Trying to decide on antennas

[whpijack]

Hi All. I’ve been reading this site almost non-stop the last few days trying to figure out how to improve my only source of internet at the house. Great info, I’ve learned a lot and appreciate the time everyone takes share their experiences.

I’m a user of AT&T’s former WHPI product. Yesterday I upgraded my old ZTE Z700A router to the IFWA-40 which allowed me to keep my grandfathered in Unlimited Plus plan. I wish I could go with some of the setups you guys are running but at least right now I don’t see a good option for plans and AT&T coverage seems the best in my area… if you loosely define “best”.

Bit of background, I’ve been running the Z700A since 2017. I modded it back in the day with an external SMA port and have been running either a 698-2700MHz Wide Band Directional Log Periodic Antenna or weBoost Outdoor Directional Yagi Antenna 301111 for 700/800/900 MHz Band with varying degrees of success. Antennas were connected to the Z700A with 25ft of LMR400. I won’t lie, the antennas have been moved A LOT as signal would get bad, snow was flying and I just needed internet. Quick job to get it running and figured I’d fix it later. Well later has finally come.

Last night I upgraded to the IFWA-40 router at AT&T store. I brought it home, fired it up and managed to get 2-3 “bars” on LTE using it’s internal antennas. I want to say that equates to -103 to -108 signal. Speed tests were abysmal, 2-3mbps down, 1 up if I was lucky. But it connected with internal antennas to LTE, something the old router wouldn’t do.

Next step, hook it up to the 700MHz Yagi. I saw a small bit of signal improvement but minimal in terms of speed. Maybe up to 4-5 mbps. We messed around with antenna pointing for a while, aiming for the towers, but I never seemed to get much better speeds or signal. Then tried with the wideband. Similar results. Nothing earth shattering for speeds. Almost like the external antenna had no effect on it. Then we started the inevitable try every combination known to man in effort to find a signal and get the thing running for the night. Throughout all this a trip to the roof netted one of the best speed tests yet, somewhere between 25-30 down and 6-7 up. But it wasn’t consistent, next test was back down at 4-5. I want to say this test was with the internal antennas only – but it could have been with the wideband connected, things started to become a blur as the sun was setting and the rest of the members of the household didn’t have internet.

We finally settled on a spot for the night inside the house, on a plant stand about 3 feet off the floor, in front of my patio door. Signal is about -103 and It’s doing 6-8 down and a choppy 1-2 up.

If you’re still with me, thanks for reading! Now I’m at the point of trying to figure out what antennas I should go with. I’m starting to suspect that the current antennas I have, and possibly even the LMR400 cable are bad since I don’t notice much if any signal or speed difference when using them. As I said they’ve been moved A LOT, LMR connections were never wrapped, lots of winter weather up here, basically I was lazy when I did this the first time.

There are 2 towers that I can work with.
One is ~2.1 miles away and has bands 2 & 12
The other is ~1.45 miles away and seems to only have band 2.
Both towers have trees in the way and fun topology.

I did some homework over the weekend and found exactly where the towers were. The online crowd sourced sites were wrong. It sounds like that’s a good thing to know for going forward in order to calculate the exact heading and point the antennas with a compass.

Today I plotted the towers and house on google earth to get an idea of the foliage in the way. I also plotted the paths on Ubiquiti’s AirLink page setting the tower heights to what they’re registered as (I finally was able to figure out which ones they were when I physically located them.)

Each tower has it’s challenges. I’ve read through swwifty’s review on the 15dBi LTE Directional Panels and seem to be leaning toward those as they seem to work well and tolerate some beam “scatter” if you will due to the foliage, moreso than a Yagi. Another thought I have is would an Omni be better… given that the router’s internals can grab an OK-ish signal now maybe an Omni would be enough to push it to a better place and tolerate some of the “scatter” better. I’d like to use 2 antennas for MIMO or one that does MIMO, just hoping to get some thoughts before I start throwing money at this. I think I can get away with a max run of 25 ft LMR400 if I mounted the antennas on my garage and the router in the garage. Possibly shorter…

Here's the aerial view of my house and the 2 towers.

Aerial View.jpg

Google earth with topology to the tower with PCI=153-154

Topography to 153.jpg

AirLink for tower with PCI=153-154

Airlink to 153.jpg

Google earth with topology to the tower with PCI=303-304

Topography to 303.jpg

AirLink for tower with PCI=303-304

Airlink to 303.jpg

I appreciate any info, thoughts, suggestions, criticisms... Thank you for reading. Fingers crossed I can get a bit better internet and be able to work from home!

Thanks.

[Didneywhorl]

You've done some work! Good stuff!

The best setups Ive seen put the router up as high as possible, outdoors, WITH the antennas.

1. If your not using 2 external antennas, like your unit is using internally, possibly 4, your really spinning your wheels.

2. All units can be placed outdoors and powered via poe with simple gear.


Ok, so you got on the roof with your unit and you had great signal. Proof of getting your antennas up higher will help. Many people have simply mounted their unit in a weatherproof enclosure on a pole on the roof. This can substantially improve signals. Getting the interwebz into the house from there depends on your router/hotspot/modem. Does it have a LAN port? Can it be tethered to a router that does via usb? Etc.

I personally HATE long antenna runs. The losses in signal, degradation, are ridiculous compared to a simple LAN cable run.

I use, and recommend, dual mimo flat panel antennas like the ones found on The Wireless Haven.coms website. Ive purchased 2 and run both as a quad antenna setup.

I would only use omnis if I had no clue where my signal was coming from OR if I used it as a mobile (think camping, RV, trucking, etc) internet solution. The issue is, you can lock frequency bands but you can't lock towers. Your modem may decide it likes the tower that is more congested than the one you want that is always faster. Modems dont care about speed, and dont seem to care about signal strength sometimes. A directional narrows down tower choices and always has higher signal gain ability.

I would go with the highest gain, simplest install, within my budget options.
Some of the dual mimo antennas off The Wireless Haven has a large housing that is weather tite and can house your router and related gear.

Power can be obtained via poe on any device using poe splitters and injectors. The injector takes a plain lan data cable and "injects" power on one end. The splitter on the other end takea the power off the LAN cable and shunts it to a power cord of your choice. Usb, 2.1mm, 2.5mm, etc. It acts as your devices dc power supply. The caveat is your limited to one power output per splitter... for now.

I can go into any details you need.

There are detailed tutorials of some of this here and people thoughts and posts you can search through on the facebook group.

[whpijack]

Thanks for the reply!

So yesterday I did some scrounging through my parts boxes at home and the office and noticed what is probably impacting me a TON. My N to SMA adapter, on the SMA side, is missing the pin! I'm not sure when this happened but it definitely can't be a good thing!

SMA.jpg

I did find a N male to SMA male cable at work which allowed me to do some more testing last night with my antennas. I seemed to get a bit better results than before however the cable is quite long, probably 20 feet, and a low grade cable, definitely not an LMR. It seems more like an RG. So I'm thinking the low grade cable is negating my gain from the antenna. Back to square one!

I think I'm on the same page with your #1 point - I need to feed 2 antenna inputs into this thing. Otherwise it's getting 1 better signal from the external ant and 1 low grade signal from the internal ant, at least that's my thinking... and it's struggling to aggregate / MIMO / whatever LTE stuff it does.

After reading through the reviews again I'm pretty much sold on the DP727L15 15dBi panels from thewirelesshaven.com. I get the feeling these respond better to a non-LOS path with trees and topography challenges than a Yagi style. I simply can't find a sweet spot with the Yagis I have. Pointing directly at the tower is often worse than pointing off in a different direction so it seems like the signal is scattering, probably due to the trees.

I'm almost ready to pull the trigger on 2 of the DP727L15's today and try to get them going in a MIMO setup. For now I'm thinking of using the The Wireless Haven duplex LMR200 cables, 10 ft, which should be long enough for testing and possibly a final install... or at least a temporary install while I figure out the final lengths needed for LMR400. I'm hoping to get this stuff by the weekend. It might be difficult to pull off.

Thanks for the info on the POE splitters. I didn't know they made them that can split off and power the router via 5v, very interesting. My hopes are that I can mount this on my garage, keep the router close, then use an existing ethernet run in the garage back to my house network. I like the idea of keeping the router in the garage. It gets very cold here in the winter time and I think with the router being in the garage at least it's protected a bit.

Here goes nothing!

[mtl26637]

It looks like you put quite a bit of effort into your topology layout. That airlink website sure comes in handy for that. One thing I noticed you did not mention was fresnel zone. Keep in mind even a direct line of site will still potentially have issues if not at a minimum height or if any obstructions within the fresnel zone. All depends on distance between antenna and tower. Might check out wiki page on fresnel zone if you are not familiar. Just thought I'd throw this out there as it 'could' explain some of your results also.

[whpijack]

The flat panels arrived today. Amazing service from The Wireless Haven!! I had to take them for a test drive.
Top 4 speeds are standing on my porch, holding the antennas in my hand and guessing at where the tower is. Pretty stable 20 download!
Bottom 4 speeds are to a tower in the opposite direction.

Now to get these babies up high on a pole!

What do you guys use for poles? I've seen references to 2" PVC and fence poles.

So glad I found this site! Cant wait for warmer weather tomorrow and some fast speeds!

20200410_160421.jpg

[JimHelms]

Depending on how high you need to go, you might look at a set of THESE. I purchased a set for another project and really like them.

[Didneywhorl]

Please don't use PVC. Your antenna will be swaying all over. I actually used fence posts, welded two together to get 14'. There are lots of creative ideas out there. Just make sure you ground it

[gscheb]

At my sister's house we used a fiberglass pole. Then used three wire ties to stabilize it.
Works good and since isn't metal lighting shouldn't be as big as a concern and extremely lighter. Went this route since she didn't have antenna tower.

IMG_20200412_151149236_HDR.jpg

[mtl26637]

Might check around in rural areas for old American Tower Company 'Special Series' TV antennas. They were very popular before Satellite TV. I'd hate to know how many have been removed and tossed in the trash in the past 10-20 years since that era OTA signals were kinda a thing of the past. They come in ~10' sections. I found an old used one and took it down and gave it a new paint job and bought the 3' hinged base from American Tower Company to replace my old base from long ago. I think the general rule was you could go 3 sections above the highest mount point. Mine would be around ~43' tall and worked out well. I used a boat trailer wench mounted to the house for the pulley system to lower it rather than climbing it. Too high for me!

[whpijack]

Hey guys, thanks for the replies.

So I ended up sticking a 10' section of 1-1/4" EMT conduit in an existing tripod mount on my garage roof. I was going to try to mount it on the eaves however ground testing wasn't much of a success. I figured I needed the height to get over the trees more so than the eave mount would allow before guy wires are needed.

I've had varying degrees of success with this. I initially pointed to a tower (PCI 303 above, 1.45 miles away) that seems to only supply band 2. I've stopped over by it 3 times now and drove around the area. My cell phone will only grab band 2 on that tower. If I get far enough away it will grab a different tower all together. Anyhow, I managed to get about 20-25 down pointed at that tower and signal was showing -102, -103ish. Sorry, that's all the info I get out of my AT&T box.

That was Saturday evening. Sunday afternoonish the speeds started really deteriorating. I reset the modem a few times without much benefit. Rain was rolling in so I wonder if the atmosphere change was having an effect.

Jumped up on the roof Sunday afternoon and rotated the mast toward the other tower (PCI 153 above, 2 miles away.) I managed to get a better signal, -92 or so but speeds were only 10-15. Rains were coming so I got off the roof and left it.

Monday was very windy but the pole stayed upright!
Tuesday, Wednesday and Today have been a bit snowy.
I noticed the signal strength last night was -98. I'm wondering if the winds twisted or angled the pole a bit.

Problem I'm having now is the speeds will be great at times. I can get up to 30mbps at times. Other times I struggle to get 2. When it gets down to the unbearable speeds I'll power cycle the modem and speeds will usually return to the 20 range. How long they remain there is a big variable though.

One thought I have is - I now have my AT&T modem mounted on the pole in a temporary enclosure (read, plastic tote)... the way the IFWA-40 device appears to be designed is the external ports are connected to the same circuitry that the internal antennas are connected to. Perhaps the device is seeing something else from the internal antennas and switching bands/towers rather than using what is coming just from the externals. One of my next steps once I can safely get back on the roof is bust the IFWA-40 open and remove the internal antennas. That way no interference, just externals. Unfortunately I don't have nice data that a Sierra modem would provide but I'm plan-locked with AT&T and this thing.

I've never really gotten great upload speeds, 2-3ish and sluggish to get going. I've been starting to think that upload is a better indicator of antenna pointing than download or signal strength. Reason, I need to shoot my upload at the tower at a relatively low power through a lot of obstacles. If I'm not aimed right the tower won't hear it and speeds will suffer. So I've been tuning more to upload speeds than download.

I've been trying to come up with a game plan for this weekend if I can get on the roof. Weatherman says I can but you know...

#1 - remove those internal antennas from the IFWA-40
#2 - play with antenna placement some more. Right now they're at the top of the 10' mast. I'm thinking of bringing them down to 5', so I can reach them, and test some different orientations. Thoughts on angling up if tower is higher than my house, angling side to side to pick up reflections differently or anything else? I think this is just going to be a lot of trial and error.
#3 - play with some other antennas I have. I have a band 12/17 yagi and a wideband log (the triangleish plastic covered type.)
#4 - if #2/3 don't work, go higher! Not sure how I'm going to do this yet but I'll figure it out. I like the 4' mast sections that Jim posted. They seem relatively inexpensive and somewhat modular.

Thoughts about pointing each antenna at a different tower? I don't think CA will work for different towers though...

Lastly, if you're still reading (I really appreciate it!)... thoughts on these? [url]http://zdacomm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/ZDADJ700YG-1.pdf[/url] The ZDADJ700-16YG. I found a surplus place that has 17 of these and offered them to me $65 each. I thought those might help if I decide to go with the tower that has band 2 and somewhat force it to use band 12/17 because I can't do it in my modem.

Other thought would be a high gain parabolic grid if I aim at the tower with band 2 only to force it to not jump to the 12/17 tower.

Bottom line, it's better at times than it ever has been. I've never hit 25-30. But the slow times are right back where I was before the dual flat panels using the internal antennas.

Thanks

[Didneywhorl]

When you get lower speeds, and it returns after a reboot, for a while, does it ONLY go back up in speed after a reboot? It sounds like your being de-prioritized, which can be bypassed sometime temporarily by resets. Does your UL speed also go down, does it stay the same and only the DL speed drops? Also check your signal info AND speed to see if something correlates.

Your setup looks good, just make sure you have the antennas oriented 90 degrees from each other. I cant tell from the picture. Maybe put them a little further a part? Prob wont matter, but I don't think it'll hurt..

Do NOT point the antennas at different towers. It wont work. It may be possible in the future, or with some settings Sorcery, but ... no.

The antennas you posted is a narrow band antenna, I think you'll be better off with the ones you have. 15dbi wide band flat panels are hard to beat for the price.

[whpijack]

I thought about the de-pri possibility. I wouldn't say it ONLY goes back up after a reboot. Last night I went to bed with it running poorly. I woke up and saw 25-30 down going to my daughter's new Xbox. Since the modem is on the roof I'm pretty sure nobody other than me knows how to reset it.

UL seems to stay consistently low. 1-3.

I know I'm way over my 22gb non-depri allowance with my Unlimited Plus plan. Seems like de-pri wouldn't be that big of a cut back especially in a rural area like mine. I left the house when it was running poorly and my phone got increasingly better speeds as I got closer to the tower. At the base I topped out at 110 down. If it can give my phone 110 that doesn't seem like the tower is overloaded enough to only warrant 2-5 at home. Sounds more like throttling than de-pri. Which is why I'm leading to it being a signal issue more than de-pri. My phone can run at slow speeds when I'm navigating through the wooded roads until I get a clearer path.

Yep, orientation is 90. I'll try a bit further apart. Maybe a little upward angle. Maybe a little side to side angling too.

I don't really want to get into the antenna parts cannon if I don't have to. The 15dbi panels seem to get good reviews. I was just thinking if I'm on 12/17 700 the gain is probably less than 15. Maybe the 16dbi 700 specific yagi's would be a better idea.

Thanks, I'll see where I can get with this thing this weekend.

[terryjett]

Will give you my take on your speed issues. I am experiencing the same. One hour (heck few minutes) speed is good, then goes to nothing. In rural area.

Have AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile (simplemobile) all running on different devices. They are all over the place when it comes to speed. Good one hour and bad the next. Even my Verizon phone internet is slow and it normally rocks.

So my reasoning: everyone is working from home. Students are learning from home. Herds of people are using video (zoom, etc.). You will have a hard time getting your share of bandwidth with all this going on.

Speed tests are not really going to tell the whole truth...

Just my take on the issue

[whpijack]

Yep that thought has been in my mind as well. It's frustrating for sure especially when fiber is being rolled out to those that already have cable access, hotspot plans being discontinued and so on and so on. Then there is me with DSL 1.5, satellite or LTE. Even when slow my LTE is faster than the DSL and I'd never survive on satellite. Ugh!

Fingers crossed for SpaceX's offering because I highly doubt anyone will come down my road.

I wish I could see signal strengths too more than my AT&T device provides. I found that the device has a CLI via telnet or ssh but I dont know the login. I wonder if more info is buried in there.

More playing this weekend. I have a feeling its capacity or deprioritization but still want to play with signals.

Take care, updates to come.

[terryjett]

Yep that thought has been in my mind as well. It's frustrating for sure especially when fiber is being rolled out to those that already have cable access, hotspot plans being discontinued and so on and so on. Then there is me with DSL 1.5, satellite or LTE. Even when slow my LTE is faster than the DSL and I'd never survive on satellite. Ugh!

Fingers crossed for SpaceX's offering because I highly doubt anyone will come down my road.

I wish I could see signal strengths too more than my AT&T device provides. I found that the device has a CLI via telnet or ssh but I dont know the login. I wonder if more info is buried in there.

More playing this weekend. I have a feeling its capacity or deprioritization but still want to play with signals.

Take care, updates to come.

Man, I am in your shoes. Lived with 7mb down / .764kb up DSL for years. Never got those speeds, but plan was on. More like 4-5mb down and .400kb up. Live in a town that is 1.5 sq miles so chance of cable or any fiber plan slim to none for years to come. LTE has been a blessing and do my very best not to abuse the network, even have video set to SD stream.

SpaceX. Oh yea, can't wait to see what it truly offers. Have done my best to find a waiting list and even tweet to Mr Musk begging to be beta tester:) If you live out in rural area where it get good and dark, look up on space.com how to locate the SpaceX satellites, pretty cool to locate/see.

Never stop playing and tweaking for more speed!

[whpijack]

I'm in a pretty similar boat. The unfortunate part of where I live is Spectrum is about 1/2 mile from the end of my road. I've tried so many times to get them to run service, even using my enterprise connections (we have Spectrum fiber at the office) and no go. Not cost effective.

That's interesting about seeing the satellites. I'll have to check that out. I've done the same research, cant find a sign up either. If you ever find anything let me know!

I need to pick up a pair of binoculars too. I want to see if I can see the towers or at least their blinking lights at night. Right now I'm not sure how much tree interference I have. Trial and error. I'm running better than I ever have before, at the fast times. Before I touched this with a 10 foot pole (ha ha) I was getting the slow 2-5 constantly. That's keeping my Hope's up that it's still a signal issue since I did greatly improve speeds at times. It seems like there are a lot of factors to how the LTE signal flies in the air. Obstacles, metal roofs, ground magnetic, weather. Fun stuff.

[balancedvas]

Depending on how high you need to go, you might look at a set of THESE. I purchased a set for another project and really like them.

Are these stiff/stable enough to not require guy wires? They sell a 32 ft version as well, but in my mind I would think they have some wobble to them.