Internet suggestions, thoughts, ideas for rural area

[Pinky]

If you come up with a make and model I would enjoy reviewing it.

Coworker got back so I had him send the link. He added that it's directional, and to play around a bit with best positioning before finalizing the install/mounting.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0024R4B5C/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1&pldnSite=1

I see it says 70+ miles, I thought it was one of those 150 mile models. Good thing we verified as I was incorrectly guessing at what he bought.

We're roughly 20 miles from our towers, fwiw.

And I'll need to find my attic; I know it's up there somewhere.

Climb upwards through your home, taking path of least resistence. If you can see trees and feel the wind, reverse a couple steps.

 

[Robert17]

Thanks for the link. I remember going up into the attic to orient a similar antenna about 50 years ago when my folks bought a color TV, a first. My mom wanted to watch the Arkansas/Tennessee bowl game but the broadcast was blacked out locally so we picked it up from a station about 120 miles away, from up river.

Attic; if I remember correctly, up from the ground floor, right? Getting too old for this.......

 

[Pinky]

Attic; if I remember correctly, up from the ground floor, right? Getting too old for this.......

You can start from the basement if necessary, just takes longer.

 

[Robert17]

I've been relatively inactive for a couple of months since we moved. Haven't been Folding due to, after the move, having to solve this cellular connectivity issue. I got a Smoothtalker Stealth Z1 cellular booster kit and mounted it soon after the move but had only been getting bars about 2/3 of the time I attempted which fouled up my Folding. A couple of weeks ago I was able to find the time to replace the small bar antenna that came with the kit with a Yagi directional antenna and have improved my reception by a bar or two when I get signal which is about 90-95% of the time, so that worked out well.

But I am still gone quite a bit (covered 740 miles Wednesday alone) so that's a Folding issue as I take my cell phone with me when traveling (who doesn't, show of hands). Otherwise I've been clearing brush and can now see all the dirt I own. Spraying for ticks, chiggers, and mosquitoes has made a big difference as well. The numbers of repairs and upgrades have been countless. Replaced the insulation on my low pressure AC line today as well as mowed. Oh, and did I mention the tree that fell on the house? Yeah, big sucker too. Took 6 weeks to get all the skilled labor to take care of all the details. The county owns the property south of us and there's an Act of God rider in their insurance which, after my insurer took care of their obligation, still set me back $2500. So the Wilson cellular booster, a reportedly more powerful booster, will have to wait a bit.

So for those of you with similar connectivity issues, there is hope. I'll post what the next upgrade to the booster issues may result in.

Glad to be back. Glad to have some time to be back. Glad that bug spray works. Blessings all around.

 

[Robert17]

Got the Wilson WeBoost 4G booster and replaced the Z1. I had contacted T-Mobile's corporate office, our carrier, a couple of weeks ago regarding the location of the nearest cellular tower, after contacting a national installation/servicing company for towers, hoping to get some better directional guidance for aiming my Yagi antenna. Corporate confirmed what the cell tower folks told me, that there aren't any nearby. And not just T-Mobile, no one. So anyone checking "cell tower locator" websites need to be aware that they aren't accurate. Since I swapped out the boosters a week ago I've been able to get 99+% first try on getting connected to the cellular network. And have seen 3-4 bars fairly often as opposed to 1-2 bars on my phone which sort of worked, but seemingly not when I wanted, just when the serendipitous winds allowed. A few weeks ago when I posted the photo above, the upload time was 5 minutes. Although I haven't tried to upload since the upgrade, just typing this without interruption or slowdown has me thinking this is going to work out pretty well.

Just for giggles, my wife and I were near a small town about 10 miles from here, pop 900, visiting a State park/lake, and when the lady at the gate asked where we are from and we responded, she laughed and said "Y'all are really out in the middle of nowhere". So I guess the plan worked.

 

[CommTech]

Corporate confirmed what the cell tower folks told me, that there aren't any nearby. And not just T-Mobile, no one.

I have setup clients that had zero reception at there home but up the mountain behind their house there was good signal, ended up putting the cell-modem (Digi WR31) in a weatherproof enclosure top of the mountain.
Then sent the Ethernet over an Ethernet extender (VDSL) down the mountain 3/4 of a mile to the home which had another Ethernet extender to convert back to standard 10/100 Ethernet which then feeds house system.

Your in Texas so I'm not sure if you have hills or not where you are, but with Ethernet extenders you can put the Cellular modem where it works well and send the data back to your home on a single pair of copper.

If not near hills, or mountains maybe there is a tall tree that has a better line of site to tower possibly?

 

[ihrsetrdr]

I have setup clients that had zero reception at there home but up the mountain behind their house there was good signal, ended up putting the cell-modem (Digi WR31) in a weatherproof enclosure top of the mountain.
Then sent the Ethernet over an Ethernet extender (VDSL) down the mountain 3/4 of a mile to the home which had another Ethernet extender to convert back to standard 10/100 Ethernet which then feeds house system.

Your in Texas so I'm not sure if you have hills or not where you are, but with Ethernet extenders you can put the Cellular modem where it works well and send the data back to your home on a single pair of copper.

If not near hills, or mountains maybe there is a tall tree that has a better line of site to tower possibly?

Hmmm, this sounds like a viable alternative to going with a satellite service like HughesNet, at least cost-wise... yes?

 

[CommTech]

Exactly, my choices were satellite and Dial-up which both suck!

Started with a AT&T hotspot but needed more flexibility and found the Digi Transport series of cellular routers.

Found out T-Mobile added towers 6 miles from me so I connected to T-Mobile as the data/pricing was good.

The Digi Transport WR31 costs around $500
The Ethernet extenders ED3141 are around $800 for the pair
The power supply with battery backup costs around $300
Cat-6, 3 WAP's and 2 Ethernet switches costed around $400
Total cost around $2000 for all parts to build system

Monthly fees from T-Mobile $70 for T-Mobile One, then add unlimited Hotspot 4G-LTE data for $25, Total $95
The data plan supposedly deprioritizes data at 50 GB but I have seen no significant slow down and run closer to 100 GB/Month

Data speeds vary but are around 7-15 Down / 2-5 Up 20-35ms ping, I have neighbors that get faster speeds too, I have too many trees with less line of sight...

 

[Robert17]

Agreed CommTech. What I pay for T-Mobile One with the 50GB adder is still cheaper than my previous experiences with DSL + phones in the city, and now the speeds are comparable.

 

[Robert17]

It's a couple of months later and some here will notice I'm reading/posting up a bit more often. Business travel still keeps my Folding at bay as being gone frequently buggers with the QRB. I've 'failed' on a couple of WU's due to the time away.

On the cellular reception discussion, I've come to relate to some of the very helpful commentary in the posts above. Storms near the largest city, 35 miles away, cut out both TV and cellular signals more often than not. We had one day last week when I was away that my wife complained she had no phone or TV all day. When I got home I had no cellular signal either and only got it back after 5am the next morning when the storms had passed. Otherwise, I still have intermittent outages, six of them today for 2-5 minutes each. Most days are like that. So being connected most of the time is OK but takes some getting used to. There are hills around and I live just below the crest of one. Between that and the heavy forestation I'm pleased to get as much as I do.

Running cable up a tree might help, but I'm going to have to hire that one out if I decide it's the final solution. My wife found an antenna for sale in town which was about eighty feet tall but someone put dibs on it by the time I could call. I've also noticed that I can have three bars on my cell phone but no internet gateway, signal strength and resolution at 100%, just no gateway. This doesn't correlate to storm activity so I'm puzzled. Or not. I still don't know exactly in what direction the nearest cellular antenna lies although I've pointed my Yagi at what seems to be the best reception direction. No help from carriers on that point. Answering this question may be futile anyway as, again, the hills and foilage may impact the signal more than anything else.

And another very large limb split off a tree that got damaged when the other one fell on the house, crunching down on a section of fence but not hitting the house. And the timing wasn't too good either. It fell in an area needed for access for the A/C guys that came and replaced my system when the compressor went out on a Thursday evening in late July. (The old system ran Freon 22 which won't be serviceable after 2020, so I replaced the whole thing with a future compliant system, and a 10 year warranty.) Temps were 104⁰ each day, my wife was away visiting an aunt, and my sole duty was keeping me and pups cool enough not to die for the next 3-1/2 days. That was a lousy weekend. The branch fell on a Monday morning about 12:30am and woke us up; she'd gotten home that afternoon. I was out chainsawing at 5am clearing debris so that the guys could get started early. Broke the chain before I could get it finished. So the adventure continues. Had to kill a pretty large snake that was freaking out the missus, but I refuse to kill the raccoon and armadillos. They're pretty cool.

 

[CommTech]

I believe you went with T-Mobile, if so I can possibly get you the tower coordinates. All I need is the CID (ci) which is the cell ID, this decimal/hexadecimal number may be available in your devices web interface.

On a Digi it is found in:
Management - Network Status > Interfaces > Mobile

which my Digi WR31 shows the following "GPRS Registration: Registered tac:423A ci:015F0303"

The ci number can get me tower info if I email to my contact at T-Mobile (Hopefully he is still working there)


Does your cell modem allow setting bands to exclude?

Sometimes the modem may try a different band as directed by tower to switch to and that band may not work so it eventually switch back to original band.

On my setup I locked out Band 12 (700MHz) as it is always a SLOW connection due to the bandwidth, and now only lock on to Band 4 1700/2100MHz which offers best connection and speed due to higher bandwidth.

As far as elevating the antenna that would significantly improve your situation.

 

[Robert17]

2412 MHz is the frequency that my WiFi is reporting.

The rest of your questions relate to a Digi device and I don't have much info on my hexadecimals excepting MAC address, IP, etc., at least no more info that I'm able to relate to your question.

 

[Robert17]

My wife's phone hasn't been having near the internet connection problems that have frustrated me. I had no gateway available all day Friday and Saturday; couldn't find a setting in my phone that seemed akilter nor on my PC systems. So I broke down and asked for directions. Only it involved driving to the nearest T-Mobile store front, about 35 miles. Kid in the store listened to my description, took one look at the screen, and changed a per-phone default setting that throttled my connection to zero if I hit a pre-ordained factory cap. He said it was used by folks with family plans so as to share/limit each phone on the plan's access to their particular needs. My wife's phone had been toggled to 'unlimited' when they set hers up when we bought them. They forgot to toggle mine. Thanks T-Mobile.

We'll see how this works out.

 

[CommTech]

Find out from the manufacturer of your cell-modem if there is access to a diagnostic screen that would show signal levels, and GCI (or CI).

Or

Load "LTE Discovery" onto your smartphone and use that to determine the cell ID (GCI)

With the Cell ID (CI) your could contact T-Mobile and ask for tower coordinates, If they can't provide that post up the CI and I will get the towers coordibates to help you better aim a directional antenna (Yagi) at tower...

 

[Robert17]

Excellent CommTech!

I installed LTE Discovery (the app) and found the coordinates for the tower my mobile phone is connected to. I've been pointing about 70° off target. I'll get up onto the roof and re-aim. I've driven up the highway in that direction looking for a tower but none are visible from the road, you know, forest and such blocking the view. But there are no hills between it and me, so that's a plus.

 

[Robert17]

Re-aimed, hard to see any improvement, but time will tell. I note that my phone is receiving on Band 12 which is much slower than the higher frequencies. dBm = -114, not too good, but is better than the -120 I was getting.

 

[CommTech]

LTE Discovery's app may give coordinates but the given coordinates may be incorrect FYI...

In my case the coordinates given by the app were way off from actual tower,
If you speak to the right T-Mobile representative (Good Luck..LOL) they may be able to give you the coordinates from GCI

If they don't know how or say they can't just post up the GCI and I will inquire with a contact at T-Mobile...

 

[Robert17]

GCI = 0129C517

Your remarks of LTE app remind me of the coverage map that T-Mobile says isn't accurate, and the plumber who said he couldn't find me on GPS and to give him verbal directions. Doesn't software work as intended? After all, no one has trouble with Windows or Linux OS's . I'm being sarcastic, please humor me. My daughter even bought me a T-shirt that says "please wait, sarcastic comment loading".

Thanks again for all your help.

 

[CommTech]

No luck yet, have not got a response from the contact I had at T-Mobile.

I will try e-mailing some others there...

 

[CommTech]

Well Crap! - T-Mobile discontinued offering the One Plus International option that gives the unlimited 4G LTE data for hotspot (Or our setups) - Those whom got the "One Plus International" better keep it because it is No Longer offered...

Looks like 4G Antenna Stores offerings are now the option for home internet and they offer both AT&T and T-Mobile plans...

Still No reply from T-Mobile on tower coordinates yet...