External Antenna - Worth It?

R

RatX

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iBurst reception in my area (Woodstock, Cape Town) has degraded a little bit in recent months. I also see that my area's reception is now classified as "Poor" on the coverage map, although just a few streets away (higher up) rates decently.

I have the old grey desktop UTD and get a stable connection, but speeds seldom go over 300 Kbit/s. I do get a steady 4/5 green LED's on the box, but use a router so don't seem to be able use any of the tools to show me the internals of the unit in terms of signal strength etc.

I do have available in my stash of goodies a Poynting Omni-A0072 antenna, but have been advised that a directional unit is a better bet. It has been a bit of a mission to get the appropriate cable for the Poynting, so don't want to go to all the effort and find it doesn't help. I've also read posts indicating that some people get better performance sticking with the internal antenna...

I'd like to hear if anybody in my position has been able to get a decent performance improvement going the external antenna route and if there are any recommendations for an antenna that includes all the necessary cables etc. Happy to get the iBurst antenna listed on the site, but only if it is worth it. From my roof I have excellent LOS to most of the CBD and Northern suburbs. Thanks for any info!
 
RatX said:
I'd like to hear if anybody in my position has been able to get a decent performance improvement going the external antenna route and if there are any recommendations for an antenna that includes all the necessary cables etc.
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According to the iBurst coverage maps I'm also in a poor coverage area, I also used to get speeds around 300kbps. I got an omni directional antenna and put the iBurst UTD in the roof, speeds jumped up to a solid 1Mbps. I then tried extending the cable to the antenna and it made no difference to the speed, so I ended up with about 15m of cable between the UTD and the antenna, but with the UTD indoors.
 
Thanks for the input ginggs - sounds promising. Which antenna did you get?
 
A difficult question to answer, since the technology that iBurst uses (as explained to me by Sean Green himself) is vulnerable to a lot of interference, such as concrete walls, burglar bars, etc. So first and foremost it seems to be a case of getting your PC as close as possible to a window, where the signal is strongest. After that, it's debatable whether or not an external antenna will make a difference. If possible, get a loan unit before spending the money, because as in my case, where iBurst initially told me I needed an external antenna, it was simply a case of pointing my USB antenna's modem at the nearest iBurst tower. Things are still not brilliant, but I ave learned to accept the fact that it isn't the strength of the signal that counts, but the quality: I have 100% signal, but rarely see half of what iBurst claims my modem is capable of.
 
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