Need for better antenna?

[Lylodc]

I have recently setup a WE868 with a MC7455 and upgraded 700-2700MHz 4dGi antennas. I am using a visible sim with a verizon tower 1mi away from my house. Thick forest lies between me and the tower.

I generally get about 4-5 bars of service on my cell with the visible card and 5-10mbps down.

With the MC7455 I am barely getting 1-2mbps down.

Code: Select all

at!gstatus?
!GSTATUS: 
Current Time:  904		Temperature: 52
Reset Counter: 1		Mode:        ONLINE         
System mode:   LTE        	PS state:    Attached     
LTE band:      B13    		LTE bw:      10 MHz  
LTE Rx chan:   5230		LTE Tx chan: 23230
LTE CA state:  INACTIVE    		LTE Scell band:B4     
LTE Scell bw:10 MHz  		LTE Scell chan:2350
EMM state:     Registered     	Normal Service 
RRC state:     RRC Connected  
IMS reg state: No Srv  		

PCC RxM RSSI:  -62		RSRP (dBm):  -93
PCC RxD RSSI:  -62		RSRP (dBm):  -92
SCC RxM RSSI:  -81		RSRP (dBm):  -124
SCC RxD RSSI:  -83		RSRP (dBm):  -123
Tx Power:      15		TAC:         0820 (2080)
RSRQ (dB):     -12.4		Cell ID:     001FB603 (2078211)
SINR (dB):     -12.4[/size]

Is it normal for my setup to get less signal than a cell phone? Should I upgrade to an outdoor antenna or the cisco LTE antenna kit?

[BillA]

Your primary band 13 has good signal but the secondary band 4 is pretty weak. If the modem is trying to aggregate those two bands, that could be the issue for your slow speeds. Try setting band 13 as the only band in your modem and see if your speeds improve. Keep in mind Visible is running their own servers on top of Verizon's, so you will likely not get any higher speeds than what see on your phone (5-10Mbps) at best. I don't think an external antenna/booster would help in this case, course you could try it, but don't invest too much time and money till you try the above method first.

To find a good secondary channel, you could go restrict your modem one band at a time till you find a good signal besides band 13. There may or may not be any good usable bands in your area besides 13. If you find a good second band, then you could set your modem to those two bands (band 13 + x) for CA to work properly.

[Lylodc]

Thanks for the reply. Played around with selecting bands for a while, but it doesnt seem to change much. I just left it to choose what it wants. Band 13 definitely has best signal, with band 4 randomly peaking to a great signal.

I do seem to be getting better speeds now, even though i dont think i changed anything. It seems to be even hitting the hotspot data cap at 5Mbps. I will work on overcoming that, but its still faster than my only other option for internet (DSL at 1Mbps).

Verizon seems to be by far the best coverage at my house, visible being the first option I found with unlimited plan. Will maybe look around for a plan through another thrid party verizon carrier.

[BillA]

Thanks for the reply. Played around with selecting bands for a while, but it doesnt seem to change much. I just left it to choose what it wants. Band 13 definitely has best signal, with band 4 randomly peaking to a great signal.

I do seem to be getting better speeds now, even though i dont think i changed anything. It seems to be even hitting the hotspot data cap at 5Mbps. I will work on overcoming that, but its still faster than my only other option for internet (DSL at 1Mbps).

Verizon seems to be by far the best coverage at my house, visible being the first option I found with unlimited plan. Will maybe look around for a plan through another thrid party verizon carrier.

If you are using Visible's service, then I'm afraid there's nothing you can do to overcome their 5Mbps speed limit.
Visible's running their own servers on top of the Verizon network, therefore they have full control over packet filtering, including speed limit. The only thing you could try, is running a VPN to mask you traffic, your mileage may vary. Unlike with other carriers where you could adjust the TTL to bypass throttling, there's nothing you can do on Visible. The old adage certainly holds true "You get what you pay for". The least expensive unthrottled Verizon based service is PagePlus for $55/month, followed by Verizon's own prepaid at $70/month.

[gscheb]

Wow so there really isn't a TTL for Visible to get around the throttling?

[Lylodc]

TTL settings dont seem to have any effect. I was able to work around it on my phone by using pdanet for a hotspot.

[BillA]

TTL settings dont seem to have any effect. I was able to work around it on my phone by using pdanet for a hotspot.

That's because PDANet creates a local VPN between the phone and computer, basically hiding all your traffic. Unfortunately the router doesn't have that capability, other than using a VPN on you computer, but you can't do that with lots of other devices (Xbox, IoT, etc).