tower 12 blocking out other towers

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pmik

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Thanks to Nic Roet's distance calculator, I have determined that my girlfriend's place is 2.1km from the Fourways Golfpark tower and 2.8km from the Fourways Exchange tower. However, wherever I go on the property, my modem only picks up Council Mineral Tech (tower 12), which is 8km away! It picks it up well (up to 4 lights, 17%) but of course I cannot connect to it coz it's too far away.

My question is: is there a way to force the modem to ignore the signal from tower 12, which it seems to choose as the strongest signal every time, so I might be able to pick up one of the other signals that could be usable? Is a directional antenna pointed away from tower 12 the best option?

Thanks
/me
 
4 now yes.

Rumours are doing the round that a tower selectable firmware version is in process... I personally CANNOT wait for it ;-)

I use a directional antenna but it's still marginal .... I often tend to connect to the wrong tower...

The problem is that if they "fix" 12 so it doesn't blast you with signal I end up without sidnal ;-) .. catch22...

R

************************************************************
The views expressed on this site are my own and NOT those of my employer.
 
Yip, a directional antenna, will only take signal eg in a 20 dgree angle so you can point it away from tower 12, I dont think the software aloows you to choose a tower yet, however I am sure they will be adding that in new updates.

Keep Surfing
 
What about reflected signal? I seem to be relying on reflected signal from 36 (our 12) and as such dont see any other towers. I am within 5km of 4 towers but I only ever see one.

I would like to see firmware where you can block/filter/choose from the available towers and also the visible sector on a tower. This would be so that if your sector goes down you can still try another sector on your super-tower. And by goes down, I mean still sends signal but doesnt receive signal.

With a cantenna, is the point to be directional or to cut noise or what? Im pointing my can in the direction of another tower but still picking up my normal tower (both within range)
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">will only take signal eg in a 20 dgree angle<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Depends on the gain of the antenna. Also keep in mind that antennas with positive gain have side lobes, i.e. they do still pick up signal in other directions but not as well as the main direction.

Side lobe levels vary, anything between 10 to 30 dB (for 40 dB side lobes get your cheque book ready!) .
For example, if you are pointing your antenna to a tower with a signal that's 20 dB weaker than the one you don't want to pick up and your antenna has a 20dB sidelobe in the direction of the unwanted tower, you will pick up both towers with equal strength. Slightly pointing the antenna off the "wanted" direction might help then.

If you don't have a directional antenna, it might help playing around with a metal plate or a big pot to try and screen off the signal from the unwanted tower. See ProAsm's site for the pringles can or "pot booster".

If both the wanted and unwanted signal is coming from the same direction then your only hope is the frequency selectable firmware upgrade that's apparantly on its way, or a very narrow band filter to kill the other frequency you're picking up (haven't looked for those, but I'm sure they will cost an arm and a leg).

Ajax
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">With a cantenna, is the point to be directional or to cut noise or what? Im pointing my can in the direction of another tower but still picking up my normal tower (both within range)<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Both directivity and cut out noise. Directivity ensures that you pick up more from the signal you want (i.e. the direction of the tower) and less of the signal you don't want (i.e. noise from your pc or some other source in a different direction).

Greedyfly is probably picking up a reflection. They can be useful too.
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by greedyflyza</i>
<br />I would like to see firmware where you can block/filter/choose from the available towers and also the visible sector on a tower. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
The firmware will most likely just be able to set the list of freqencies that the modem searches on. Then you will be on the strongest tower.

This brings me to the uselessness of the 29km mode : If your away from the city, you will most likely be on the same antenna for each tower. And the farther you're away from all the towers, the closer their dBs come to each other (check the calculator expected value). Which means the modem picks up half a packet from each tower, and gives up. So your only chance will be to pick off the tower you want with a dish, provided they are not in a straight line of each other.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by pmik</i>
<br />Thanks to Nic Roet's distance calculator, I have determined that my girlfriend's place is 2.1km from the Fourways Golfpark tower and 2.8km from the Fourways Exchange tower. However, wherever I go on the
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
* Nic Roet gets offer to sell logs of webserver, but flatly denies existance of log file *

<hr noshade size="1">
<center>http://rational.co.za/MyWireless/calculate.html</center>
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Side lobe levels vary, anything between 10 to 30 dB (for 40 dB side lobes get your cheque book ready!) .<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">People receiving a signal from any tower that live within 800 meters of a tower are normally dependant on these side lobes.
More than often you will find a user 3 to 5 km away receive a much stronger signal than someone living 500 meters from a tower.
This too is part of the tweaking for some towers (terain depending) where users close to tower X with a week signal could get a better signal from tower Y - 4 km away.


<hr noshade size="1"><center><font color="blue">MyWireless Stuff</font id="blue">
<font size="1"><font color="black">The opinions expressed here are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer</font id="size1"></font id="black"></center>
 
Well Im equidistant from two towers (both 3km +- 100m) and I always only pick up the one tower. Oh well I guess it is the strongest one. Even if I pick up 5% signal it still wont get another tower.
 
Right, gurus. I'm connecting to Tower 12 too. It's just on 6km away and I get about 6% signal. Sometimes it pops up to 12% with my patch antenna but never any better than that.

Will I get better signal (and thus lower ping time, less packet loss) with a proper directional/patch antenna? I can't move the study, so I can't move my modem to the other side of the house (as high as 22% signal).

What's my best bet to improve connectivity?
 
Mentioning the magical 6km number will usually get a set of standard responses from Sentech - you are too far ;-)

As to the reality of the situation there are a couple of things to consider but I would personally try go for something cost effective ;-)

Have you tried to check signal strength inside your ceiling - ie above the study... If so buy a USB extension cable and place the modems etc up there - just make sure you don't have ratz ;-)

Other than that getting the ethernet cable and a CAT5 extention to the other side of the house is an option.

Third option and possibly the most expensive is to get a proper outdoor antenna from one of the companies so frequently posting on the forum; run a decent cable from there into the study and connect the modem.

Hope these ideas assist a tad.

R

************************************************************
The views expressed on this site are my own and NOT those of my employer.
 
tower 12 sucks congealed monkey butt...

i normally "reboot" my modem, moving it around the whole time - until I get tower 82...

tell me grasshoppers... how do i switch HTML code on in my posts... 'cos I'm just getting messed up text for my signature now...

I haven't lost my mind... It's backed up on disk somewhere...
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by regardtv</i>
<br />Mentioning the magical 6km number will usually get a set of standard responses from Sentech - you are too far ;-)

As to the reality of the situation there are a couple of things to consider but I would personally try go for something cost effective ;-)

Have you tried to check signal strength inside your ceiling - ie above the study... If so buy a USB extension cable and place the modems etc up there - just make sure you don't have ratz ;-)

Other than that getting the ethernet cable and a CAT5 extention to the other side of the house is an option.

Third option and possibly the most expensive is to get a proper outdoor antenna from one of the companies so frequently posting on the forum; run a decent cable from there into the study and connect the modem.

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Well the challenge of getting the modem in the ceiling, is power. I'm already using PPPoE using an Ethernet cable, so the distance of the cable isn't a problem, but again, getting power to the sucker is a mission.

I have to rboot my modem about 3 times per day to re-establish a connection, which is getting quite frustrating and the "variable" signal strenght is playing hell with trying to run VoIP. (not to mention the amount of spit I need to consume to constantly re-position the patch antenna).

BTW - anyone else's patch antenna fallen apart yet? Seems the double-sided tape isn't so double sided after a few weeks in the window.
 
Heya Beer,

Quick one for you. did you find that tower 12 dissapeared from 16:47 until 16:51 today ?

R

************************************************************
The views expressed on this site are my own and NOT those of my employer.
 
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