Questions about Ubifi and Mofi 4500

[fmj435]

I have a home and cabin with the typical rural internet struggles. I found Ubifi and decided to give it a try and it eventually lead me here which is an absolute sight for sore eyes. I love living outside of town but internet is the cause of so much anxiety.

My question is if Ubifi is the way to go for this? It seems like having a truly unlimited plan for this would be the end all beat all or are there other options?

Second item I am working through and would love some input on is if there is a way I can utilize the Mofi 4500 that you seemingly have to purchase to get ubifi and adapt it to a setup using a Raspi mounted near the antennas. In both of my situations I have 40 foot channelmaster antennas that I would use so having some way of shortening the run of cable from the antenna seems like the best setup.

Thank you for any help!

[Didneywhorl]

Welcome to the cult of unlimited Data Plans

Clarify please, why would you need to use a mofi4500 (a whitelabeled zbt we826 with an old sierra wireless mc7455 modem) and a pi to use ubify?

The near the antenna parts makes sense because shortest antenna cables possible is always best.

Ill have to lookup your antennae, not familiar. Links?

[fmj435]

I guess I'm not sure if the raspi makes sense given the hardware I already have. This is what Ufi sells https://www.ufi.net/product/mofi-sim4-4g-lte-gateway/ I had no idea that in order to work properly you should have 2 antennas though. So i purchased one antenna https://www.ufi.net/product/directional ... r-antenna/ and 75 ft of cable from them. RIght now I have that one antenna plugged in and I get -110dbm band 4 and if it lock it to band 12 I get -96dbm. Speeds vary a lot between 20-40mbps and it also just seems like it is in general all over the place with both speeds and signal. If I walk 300 yards down the road to a clearing that faces toward the antenna I get 140mbps on band 66 with my cell phone (a samsung s8 active which has pretty bad reception) which is also At&T. It is pretty wooded in between the clearing and my cabin though.

I suppose I could just mount the ubifi router in a dry box on the tower and run power up to it? Or does an extra 30-40 feet of cable not affect much in the long run?

[Didneywhorl]

The router is a ZBT WE826, it maxxes out at about 90Mbps, because the LAN is only 100Mbit LAN. It has a category 6 modem in it, and can do a little better, but not much, nothing you can do on that. The modem being cat6 will always be slower than your way more powerful S8 phone, which has a category 16 modem chip. You cant compare the two, but you can use the phone to check the capabilities of a particular cell tower.

Long runs of antenna cable cancel out the gains from the antenna, sometimes it cant be helped. Short as possible is best. LMR400 is always advised if you want the lesser of the losses from cabling, still losses though.

Try comparing signal strength from inside the house to dry mounting the router, with the oem antennas, no cables, up on the highest spot you can outside. If you get better signal ten it will be a great idea to then try with the antennas attached with shorter cables. Mounting inside a weatherproof box is popular and works well.

I like to use the info on this page https://usatcorp.com/faqs/understanding ... th-values/ to roughly understand signal info basics. Some numbers will look opposite of what the others are telling, but you should get a general idea of when the signal is better.

If you get your signal values in the excellent zone of the chart and your speeds aren't where you think they could be, then you may be dealing with limitations on the tower, which you can not control, but with outdoor directional antennas you CAN reach out to a different tower simply by directing them to it. Its not easy, but it is fairly simple.
I'm still not sure where a rpi would come into play People use them as routers sometimes, but the MOFI is the router in this case.

[fmj435]

Thanks for the info.

I noticed that the modems I look at don't seem to list band 66. Is this just because it is looped in with band 4?

[Didneywhorl]

I don't think so.

There's plenty out there that support B66 ... Check this site for a good list of cards. Prices arent the best, but they have a good listing of modules....

https://techship.com/products/category/ ... r-modules/

[fmj435]

I've learned a few things in the past week. Ubifi only supports the modem they sell, as in they say you can't use there sim in a modem capable of grabbing band 66. Which really sucks. I found the best tower on ATT for me and a signal from it on band 66 with speeds of 130mbps+ but now I don't know what I could use for a sim in that modem. Is there another ATT sim card option out there? Thanks for the help.

[Didneywhorl]

ATT isn't real fun in that regard. They IMEI scan their devices