High Gain External Antennas now available

Thanks Folks !

I have contacted the technical dept at Smartcom. They apparently supply the "Yagi" antenna, they informed me that this antenna was perferct for GPRS applications but was not operating effectively on 3G / Hsdpa. Apparently the operations are slightly different, however they are testing an antenna this week which is specifically disigned for 3G. Depending on results they might be available as soon as the end of next week. Lets wait and see !
 
Thanks
Where are the Poynting antennas available from and are they specific to various cards ?
 
Latency and Packet Loss

I have a question regarding Latency and Packet loss.

In the follwing cennnario you have 2 bars on standard HSDPA card, then install the high gain antennae and get 4 bars now.

If you ping oversees sites do you still get packet loss or improved latency.

If someone can give me info on the following pings:

ping www.westwood.com -t (ping for about a minute and give me report)

ping www.gamespy.com -t (ping for about a minute and give me report)

Kind Regards

Nictron
 
Here are my results (HSDPA - only 2 bars)


www.westwood.com

Ping statistics for 159.153.235.27:
Packets: Sent = 35, Received = 35, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 514ms, Maximum = 647ms, Average = 551ms


www.gamespy.com

Ping statistics for 216.35.19.179:
Packets: Sent = 29, Received = 29, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 550ms, Maximum = 650ms, Average = 572ms


Hope this helps...

Cheers
 
nictron said:
I have a question regarding Latency and Packet loss.

In the follwing cennnario you have 2 bars on standard HSDPA card, then install the high gain antennae and get 4 bars now.

If you ping oversees sites do you still get packet loss or improved latency.

Nictron
Click to expand...

If your pings are only being lost of overseas sites or your latency is really bad for overseas then there's not much that improved connectivity can do.

having said that, a better signal is generally going to improve the first hop latency and ping times.

do a tracert -d (select any website here), the first hop (no router) or second (with a router ) will indicate your link latency this improves with better signal, naturally all ensuing hops will improve as well.

but latency can also be caused by plenty of other issues which are totally out of your control.

D
 
My results using MTN EDGE

ping www.westwood.com

Ping statistics for 159.153.235.27:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 671ms, Maximum = 1210ms, Average = 859ms

ping www.gamespy.com

Ping statistics for 216.35.19.179:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 739ms, Maximum = 959ms, Average = 813ms
 
I find it quite amazing that you do not get packet loss with only two bars, in every scenario that I have tested with two bars it is just a disaster, packet loss of 20% and more. With 3 bars in the city I get 0 - 5 % packet loss.

Do you have an external antenna for your setup to get two bars?

If there is someone with 4 bars connectivity? If they can give me the same test results it would be appreciated?

Regards

Nictron
 
Signal quality and signal strength are not always related.

You can get a high signal level (4 to 5 bars) but with lots of interference and the system will modulate you down to a lower throughput.

Or you can get the inverse; a low level signal (1 to 2 bars) but with no or little interference.

At home, I seem to fall into this category on 3G/HSDPA; I get only 2 bars with the clipon antenna, yet stay connected for days and easily get speeds in excess of 1Mb/s.

A few weeks ago I suddenly started dropping calls on 2G but had a full strength signal. Turns out something (or someone) suddenly started to interfere with the 2G signal and the guys had to change the frequencies to get around it.
 
nictron said:
Do you have an external antenna for your setup to get two bars?
Nictron
Click to expand...

Nope, just the phone...

I'm gonna take my laptop up the hill by my place and try it out there (pretty sure i'll have an awesome signal) and let you know...that should be closer to antenna specs then..
 
BjornD said:
Nope, just the phone...

I'm gonna take my laptop up the hill by my place and try it out there (pretty sure i'll have an awesome signal) and let you know...that should be closer to antenna specs then..
Click to expand...

Walking up a hill to get a strong signal. Sounds like fun.
vodacom3g said:
Turns out something (or someone) suddenly started to interfere with the 2G signal and the guys had to change the frequencies to get around it.
Click to expand...

Who do I contact if I would like to query a situation like you had at home.

Regards

Nictron
 
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nictron said:
Walking up a hill to get a strong signal. Sounds like fun.
Click to expand...

It's a residential hill..i live on the side opposite the signal hence my 1-2 bars :), so it's 50m drive

but i could definately see the funny in me hiking up a hill with laptop in hand! :p
 
ic said:
To see the effect of dropped packets - from the customer's end, on speed, compare streaming audio using UDP with say TCP/IP [HTTP] streaming audio...
Click to expand...

Will try that, hopefully the antennae will prevent the packet loss, because that is the serious issue (packet loss).

Regards

Nictron
 
Hi All

I have received my antennae and installed it over the weekend. Unfortunately I get a better signal but packet loss is still unacceptably high.

I purchased the 7 dBi antennae and from communication with pointing it came out that the 10m cable I got with the antennae lose 1 dBi per meter, so it defeats the purpose. I am going to shorten the cable to 3-5 m and see if that helps the cause. i have also noticed on Vodacoms 3G coverage map that I fall in a dead spot area (wonderful).

I have been able to play some BFME2 over the weekend but still got allot of problems, though play was smooth when it worked.

Regards

Nictron
 
nictron said:
Hi All

I have received my antennae and installed it over the weekend. Unfortunately I get a better signal but packet loss is still unacceptably high.

I purchased the 7 dBi antennae and from communication with pointing it came out that the 10m cable I got with the antennae lose 1 dBi per meter, so it defeats the purpose. I am going to shorten the cable to 3-5 m and see if that helps the cause. i have also noticed on Vodacoms 3G coverage map that I fall in a dead spot area (wonderful).

I have been able to play some BFME2 over the weekend but still got allot of problems, though play was smooth when it worked.

Regards

Nictron
Click to expand...

Remember, by mounting the antenna outdoors, you gain another 8 9or so) dB, so you should see a serious gain in sensitivity by mounting your antenna outdoors.

The Yagi's are not really supposed to be mounted indoors.
 
vodacom3g said:
Remember, by mounting the antenna outdoors, you gain another 8 9or so) dB, so you should see a serious gain in sensitivity by mounting your antenna outdoors.indoors.
Click to expand...

So tell me if I am incorrect, will a 7dBi antennae mounted outside actually give you 7 + 8/9 = 15 dBi. Minus cable 10m losing 10dBi = 5 dBi at the end.

Do you advise shortening the cable or not?

Regards

Nictron
 
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nictron said:
So tell me if I am incorrect, will a 7dBi antennae mounted outside actually give you 7 + 8/9 = 15 dBi. Minus cable 10m losing 10dBi = 5 dBi at the end.

Do you advise shortening the cable or not?

Regards

Nictron
Click to expand...

Yes, it'll be 15dB.

I can't think the losses can be so high on the cable. Will ask the engineers.

Just remember a 15dB gain, starting from a base of 0 will still be 0, so first make sure there is a signal to amplify.
 
I currently use a cell c mobile datacard that already has an external antennae(It was supplied with the card), I have 100% signal according to their dashboard program, but packetloss is extremely high. Would adding an additional high gain antennae benefit this problem at all?
 
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