Antenna - Yes or No

Burr

Burr

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Joined
Feb 7, 2013
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Location
Glen Anil, Durban
Hi Guys,

Just a quick query. I'm not too clued up on fixed LTE products, having had ADSL for the last couple of years. However, I recently moved and have been forced to look at alternatives as there are infrastructure problems in my area according to Telkom. I've started using Telkom's Fixed LTE Service, and to say it's underwhelming is a bit of an understatement. I'm using the Huawei B315 router with the paddle antennae at the moment. The router always indicates that I have great signal, but the speeds are atrocious - congestion of some sort, no doubt.

I've seen plenty of reviews on these Ponting antennae praising the products, with people often indicating that it's worked wonders for speeds etc. My question is, will it really make a difference for me (speed wise) if I don't have any signal issues? Or will I just be chucking R1600 away "improving" signal that's fine to begin with?
 
Well I'm in the same boat as you.
I had ADSL since 2003 but we never could get more than 4 Mbps and that was not enough to stream HD and also the ADSL slowed down to 3 Mbps over time.
So I switched to Telkom (fixed) LTE and also have a B315 router.
Initially I too used the paddle antenna or bunny ears as some call it but I found it worked better with the internal antenna.
At the time the Telkom Tower was 2 km away and I acquired a Xpol-6-10M poynting antenna and this did the trick.
My speed increased quite significantly.
In January Telkom put LTE on our local Telkom Mini Tower about 500 meters away and I thought well I won't need the antenna anymore.
I was wrong, depending on the weather the signal and speed change quite dramatically and the antenna does it's job there.
Oh you must make sure your B315 is on 2300 Mhz, if not get an app called 'E5186 Toolbox 0.9' and force the B315 to 2300 Mhz.
You'll be lucky if you get 20 Mbps on the normal default 1800 Mhz.
Today's speedtest: https://speedtest.co.za/result/92614
Hot sunny days like today is not good.
Cloudy with light drizzle I get good speeds: https://speedtest.co.za/result/81023:)

When you say good signal, how good ?
RSRP: ? RSRQ: ? SINR: ?

**Edit**
This is with the Poynting antennae switched off.
https://speedtest.co.za/result/92664
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the info :)

ProAsm said:
When you say good signal, how good ?
RSRP: ? RSRQ: ? SINR: ?
Click to expand...
I'll have to check this out this evening when I get home. I've just been going on the number of bars. I am using the router supplied to me by Afrihost (I went for a Cell C package initially but it was T R A S H, so just paid the cancellation fee and kept the router) - not sure if this would be an issue too?

I see your speeds are pretty decent even without the antenna. My upload isn't really an issue (generally about 8mbps) but my download speeds very rarely exceed 3mbps. Things get even worse in the early evening (think 56k days) which points to congestion - I live in a pretty densely populated area too so that isn't too surprising.
 
Hi guys, not to hijack the thread but I have just fitted an xpol 6 to my 618. Does it matter which cable goes where.?
Further, I have a Cell C from Axxess. How do I determine the direction of the antenna ?
 
martinco said:
Hi guys, not to hijack the thread but I have just fitted an xpol 6 to my 618. Does it matter which cable goes where.?
Further, I have a Cell C from Axxess. How do I determine the direction of the antenna ?
Click to expand...
No it does not matter which cable goes where.
You need to run an app called LteWatchH and switch to 'Big Mode' and slowly swing the antenna around for the best reading.
Ideally you want the best RSRP (-75 to -55) with the highest SINR possible, as close to 30 dB's as possible.
Often the SINR is more important than the signal strength.
If you stay closer than 500 meters from the Tower, try turning the antenna slightly away from the Tower.
This is because the Thermal Noise radiated by the Providers transmission can sometimes give you a high noise floor.
In my case I have this problem, directly to the Tower I get -68 dBm but my SINR is only around 24 dB.

ltesigs.jpg
 
Last edited:
ProAsm said:
When you say good signal, how good ?
RSRP: ? RSRQ: ? SINR: ?
Click to expand...

Only got around to checking everything out now. Stats don't look too great, tbh. Also, I've got the B315s-22 which doesn't appear to work on 2300Mhz. It's not an option using the toolbox, which is a bit annoying.


Capture.PNG
 
Burr said:
Only got around to checking everything out now. Stats don't look too great, tbh. Also, I've got the B315s-22 which doesn't appear to work on 2300Mhz. It's not an option using the toolbox, which is a bit annoying.


View attachment 623284
Click to expand...
-88 is not too bad but the -12 and 5 is not good at all.
When I got my B315 it too could not do 2300 but thanks to sajunky he managed to get something going for us.
Download this config file and unzip it into your Toolbox folder, just backup your current one.
http://www.proasm.com/other/config.zip
Also check out this topic:
https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/threads/toolbox-for-new-huawei-hilink-devices-e5186-b315s.798330/
 
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