Wireless Joint

Hey all, new to the boards... I am gonna be honest... I am so far out of the loop on this one. I dont really understand how to make it all work.

Here is the deal, My wife and I, as well as our 2 kids are going off grid, and for the first time in my life I will not have access to affordable internet options

there are some options but they dont really bring anything impressive to the table...

Then I heard about Visible wireless. I got a sim and took it out to where we will be living so that I could test it...

I located the closest Verizon cell tower(Visible uses Verizon) and desire being only 4G LTE at the location, the speed looked great... 89mbps down and 68mbps up

I went about 2 miles away(as the crow flies) at our campsite and still had similar numbers...

I checked and could clearly see I was on Band 66

Then I went out to my property site, kind of down in a holler and it puts some trees between my property and the cell tower.... it's maybe 300 yards from the campsite... Cell strength drops down quite a bit at that point... and speeds where around 4mbps down/0.750 mbps up...

I checked the signal and it seems that the it has switched to band 13.... My plan to solve this is a Cell signal band 66 ONLY booster on a 20-30 foot tall push up pole... I know that will solve this issue


But that is not the only issue...

It turns out that Visible throttles the hotspot function to 5mbps down... but doesnt seem to throttle uploads(not sure about tethering though...) I need to figure out how to get around the throttling...

It also seems they limit how many can connect to the hotspot... not hard to work around but... maybe a simple travel router?

I guess one option is that I could merge my wife's cell phone hotspot and mine together when i need a faster downloads?

Welcome to the forum!

First, you don't need a booster, you can use a narrow band antenna, like a yagi or narrow band flat panel antenna. For going through trees, using a flat panel usually works better. A booster is great if you also need cell phone use, but you seem to be focused on data speed, so I say skip the expensive booster.


Second, bypassing Visibles hotspot throttle is easy, for now. All you need is a router that can change the TTL value of the IPV4 packets from your network, and HL value of IPV6.

I made a tutorial on TTL here: https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2752

The above recommended antenna solution should resolve your signal strength issues just fine, I can add nothing to that recommendation, other then you may want to research MIMO for your antenna solution.

Using a dedicated router will solve your other issues:
1) It will allow you to set TTL like mentioned above
2) It will allow multiple simultanious users as visible will only see it as a single devive no matter how many are using it
3) You can lock the lte band(s) used... in your case you could tell it ONLY use 66

Personally I use a wg3526 and an ep06 modem but there are many combinations possible and this may or may not be the best combination for your specific situtation. I have anpther post on here where I listed my reasoning for picking this exact euipment. If your interested I will try and find the link for you.

Welcome ericfx1984

Both Didneywhorl and Adm1jtg have given excellent advice.

The only thing I can add is you may want to get the WG3526 with the PoE option.
Part number WG3526-P, this would give you the option to use power over ethernet.

This would allow to put the WG3526-P in an enclosure and be able to keep your antenna cables very short. You could mount both the modem and antennas on the 30Ft pole. And run just one Cat-6 Ethernet cable from the pole to the house will no signal loss.

Doing this stuff is not as scary as it looks, you will be in good hands.

Get with the boys at the The Wireless Haven store, to have them help you be your families hero.

Cheers

https://thewirelesshaven.com/shop/routers/lte-routers/wg3526-p

Here is an example

See link for more clues
https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=37 ... ure#p17977

Here is another example.

This guy used the BIG guns

Would start out small and simple and hardware as needed
The only hard part is the SIM/Data Plan
Some have had luck with getting a data only plan for an iPad

Hello.
Will also say booster not needed for sure for lte data use. I like we826 and em12 and a parabolic antenna for visible.