable again so the fact it was more money upfront wasnt an issue. I bought the high end stuff so if I had any issues I would immediately be able to rule out the cable as being an issue,

Lastly you mentioned 700mhz a few times. The frequency that is best is situtational. the lower end like 700 and such is better at penetrating things like buildings and trees and the like. The higher frequencies are typically stronger and have better bandwidth in open areas. In some cases like my own a combination is best. I use band 5 (850mhz range) for all my phone calls and also for my data but have the router setup to agrgregate to 66 (1700/2100 mhz) for extra bandwidth and speed when needed. I am in a heavily wooded and mountainous area.

Please remember all the above is just my personal choices and experiences. I went into detail so you wouldn't just blindly try my choices but understand why I made them so you could determine if they might also be the right choices for you.

Lastly I want to re-iterate The Wireless Haven was closed when I did all my setup thus why I used things from amazon. Every one of the components I used was based pretty much on what The Wireless Haven carried when they were open. The one exception is the antennas and The Wireless Haven does have comparable ones. I dont want you guys or the guys at The Wireless Haven to think for a minute I could have done this without them.

[Ltebnb4]

Dual booster(700mhz) dual antennas got 34mbps down and 3-8 up. 34 down is very close to theoretical max for band 12

[Adm1jtg]

Sounds like you have found your solution then. How is your ecio and sinr? as I have seen really good download and upload speeds but like I said above poor reliability for things like streaming video?

[Ltebnb4]

Sounds like you have found your solution then. How is your ecio and sinr? as I have seen really good download and upload speeds but like I said above poor reliability for things like streaming video?

Didn’t check sinr although I vaguely remember everything being in field test when I used dual.
^ I experienced the same issues you mention about poor reliability/cutting in and out esp with video/high bandwidth activities with single booster, in my case it would sometimes make things run slower than no booster at all. Dual boosters seemed to solve that no more lagging cutting in and out and higher speeds. Granted this was at my grandmas house where I did dual booster test and she has a decent signal speed on roof I get about 40-60mbps. The choppiness with single booster could also have been from constant switching in between unboosted 1 bar of high frequency LTE and boosted 4 bars of 700mhz. Dual boosters stopped switching affect on phone...
Anyways I took all the antennas n stuff down will be doing more tests at my place which has highly variable congested and obstructed signal 2-60mbps depending on weather time of day and vacationers in area...
I currently have my nighthawk plugged into dual yagis indoors with little to no noticeable dB change in nighthawk app still ~ -107 db but uplink and downlink improved, generally over 25 mbps down and 2-7 up, previously uplink was 0.5 - 2 with nighthawks 4x4 internal antennas

-May I ask what the highest download/upload speeds were that you got with booster?

[Adm1jtg]

Sure, Just keep in mind I am like the poster child for worst case scenerios to get good signal. I have mountains and thick trees and my closest tower line of sight is about 10 miles away. Before all this it was difficult to even make a good phone call.

With the booster setup I would get anywhere up to abot 22 meg down and up to about 12 meg up on the best days

With the passive mino setup I get anywhere from about 26 meg down and up to about 8 meg up agaion on best days

So with booster I got better upload speeds wih SLIGHTLY reduced download speeds and with mimo SLIGHTLY better download speeds at the cost of upload speed

Since the only time I really care about upload speeds is for video calls and since anything over about 2 meg up is plenty for that the increased download speeds even though minor were of more relevence to me.

Also the reliability seems better and more consistant on the passive solution (aka the mimo)

[HackeringHam]

You be the judge:
https://www.qsl.net/co8tw/Coax_Calculator.htm
Again depending on the frequency your actively using it could be up to about a 3db difference. Again doesnt sound like a lot but I seem to recall someone saying a 3db change is something like a 50% difference overall. But honestly for me it was simplier then loss and calculators and all, LMR400 is simply the best bang for the buck loss vs cost cable I could find. I knew I NEVER wanted to run cable again so the fact it was more money upfront wasnt an issue. I bought the high end stuff so if I had any issues I would immediately be able to rule out the cable as being an issue,

Lastly you mentioned 700mhz a few times. The frequency that is best is situtational. the lower end like 700 and such is better at penetrating things like buildings and trees and the like. The higher frequencies are typically stronger and have better bandwidth in open areas. In some cases like my own a combination is best. I use band 5 (850mhz range) for all my phone calls and also for my data but have the router setup to agrgregate to 66 (1700/2100 mhz) for extra bandwidth and speed when needed. I am in a heavily wooded and mountainous area.

Please remember all the above is just my personal choices and experiences. I went into detail so you wouldn't just blindly try my choices but understand why I made them so you could determine if they might also be the right choices for you.

Lastly I want to re-iterate The Wireless Haven was closed when I did all my setup thus why I used things from amazon. Every one of the components I used was based pretty much on what The Wireless Haven carried when they were open. The one exception is the antennas and The Wireless Haven does have comparable ones. I dont want you guys or the guys at The Wireless Haven to think for a minute I could have done this without them.

He is right. Lm400 the best, the top of the line. It has very little loss. But do yourself a favor and don't use RG58. VERY MUCH LOSS!!! Rg8x is good and rg 8x is good. They come in right under lm400 as far as what's good!