Centurion Reception

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Billy

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Centurion, RSA
Strydom Park (MinTEk) was offline today, So as suppliers need to be paid I took the modem home. Previously in Hennops Park I had found a 2 light signal holding the modem above my head against a window.
Today I was more determined and finally found a spot with three lights pointed at the Groenkloof tower (LOS). Moved a computer and logged in. No problem. Played with a saucepan lid and got 4 lights. Wife came up with prestik and aluminium foil pie dish.
Result modem perched on burgalar bar with prestiked pie dish as ariel and 4 lights.
Can't wait for the hennops park tower[:)]
NB Groenkloof is 8km away
 
Well according to the given info in the forums so far.. there is no MyWireless tower at the Groenkloof tower. Your modem can only send up to 5.7-6km. Thats it. LOS means nothing. Unless you can confirm this by means of tower number etc. Check your tower number with MySignal or something and check it on the list. You are probably connecting to some tower within 6km (or what you think is 8km to Groenkloof - if it exists - is less "as the crow flies")

I for one would be interested to know if there is a tower at Groenkloof. But now that ProASM is gone, where will we get this info?

Someone can just convince one of the support ppl on the help line to visit the forum anonymously [8D] and drop some info [:D]

Let us know what your results for Groenkloof are..
 
I wouldn't be so sure I was picking up Base station 82 which is I think the bluff and that is around 18KM away :) you'll be surprised how far you can go with LOS that was with 18% signal strength:)

Regards
Cerberus
 
Well, we will need ProASM for this one but as far as my understanding goes.. the towers can reach up to something like 60km but your modem has limited power (granted, it is quite a high transmit power) so much like a cell phone, it can only send so far.. I'm no real expert or anything on this but I dont really think you can send a signal successfully for more than 7 or so kms. But hey, you could be lucky [:)]

Also, with LOS and thus a small signal strength <5% you could still connect well past 6km. Can you perhaps post some comparitive ping results.. well I guess thats tough since you cant jump towers and are obviously quite far from the nearest tower or so the modem thinks [:p]

It would be nice if you could have a readout/menu or something in MySignal that would show all the towers picked up and their respective pings/(guessed)distance/SNR/signal strength and then you could have a choice which tower to "prefer".

Lastly, does anyone know if/how the UMTS system handles handovers? I know that the IPWireless hardware is capable of maintaining service at high speed (by this I mean in your car on the road) but what happens when you change base towers? Will you be disconnected or can you be dynamically switched ie. like normal cell phone operation?

Anyone?
 
The tower is 36 which is either Hennops Park (Not Online) or Sunnyside over 10km away and with hills in between.

Signal strength is 17%
 
Yip, it is Sunnyside. I know since I connected to it the other day and checked so I distinctly remember 36 as sunnyside. You must have a super powered modem or something since you are connecting while so far away from all the towers. Lotsa people battle to connect within a couple of kms.. you must be quite lucky [:p]
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">But now that ProASM is gone, where will we get this info? <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Where did proasm go!?


Nick Smit
[email protected]
 
It seemed that he had left since he went very quiet for a while in the whole MySignal thread dispute. He has in the meanwhile said that he will stay and still continues to add to the MyADSL forum - thankfully!

The list of towers is not on his site anymore however, but it can be found somewhere on the forum.
 
The following information I stand to be corrected on and needs to be practically tested.

The 5 km is the max distance a standard modem will transmit before starting to suffer severe packet loss and syncronization.
I enquired to what the maximum distance MyWireless will reach and the answer was 20 odd kms although at this distance a high gain antenna is required mainly to boost your transmission power from your modem.
Remember every dB that is good for receiving is also good for transmission.

Regarding the tower handovers, I also checked on this and from what I understand you need to disconnect from the one before entering the other - pity.

Also as I said once before the rollout of towers in Gauteng I'm afraid I cannot help much on, although I checked my list and there is no mention of Groenkloof.
Hell keeping track of Durbs is enuf to handle atm [:)]
 
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