Hi all,

Some time ago Sean assisted me with setting up our broadband at home, long story short I ended up trying out a pair of Co-linear tube antennas with the hopes of latching onto a relatively weak Band 3 signal from Vodafone but it didn't go to plan, we reverted to a router placed on an part open window in the workshop and a WiFi repeater which to a degree has worked OK we were able to get around 10mb down and 2-3mb up which was OK for what we were using it for at the time.

Roll forward a few months and both of us are now faced with working from home and need a better connection, the contention on Vodafone spiked with the arrival of Covid and made it almost unusable during peak hours so I purchased an Eir sim card as there is a mast next to the Vodafone one we had been connecting to before in the hopes it was less congested or maybe even swapping between the 2.

I set this up this morning and below are the figures and speed-test from both inside and outside, one note on the outside figure is that I had a number of 20+ mb download tests earlier on but the test I did that is below was done immediately after the indoor one so as to try and be somewhat accurate.

We are not far (3.5km) from mast but are surrounded by forestry in all directions unfortunately.  Testing with Vodafone produces similar results although being on Vodafone X our speed is capped around 10-12mb down but can get up to 25mb on my phone stood in field on Vodafone.

I am connecting to Band 20 on both Vodafone and Eir and my question being which antenna would suit us best given the readings below?  I am sure Sean recommended a pair of LAT 22 (I think) antennas previously and wondered if this advise still stood firm.

Thanks in advance for any advice.


Location of property in relation to both the Vodafone and Eir masts which are situated together.



Router signal readings with router placed indoors facing direction of mast (Eir)



Testmy results for above.



Router signal readings with router placed outside on a chair (no elevation)




Testmy results for above.

Just about every day while browsing the news, I usually see one ad claiming to boost by Wi-Fi signal and speed with a plug-in repeater.  Based on my past experience with Wi-Fi repeaters from popular consumer brands such as D-Link and TP-Link, I have yet to find one that delivers a stable connection.  I've even helped fix a few other people's Wi-Fi problems just by unplugging their Wi-Fi repeater!

So what about this heavily advertised Wi-Fi repeater?  I recommend watching the following video before clicking the ad:



These are my personal recommendations for improving Wi-Fi coverage:

Mesh Wi-Fi
Mesh Wi-Fi kits typically consist of two or three units.  These are simple to set up - Just plug the main unit into a LAN port of the router and place the second box about midway between where the current Wi-Fi drops out.  They usually come with an App to help configure them, which basically just asks to give it a Wi-Fi name and password.  The main downside however is the initial purchase cost.  

Based on my experience with the Tenda Nova MW6-2, the Wi-Fi appears very stable on the second unit and my PC which is wired to the second unit by Ethernet cable has yet to drop out.  In fact, I find this connection far more stable and several times faster (~400Mbps vs ~100Mbps over 5GHz ac band) than the USB TP-Link Archer T9UH that was dropping out intermittently at least once a week.  Unlike a Wi-Fi repeater, the second unit broadcasts on a different channel on the 2.4GHz band.  

Homeplug Powerline Wi-Fi
A cheaper alternative to a mesh kit.  Like a Wi-Fi kit, this also consists of two or three units.  There is a master unit that plugs into the LAN port of the router.  The second unit can be placed in the area with poor Wi-Fi coverage.  As the Wi-Fi extender uses the home's electrical wiring to carry the network data, it can operate on a separate Wi-Fi channel and does not need to be within range of the master unit.  

Based on my experience with Belkin and Netgear Powerline kits, the extended Wi-Fi is certainly a lot more stable than any Wi-Fi repeater I tried.  However, I had intermittent drop-outs usually lasting a few seconds, sometimes 2 to 3 an evening.  It's quite possible our house has noisy electrical wiring, but after having no luck getting a very stable connection trying them across various electrical outlets, I ended up taking it out after a month of use.  I have heard of others having success with Homeplug Wi-Fi, so if you plan trying a kit, I suggest ordering it online so that you can return it within the 14 day cooling off period if turns out to be unstable.

Long Ethernet cable and a Wi-Fi access point or old router
The cheapest option, which can deliver the fastest extended Wi-Fi is to run an Ethernet cable to the area with poor Wi-Fi coverage and connect it to a Wi-Fi access point or the LAN port of a reconfigured old router.   As the network data is carried over a dedicated Ethernet cable to the router, the extended Wi-Fi is not affected by the speed available over the home wiring or taking up bandwidth on the main Wi-Fi access point.

To repurpose an old router, first connect a PC or laptop to it and go into its web interface.  Change the Wi-Fi name, password and Wi-Fi channel as desired.  You can give it the same Wi-Fi name and password as the main router to allow devices to roam to it.  Then disable its DHCP, DHCP6 and/or IPv6 (RA) settings.  Connect an Ethernet cable from any of its LAN ports (don't use the WAN port) to any LAN port on the main router.  To reconfigure an old Eircom F2000, see this guide.

Hi All, 

Some issues with new 4G BB kit you might be able to help me with. 

ATK-LOG LTE Antenna mounted outside on roof (pointed at Three LTE Mast located 2kms away). ATK-LOG LTE antenna connected to a Tenda 4G680V2.0 Router using supplied 10 metre antenna cable. Router connected via patch cable to Tenda 300Mbps Wireless N High Power Access Point.

Three payg voice sim placed in iphone and I get strong 4G signal and speed test results of between 40-70megs download. Happy days!
Place the same three sim into the Tenda router and speeds barely make it above 10megs download.

If I disconnect external antenna from the router and connect the 2 supplied antennae and place in upstairs window (approx 3 feet below where external antenna is on the roof) the router pointing at the same three mast and I'm getting speeds of 40megs download.  I plan to get up on the roof tomorrow and turn external antenna and reset the router every 30 degrees or so and see if it improoves anything! Are there any setting s i should be changing on the router?

If anyone can shine a light on this for me, I'd much apprciate it!

RSRP: -112
SINR: -1.08 (varies between 0.8 - 2.5)

Many Thanks in advance! 

Pilatus260

Hi, I wish I had come across this forum earlier...it could have saved me a sore head
I bought a repeater which came with two cheapo panel antennas, after much heartache I purchased a Poynting omni directional antenna and got a pretty good signal.
My problem is now on the transmitting side of things. What is the best antenna to send this improved signal around the house(old cottage with some 2 feet thick walls)
Sorry for the long winded description and thanks in advance for any constructive replies 

Hi,

I am just wondering what relationship, if any, is there between the Site ID given on ComReg SiteViewer, and the Cell ID reported by a router. I have a Huawei B618 router, which reports that I am connected to Cell ID 443394. Looking at the ComReg site gives me my closest mast as 3_WK0044, and another nearby as 3_WK0122. I don't know which one, if either, it is actually connected to.

Thanks in advance

If you'd like to get WARP+ to work on windows before the actual release later this year. You can do it like this. You can also subscribe to find out when it is available here : https://1.1.1.1/  and click on your OS/Device

Step one:  Go to https://repl.it/  and click -  Start coding -  BASH -> Create repl 

Step two:  Copy this command into terminal : wget -O wgcf https://github.com/ViRb3/wgcf/releases/d..._linux_386; chmod +x wgcf 

Step three:    After that command, copy this into it next:        ./wgcf 

Step four:  To register a cloudflare account copy this into terminal :       ./wgcf register   and press enter to agree to terms and conditions

Step five:  The file wgcf-account.toml  file will appear on the left with the account information, you can edit this key with your own android/iOS key if you have premium account on that. Though I've been using it without anything just the generated profile and i've already used well over 10 GB

Step 6: To get your wireguard profile just copy this into terminal: ./wgcf generate   and it will generate the profile. 

Step 7: When it generates the profile name  wgcf-profile.conf  // Open wireguard and click down in the bottom left "Add empty tunnel" and copy all the contents of the
 wgcf-profile.conf  file and then you can name it whatever you want and  click activate and it should work fine. 

Step 8: You can download wireguard here:  https://www.wireguard.com/install/

Optional: Link to the cloudflare account generator / if you'd like to check commands/syntax:  https://github.com/ViRb3/wgcf


I went from 40-50 Mbps because of the traffic shaping to crazy results , well over 100 Mbps. Even showing a 470 Mbps maximum on testmy.net result  

Like this you can see the max download in the top right of 471 Mbps    not sure whether its a glitch but  :


 



Speedtest.net results now instead of 50 ish: 

Unfortunately I woke up this morning and did a speed test on my LTE12 to find i'm now also experiencing this "LTE link down" issue. I'm going to record a video and copy the log but what I really don't understand is why this is suddenly became an issue 2 days after enjoying fast speeds without any issues. I literally had 0 issues for 2 days after I got it. 100-200Mbps at peak with downloads only bad time I noticed was three's traffic shaping last night. Is it possible they could see i'm getting these kind of speeds and did something to throttle/limit my connection? I dont understand how it can suddenly stop working when I wasn't initially having the issue. Just a thought.  I'll update this post with a video illustrating exactly what is going on here:

https://streamable.com/qg7hv4


Update: About an hour later and after 3 or 4  hard resets, I am maintaining connection again but the speeds are a joke in comparison. It definitely feels like some kind of limiting measure was imposed somehow. I was getting 100 Mbps in the day yesterday , even 200 Mbps when it was off peak -  and 70-80 ish around 6pm, I did some tests around 11pm yesterday  and the speeds dropped so badly. (I left those results in my other post/asked about traffic shaping) and I just assumed it was that. I wouldn't imagine the cell would be heavily loaded around 2pm on a friday? Ever since i've managed to maintain connection while downloading today, the speeds are much worse.  maybe it is just heavily loaded but just have a look at these results as a comparison. Even prioritized hosts like the vultr test file is downloading at poor speed. If I do a speed test on cloudlflares though, it'll get to about 66 mbps every time no matter which cell I set as the primary band which makes it feel like a limit. It will not surpass 66 ish Mbps on cloudflare at all which is odd. I really wonder is it possible can they notice that someone is getting those speeds and impose come kind of traffic shaping? Or is it some issue with the router where it just decides to become faulty after two days of use  
Bunch of speedtests here with times to see what i'm talking about: https://imgur.com/a/5r7bXv5

Is it even possible that they can indentify a single user using excessive data/getting more speeds than they should and impose some kind of limit on them? or is traffic shaping set for every single user when its used? I've got no idea why i'd get such a sharp change in performance a day and a half later
I did a speedtest on my R11e4G on its own and the speeds are quite poor as well about 10-16 Mbps down on the fastest band 3 cell. The upload is even too low now to stream anymore. Knowing my luck , they imposed traffic shaping the day after I got my new setup I used to get 14-16 mbps with band 3 upload on the R11e4G, now i'm getting 7-8 on speedtest.net which translates to about 3-4k bitrate max on a twitch server. Thats why I needed the big overhead with upload.

Hi, 
Sorry if this is a stupid question or has been answered already on another post, I'm very new to all this!
I have a SIM unlocked Huawei E5577 (originally got from Eir) with a Three data SIM. It works fine when using 3G, but as soon as it switches over to 4G, I lose connection and get an error message saying I need to enable roaming. 
I've tried adjusting APN settings but no joy. 
Any help is greatly appreciated!

I recently came across this YouTube video showing how to lock the primary frequency band (EARFCN) on a Huawei pocket modem and found that these commands work on my Huawei B525. 

Update: This requires debranded firmware that enables Telnet connectivity.  With my Three branded Huawei B525, I flashed it with jhowel22's firmware a while back to unlock additional capabilities. Three's firmware blocks Telnet.

Unlike locking to a band #, locking the primary frequency band has the advantage of allowing the router to continue operating in 4G+ mode.  

Windows Telnet needs to be installed (if not already):

1. Click Start and type "Windows Features".
   
2. Click "Turn Windows Features on or off"
   
3. Tick "Telnet Client"
   
4. Click 'OK' and give it a minute to install Telnet.
   

1. Press the Windows key + 'R'
   
2. In the 'Open:' field, enter: telnet 192.168.8.1
   
3. Click 'OK'.
   

• If you try to lock to a primary frequency that is not in use in the area, the router will lose Internet connectivity showing "No Service" until the frequency lock is removed.
  
• The Huawei B525 loses the frequency locking after a reboot. 
  
• If the router loses connectivity, 4G+ may not work until frequency locking is temporarily disabled.
  

The NetGear Nighthawk M1 (MR1100) router has a fairly short Wi-Fi range, much like that of a mobile phone operating as a portable Hotspot. 

To my surprise while browsing the various Wi-Fi settings, the Wi-Fi range is set to Medium by default.  While this is fine in a small space such as a motorhome, it's barely usable more than a room apart in a house, particularly on the 5GHz band.

Changing the setting is straight forward - Just go into the web interface or App and log in, then go into Setup (1) -> Wireless (2) and change the WiFi Range drop-down (3) to 'Large'.  Then click Apply.

   

Going by the Wi-Fi Analyzer App on my phone, this increases the signal strength by roughly 6dB, at least on the 5GHz band as shown in green below:

   

Despite the improved signal strength, it is still much weaker than most desktop routers.  For example, when placed side by side with the popular Huawei B525 router, the M1 signal was 9dB weaker than the B525 on the 5GHz band.  When placed side by side with my Fritz Box 7360, the M1 signal was 7dB weaker on the 2.4GHz band.

So while this tweak may improve connection stability and speed a second room apart, I still recommend getting a dedicated Wi-Fi router or mesh kit and using the M1 as a passive modem, i.e. put it into bridge mode (Setup -> Mobile Router Setup -> IP Passthrough).