Thanks this is very helpful but playing around lol it gonna take me a long time
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External antenna on congested Tower(Rain)
- Thread starter Chuma1031
- Start date
Peter1010987904
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You can get xpol 6 cheaper. Google Third Flame Pty Ltd based in centurion
Here's mine.
RSRP -68
RSRQ -10
SINR 14
I'm also just getting just under 1mb speed occasionally, but most of the time it hovers around the 500kb mark. These past few days I've been thinking of getting one of those xpol antennas but what really dissuades me is seeing everyone elses signal stats, and then realising the signal I'm receiving is so much stronger than what everyone else is getting. Which makes me think the xpol isnt gonna make that much of a difference, the real problem is congestion.
I have 11 Rain towers around me, all in 3kms proximity so I'll see if I have some time today to drive to every one of those towers and do a speed test, also to check if all of them only support the 1800 band. If I do find one with the 2600 band then I guess it'll be worth it to get the xpol, provided I get better speeds on the 2600.
I guess you right ... Even now I’m getting speeds up to 8 D and 10 U ... with no Xpol ... due to the fact that it’s early morning so clearly it tells me I’m having issues with congested towers ... whatever tower I’m connected to there was two I picked up moving the router around and both don’t seem to support the 2600 band ... so I honestly don’t understand
Peter1010987904
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No! The RSRQ needs to be -10 or lower, the higher it goes the lower your speeds. And that should enable you to also lower the RSRP.
The RSRQ, while not great, is fine. He has good SINR and RSRP.
Thanks buddy I’ll keep this in mind and I’ll play around with it again to get that stats
Thanks buddy
Guys. Those of you struggling to get anything over 1mb speed, that's including me, there's one value on the router's signal parameters that you have to pay special attention to.
It's the SINR.
Anything over 14db and you will easily get up to 2mb. Not much, I know, but if you've been struggling like I have for the past few months then you'll know how much of a difference that extra mb of speed can make! Some posters here said if you already get good signal and you're close to the tower then you dont need one of those xpol antennas. Well I'm gonna have to disagree with you guys. I understand, there's congestion but believe me, every last db you can squeeze out of that tower WILL help make your internet that little bit faster. Even if its 1mb faster, atleast you get to watch youtube and netflix without buffering
So here's what I did today. Took my router with me and drove to my nearest tower, about 300 meters away I stopped and did a speedtest and checked signal values. SINR was at 22db, speedtest results gave a consistent 2mb. Already way better than the sub 1mb speed I've become accustomed to at my house, which is +- 600m away from the tower.
So now ofcourse I was thinking to myself, maybe if I get even closer to the tower I'll get even better signal?
Wrong! Those poor people living right under the towers who we all along thought must be eating all the bandwidth? They get worse speed than I get at my house! The closer I moved to the tower, the worse my signal became. Speedtest gave a consistent speed of between 0.2 - 0.3mb. SINR was at -3 with me was less than 50 meters away from the tower.
Next thing I did was to see if I can connect to a different tower, just to see if all towers were equal in the speed department. Tested a total of 5 towers, all operating on the 1800mhz frequency and all of them gave me a max download speed of 2mb, depending ofcourse if I'm not too close or too far from the tower. Just had to make sure the SINR was over 14db to consistently hit 2mb download speed.
I'm really not too sure which tower it was but once or twice during my testing the router latched onto a 2500mhz signal, but the signal was way too weak for me to even do a speedtest.
So yeah, in conclusion Im gonna have to say if you do get an xpol, it's going to give you those extra db's but it wont give you a big bump in speed. I'll be looking to aquire one as soon as finances allow, I'm definitely willing to invest in one now that Vumatel cancelled their planned fibre rollout in my area. Just gotta make do with what's available to me.. sigh.
It's the SINR.
Anything over 14db and you will easily get up to 2mb. Not much, I know, but if you've been struggling like I have for the past few months then you'll know how much of a difference that extra mb of speed can make! Some posters here said if you already get good signal and you're close to the tower then you dont need one of those xpol antennas. Well I'm gonna have to disagree with you guys. I understand, there's congestion but believe me, every last db you can squeeze out of that tower WILL help make your internet that little bit faster. Even if its 1mb faster, atleast you get to watch youtube and netflix without buffering
So here's what I did today. Took my router with me and drove to my nearest tower, about 300 meters away I stopped and did a speedtest and checked signal values. SINR was at 22db, speedtest results gave a consistent 2mb. Already way better than the sub 1mb speed I've become accustomed to at my house, which is +- 600m away from the tower.
So now ofcourse I was thinking to myself, maybe if I get even closer to the tower I'll get even better signal?
Wrong! Those poor people living right under the towers who we all along thought must be eating all the bandwidth? They get worse speed than I get at my house! The closer I moved to the tower, the worse my signal became. Speedtest gave a consistent speed of between 0.2 - 0.3mb. SINR was at -3 with me was less than 50 meters away from the tower.
Next thing I did was to see if I can connect to a different tower, just to see if all towers were equal in the speed department. Tested a total of 5 towers, all operating on the 1800mhz frequency and all of them gave me a max download speed of 2mb, depending ofcourse if I'm not too close or too far from the tower. Just had to make sure the SINR was over 14db to consistently hit 2mb download speed.
I'm really not too sure which tower it was but once or twice during my testing the router latched onto a 2500mhz signal, but the signal was way too weak for me to even do a speedtest.
So yeah, in conclusion Im gonna have to say if you do get an xpol, it's going to give you those extra db's but it wont give you a big bump in speed. I'll be looking to aquire one as soon as finances allow, I'm definitely willing to invest in one now that Vumatel cancelled their planned fibre rollout in my area. Just gotta make do with what's available to me.. sigh.
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SINR is important, yes, but I disagree here. You don't need a huge value just to get a few mbps. At 14, you should be getting far more. SINR is derived from RSPR and RSRQ.
It's not you, it's them.
It's not you, it's them.
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And this test you did is exactly what I’m getting at this very moment for months I’ll say over an year ... I don’t understand why they not upgrading there towers ... but it’s true getting the SINR up will help a lot but 14 must give you more than 2 mbps I mean I was at work and I tested my speeds there 18 Sinr gave me 30 mbps and when I did the band change to 2500mhz it was 25 SINR ... speeds was 50+ mbps ... but when I got home two towers didn’t support those bands so back to 1800mhz congested towers less than 1 megabyte download speed I just gave up ...
I can’t say if I’ll invest in a Xpol to get an extra megabyte that’s still poor so I’m looking into something else at this stage different ISP
But it’s true no use getting an Xpol
Why must we struggling driving around and see what works if we paying for a 500 kilobytes download damn that’s poor not for me I did my testing and we just have poor towers rain should either upgrade them or we just look into getting a different ISP that’s all I’m looking at Telkom’s one
Lmk bru you're driving around for 500kbs , k*k funny
Truth of the matter is this, and i dont believe the congestion BS excuse anymore. Some towers are limited to 2mb speed, and I'm sure this is true because why do I get consistent speeds of only 2mb? It's only possible to hit the promised 10mb speed cap early in the mornings, its like Rain deliberately slow the towers down during the day. There is some congestion obviously bit how do you explain the consistent 2mb speed I'm getting when my SiNR is at 22dbs? Never much slower or faster? They're f*cking us around thats why!
Your SINR is 22 and you getting 2 megabyte damn ... I was at work testing my sim and router on the 2500mhz band and it was 25 SINR and it was like 50 megabyte download but on the normal 1800mhz it was 30 megabytes ... I honestly don’t no what’s happening but it can be that In areas they capping us
I want to try an external antenna at my residence but du to terrain and trees surrounding the property I will need at least 5m pole to mount the antenna to clear the trees and get line of sight to the closest tower and other towers in my area.
Is it possible to make your own cable to connect the external antenna to my router as I would need a long set of cables and the cables are expensive.....
SMA connectors are relatively cheap but what cable is used to make up these cables?
Is it possible to make your own cable to connect the external antenna to my router as I would need a long set of cables and the cables are expensive.....
SMA connectors are relatively cheap but what cable is used to make up these cables?
Unless they are very dense, trees are no issue. RF can easily penetrate them and they are pretty transparent to the signal. Any gains you make will be offset by the losses of additional cable, connectors, etc. Don't expect great results with this approach. You may even see worse results.
If you have LoS to the tower, apart from the trees, you are fine. My LoS is direct, with trees in the way. My signal is fine, and I get full speed when the network is not congested.