Antenna Successes

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ShadowSA

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Hi Please post the details of antennas you've had success with.

I've installed the Poynting Neotel Antenna and went from 70 RSSI to 55. Did not make an enormous speed difference though.

I want to get a bit of a more mobile solution, like a small omni on a camera tripod. I know the Neotoel is in the 800+MHz range, but the Neotel Yagi is specced as 900MHz. Will a dipole 900Mhz also work fine then?

Thanks
 
Greetings.

Just wanted to pop in and share an experience I had this weekend mounting an external antenna - non poynting.

My house is 3 stories high, so about 9 meters + 3m for the roof. Make it 12 meters in the air.

I live in the ruimsig area and I was allways under the impression that I was using a tower situated in a specific part of this area.

So this weekend I finally took the plunge, hired a ladder and climbed on my roof and mounted my antenna on a 2 meter pole. Properly grounded and now having direct line of sight of the transmitter and my entire surrounding area.
( Antenna now roughly elevated 14 meters in the air on an already elevated geographic area.

Now for the good stuff. Using the router in my living room on the middle floor I managed to get reasonable speeds from time to time (up to 1.4mbps) but I was not happy with the stability of the signal and I wanted to reduce my RSSI which was 79 at best.

Upon completion of the mounting of the antenna I found I now had an RSSI of 65 which indicated to me that all was 100's.

This was not the case, I could not get a download speed of more than 200/300kb's.

I moved the router back downstairs and true as bob once again I had up to 1.4mbps on a speedtest, whilst having an RSSI of 79.

I then resorted to using the "AxesstelPst EvDO" software via USB to my laptop to investigate this occurance.

Within a few minutes ( it was a long day ) I managed to establish that I was in fact using a different tower with the antenna mounted on my roof to the one I was receiving a signal from in my lounge.

I then realligned the antenna to point at the "other" tower in my area and whola, I managed to match the "PN" number to the one I had found in my lounge.

Now for the interesting thing, the router by the looks of things does a sort of handshake, I managed to observe this whilst using the software mentioned above and simulating traffic. Using the external antenna pointed at my now tower of preference I found that the router requests a speed of 1.295mbps, which is "granted". This "speed" is then maintained until another reading "ec/lo 4.2db" exceeds 11db at which time the router steps down to 968kbps.

Neotel was down most of the day today so despite having now done all my testing and being happy with my results I could not do a propper internet speed test.

Neotel came back online later this afternoon and the weather isn't so great now so I am only managing to get a 968kbps reading from the software with spikes to the 1.295mpbs "handshake".

Now for the good part, questions arrising from my experience this weekend:

Firstly, with my now 65 RSSI why (A) is the first tower only performing a handshake at about 300kbps? - Bandwidth testing graph on the EVDO tool is showing a solid line when doing this so at least it's a perfect signal right?

Secondly, why when the EVDO signal is testing 1.295mbps is my speed tests ranging anything between 495kbps to 1024kbps.

Thirdly, why on a 3mbps capeable device do I only manage to get a maximum of 1.295mbps on my initial handshake.
 
Antenna

Antenna does not equal better speed by default folks... stable signal strength = yes almost always..
 
Greetings!

after spending hours up and down the roof checking various adjustments etc... I finally settled for the transmitter in Radio Kop.

Although congested I am still able to get a stable connection with the following speeds during the day:

Download Speed: 772 kbps (96.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 385 kbps (48.1 KB/sec transfer rate)

At night this goes up to about 1.2mb down and 550kbps up.

Sad how this still outperforms any other connection that is available in my area. :-(
 
Quick Update: Speeds now dropped 60% with the external antenna down to +/- 500kbps down and +/- 200 - 400kbps up. Called Neotel, congested tower blamed, contract being cancelled at no cost to me, guess what service I am getting as a replacement... ?
 
I am taking Telkom Closer 1 initially (R145 per month for line rental no installation costs... :-) )
Then once completed I will upgrade to Telkom DoBroadband3 or potentially Telkom Closer5, for the 5GB international and 30 GB local.

Total cost inclusing phone line rental, DSL line rental for up to 4096and the internet portion, R703 and R685 respectifely.

I will look at the other non-contract based DSL vendors for international topup when needed.

I am also making a point out of opting for self install and not signing any contracts.

Total installation costs for the above = R0

Modem cost = R400.

I am surprised I never managed to locate the information given above in my previous research, could have saved myself lots of headaches!

BTW: @jeanres, any good per GB vendors out there?
 
Prior to getting my antenna, I was getting 100KB/s ±
Then things started to get worse, Neotel gave me a antenna (after alot of fighting) and then my speeds improved back to 100KB/s ±

I sometimes think I never needed the antenna because I still get crappy speeds.
 
Mail

Gary Waterworth said:
I have lost faith in Hugo totally. 17 days and counting since he started looking at my refund.......
Click to expand...

:sick:

Did you see the request sent to banking for release of the funds i sent today through to you?

Hugo
 
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