Good signal, low speeds

R

Reptlle

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Just got 8ta's internet 5 yesterday. I live really close to a cellphone tower, so my signal is pretty damn good. Using a TP-Link router (TL-MR3420), getting signal strength of 85% - 100% (Average around 95%). My speeds however are about 3Mbps. My friend also has Internet5, his signal strength averages at around 26% and he gets speeds of about 2.5Mbps. So I know mine has to be higher. I'm using the Huawei E173, but that's suppose to be 7.2Mbps max. 3Mbps is a lot less than 7.2. Any suggestions?

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3Mbps is not bad, it's a pretty average speed these days. The limiting factor here is your tower's capacity. There is not much you can do, except for getting a yagi antenna to connect to a different tower. It's probably not even remotely worth it. Be happy with your 3Mbps. It might increase at night as less people connect to the tower.
 
I thought all 8ta towers had a 21Mbps capacity. Yeah, I guess 3Mbps isn't bad, but when I got 100% signal strength I expected more. But it never goes above 3.06Mbps so I'm assuming it is a capacity issue. Just glad I didn't get a faster 3g stick. Would've been bummed if I had gotten a 21Mbps one and I couldn't go above 3Mbps. Thanks for clearing that up.
 
21Mbps is just the theoretical maximum speed of the tower coupled with a 21Mbps dongle. The maximum real world speed of such a setup that people report are in the 10-12Mbps range. So that 21Mbps really refer to perfect lab-like conditions. The limiting factor might also be the capacity of the data link serving your particular tower.

Don't worry about not getting a 21Mbps dongle. It's nice to have for future proofing, but it wouldn't have made a difference to your speed as it's the tower (and everyone around you that use it) that is limiting you to 3Mbps. Take a look at this speedtest.net result I once got with my 7.2Mbps dongle. So if conditions at your tower increase, your speed will increase up to about 7Mbps.

Edit: my last paragraph is not really applicable as I initially misread your post :o
 
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Signal strength doesnt really mean that much,you also need to look at the entire radio condition, so signal and quality levels. This coupled with the loading on the site will give you an idea on your speed.

So you could have -100dBm signal level but really good quality and get 3mbps, to get 5-6mbps you will need really good quality and around -75dBm signal levels as well as be 1 or maybe 3 people attached to that site.
 
Viva said:
Take a look at this speedtest.net result I once got with my 7.2Mbps dongle. So if conditions at your tower increase, your speed will increase up to about 7Mbps.

Edit: my last paragraph is not really applicable as I initially misread your post :o
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It is also wrong. You can't get 7.1Mbps from 7.2Mbps modem, it is impossible.
 
sajunky said:
It is also wrong. You can't get 7.1Mbps from 7.2Mbps modem, it is impossible.
Click to expand...

Then speedtest.net got it wrong. Care to elaborate why you say it is impossible? I can't find any information confirming this.

It doesn't really matter though, the point is that 3Mbps is not the maximum one can get with a 7.2Mbps dongle.
 
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I used to get around 1050kb/s downloads (~8Mbps ) and the last few weeks its gone down the toilet, don't get much better than 2Mbps. Truly annoying.

Signal Strength -85 to -91 dBm
 
Viva said:
Then speedtest.net got it wrong. Care to elaborate why you say it is impossible? I can't find any information confirming this.
Click to expand...
Protocol overhead if I remember correctly. Maximum data throuput from 7.2Mbps modem is around 6.3-6.5Mbps.
 
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