External 4G antenna for rural location

alexakasloth said:
Do you know which antenna your brother is using? I was looking at the one I linked to but would be interested to see what success others are having with different models.
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Its the one by mikrotik about £150 that has the router in the what would be LNB if it were a satellite dish.
 
Got a Poynting XPOL-2 5G a few weeks ago £124, made a big difference to the router in the loft with bunny ear aerials.

Have it on a 10ft pole , side of the house.

Get speeds between 30-100 down and 30 up on 3 4G , not bad at all for £17 a month.

BT FTTC was £25+ a month for 14mbs down and 1 up!

4gggggg.jpg
 
Th0nt said:
Thanks for sharing. Did you find a way to position it best?
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Just by rotating it a bit, mate put it up in a rush, I'm going up the ladder when it's warmer and not windy to fine tune it, used the Huawei app for the signal graph and huactrl app.
 
I was thinking of on a good day putting the router on an extension lead and walking round the house with it at end of a pole. Probably better than any handheld gadget that would cost a lot.
 
Well I had mine in the loft with an extension lead, made a big difference, can't get 4G in the house on a phone, but pretty good in the loft.

Thought I'd try an aerial out of the window, signal was good, then got it up on a pole, think a lot buy from ebay, try them, if good keep them, if not return.
 
I had a very similar issue until recently. No fibre here, and stuck at the edge of copper ADSL. Gave speeds of 1MB/s. So I went 4G but I went with EE and their 4G++ plan on unlimited data. So theoretical max speeds in 90MB/s range over regular 4G. My TP-Link Archer MR600 Cat 6. Router came with the normal short aerials we all see. I was getting about 50% signal in the study and that gave me ~9MB/s. A nice improvement but I knew it wasn't perfect. Similarly, where I live, it's an old stone house with thick walls and it is in the dip of a valley. Everything against me here! :)

So I recently purchased this aerial - https://www.taoglas.com/product/gemini-lma100-2g3g4g-lte-mimo-antenna/ (cost about 80 odd Euros). I wanted something better for indoors that i could position about, that still had 2x2 MIMO and still covered the right bands. With this aerial, I was up to ~20MB/s. I then moved the whole setup into the loft. A bit of trial and error, and I have found the sweet spot. 100% signal coverage and combined with the better aerial, I now get ~60MB/s speeds. Consistently. I'm pleased I tried this first instead of diving into the external mast setup (which was my last resort).

EDIT: Quick speed test (whilst also streaming Music on Spotify)
EDIT 2: Forgot to mention that the PC is connected via Gigabit Home Plug to the Router.

4G-Speed.jpg


I think if I wanted to get more, I'd need to go for a Cat 9 or Cat 11 Huawei Router.

Hope this helps.
 
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It doesn’t really matter what you do, it’s going to be pricey.

I work away a lot and I have a Mikrotik SXT-LTE that I suction-cup onto the outside of the hotel window and a flat Ethernet cable that I run in to the PoE switch. And I then plug my PC into that, and a UniFi Flex-HD if I need WLAN.

Being from Eastern Europe where 4G is widely available and rural broadband is literally non-existent, Mikrotik offer a wide range of options. The SXT-LTE6 kit is £150, the LHG-LTE6 kit is £180, wAP AC LTE6 is £190, Chateau AIO LTE6 is £225 and the Audience AIO LTE6 is £265. They’re all based on the same LTE6 Mini-PCIe modem card which is £100 if you want to upgrade an older unit. They’re all good.

A decent Huawei AIO router will be £120 plus, say, £40 for a pair of directional antennae, and it’ll be £100 to mount and cable those in.

Teltonika is also excellent, and would be similar money to the Huawei plus antennae.

For me, I would get a specialist in, get a site survey done, and spend the money once for a proper solution that works rather than mess about with something cheap where you spend more, just in 2 or 3 chunks because you didn’t do it right the first time.
 
I've just ordered a Zyxel 4G LTE-A Outdoor Router [MIGHT SEND BACK, SEE BELOW]. We're out in the sticks and on a three unlimited wireless broadband package. We're quite lucky in that I can see our three mobile mast from the house, so we should be able to get decent speeds. If I can get the most out of it then it will be fantastic value for money. Alternative was an option on an "FTTP on demand" product, but costs looked like they were going to zoom out of control pretty quick.

At the moment connection speeds from the supplied three hardware (Huawei B252 I think) are about 23Mbps on 3G and anwyhere between 10-35Mbps on 4G , although the connection is a little less stable on the latter. I get about 55Mbps on my iphone. I'm sure with a bit of tinkering I could get more from the Huawei router, but it means putting it in what would be inconvenient locations in the house.

I looked at the 4G antenna option, but the existing aerial pole on our house is at the top of the gable end and the 5m restriction on cable length made it difficult to implement this option. The Zyxel router is PoE, so eliminates the cable length issue. I should get round to installing it next week, so I'll keep you updated.
 
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OK, have installed the new Zyxel 4G LTE-A Outdoor Router and really, really pleased with the results. Feels like a very well made piece of kit. Inserted our SIM card, plugged in via PoE and within seconds it had connected. Without putting outside, just putting it in same indoor spot as the old router, getting about 85mbps down and 35mbps up. Speeds also seem to be very consistent, whereas on the old router they'd bounce around a bit. Looking forward to seeing what happens when it's put up on the roof. So far I'm impressed.
 
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