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Questions regarding external antennas

Good morning, this is my first post here having lurked with great interest for a few months.

Living in the very rural Suffolk/Norfolk borders, we were excited when we discovered that BT were starting to offer a FTTC service as opposed to the standard full copper service we were receiving. We were getting 4-5Mbps on copper and thinking that the extra £10 per month would be worth it given the stated 8 Mbps for FTTC, we jumped in. I am sure it comes as no surprise to anyone that we are, ahem, underwhelmed by the "upgrade", which is really no different, only more expensive.

Experimenting with with 3 SIM in a cheap fleBay sourced 3/4g dongle attached to my Draytek 2860 router, I was initially surprised to find that the up- and download speeds were significantly faster than ADSL and that with the dongle inside a cabinet downstairs in an old house with 1ft thick walls! Supported by the views on this forum I am now about to jump in with both feet and use mobile broadband as a complement to the BT service, if not a total replacement.

I notice that, when upstairs in the house, I can sometimes get a 4g service and it is pretty clear that an external antenna is the way to go. I almost jumped in and bought this one - https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/15383-solwise-4g-xpol-a0001/ - but before I do I thought I would ask a couple of questions...

1. The dongle (a rebranded Huawei 3372) has two antenna ports. Is it therefore better to get an antenna that has two cables to take advantage of the two ports, or doesn't it make any difference?

2. Is a directional antenna better than an omni-directional one, ie is the omni-directional option a "cop-out" compromise if I don't know or can't be bothered doing the research into where the best mast is located?

3. How significant is the "gain" figure in the antenna specifications? My default assumption is that more has to be better (an amp that goes to 11 is better than 10, right?) but I suspect there is more to the topic.

On my phone, Mastdata (thanks again to this site) tells me there is a 3 mast in a field about 600m away and the OpenSignal app also points in that direction although I can't for the life of me see the antenna! I am not wedded to 3, but have been relatively happy with them for phones and iPads for a few years now so my default assumption is that I will stay with them.

If anyone can help me with the above it would be very much appreciated.
 
I am sure our mobile internet expert will be along soon, he will probably tell you a directional antenna is best, and that a 4G antenna uses both ports on the dongle; but regarding the inability to see the antenna; it might be disguised.

I know of at least two areas where masts have had to be disguised before planning permission was granted; has a new, odd looking tree appeared in the general location of the mast??

As for BT, some friends recently got told they can have 300Mbps Infinity fibre, despite the fact they only get 150-200Kbps ADSL, and the nearest Fibre cabinet is around 2 miles away in a straight line. Even the BT system, when you enter their phone number insists they can have it, and that they currently get 2-4Mbps on ADSL.
 
Are you sure the fibre they can get is the on deman veriety I have FTTC and decent speeds but I can also get FTTponD of 300Mbps. It is the setting up costs the cable to home etc is expensive as it is on demand.

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Are you sure the fibre they can get is the on deman veriety I have FTTC and decent speeds but I can also get FTTponD of 300Mbps. It is the setting up costs the cable to home etc is expensive as it is on demand.

View attachment 41

The small print on the BT flyer sent in their name (and the BT online checker), gives the standard infinity pricing structure and and quotes a £65 install fee - which is FTTC, but I dont think you can get 300Mbps FTTC, and certainly not over more than 2 miles of rural copper phone line; so the whole BT flyer is a scam.
 
Thanks for the responses.

Out of interest, I just went back on to the BT site and put my phone number into their Broadband Checker. I was amused to see.... "Great News! You could get Faster Broadband" followed by an estimated "speed" of 1-3Mb.

As I recall, when I did the same thing prior to my "upgrade" from standard ADSL, the estimated speed was 5-8Mb. I am intrigued how, in less than a year, the estimate can be so substantially downgraded to a speed slower than the slowest 100% copper connection.

Clearly I need to call BT about this (after plugging the HomeHub back in, without which they won't talk to anyone..), but augmenting this 'service' a mobile connection is ever more urgent!

On the subject of the type of antenna, I came across the following document yesterday - https://www.solwise.co.uk/4g-lte-antenna-considerations.html - in which Solwise recommend omnidirectional antenna. I guess, to your point, if I can't be sure where the mast is that this is a safer choice. I will, however, do a little more research on this topic, short of getting shot by one of the local farmers for trespass....
 
Experimenting with with 3 SIM in a cheap fleBay sourced 3/4g dongle attached to my Draytek 2860 router, I was initially surprised to find that the up- and download speeds were significantly faster than ADSL and that with the dongle inside a cabinet downstairs in an old house with 1ft thick walls! Supported by the views on this forum I am now about to jump in with both feet and use mobile broadband as a complement to the BT service, if not a total replacement.

I notice that, when upstairs in the house, I can sometimes get a 4g service and it is pretty clear that an external antenna is the way to go. I almost jumped in and bought this one - https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/15383-solwise-4g-xpol-a0001/ - but before I do I thought I would ask a couple of questions...


1. The dongle (a rebranded Huawei 3372) has two antenna ports. Is it therefore better to get an antenna that has two cables to take advantage of the two ports, or doesn't it make any difference?

4G works best with two antennae. So either an antennae that is cross-polarised and works with 4G frequencies and has two outputs, or, two antennae.

2. Is a directional antenna better than an omni-directional one, ie is the omni-directional option a "cop-out" compromise if I don't know or can't be bothered doing the research into where the best mast is located?

Directional is better if you can point it at the transmitter and there's nothing significant in the way (block of flats, hill). Ideally it needs line of sight. Directional antennae have much greater gain than Omni-directional. That said, if you then want to change operator later on you might have to physically repoint it.

3. How significant is the "gain" figure in the antenna specifications? My default assumption is that more has to be better (an amp that goes to 11 is better than 10, right?) but I suspect there is more to the topic.

It is very significant. Unless you already have a very strong signal. The one you've bought has only a very small uplift and may make little difference.

NB you may need a "pigtail" adapter to connect the antenna to your device, the sockets and plugs can differ. Solwise sell those.

A good directional one may give a gain uplift of 10 or more and make a huge difference. However:

On my phone, Mastdata (thanks again to this site) tells me there is a 3 mast in a field about 600m away and the OpenSignal app also points in that direction although I can't for the life of me see the antenna! I am not wedded to 3, but have been relatively happy with them for phones and iPads for a few years now so my default assumption is that I will stay with them.

If it's 600m away you ought to be able to see it from the top of your house? Unless you're in a dip and the transmitter is the other side of a hill.

Height is everything. Ideally you want the antenna on the top of your house (e.g. fixed to the chimney/roof) aligned perfectly with the transmitter. Indeed the dongle by itself at the right height might outperform a good antenna lower down.

Because antennae have short cables (don't extend them, they need to be short) working backwards - antenna as high as you can get it, then the modem or dongle. However dongles don't normally have an Ethernet output and so there's then no way to power the thing or feed the signal around the house unless you run a long powered USB cable to it. Those are temperamental at best.

Ideal is to buy a 4G modem like this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Huawei-B593s-22-Unlocked-Wireless-Router/dp/B009QW3ZG4

.. which is "standalone" (doesn't need plugging into the PC with a USB port), network unlocked and will enable you to try different operators, has decent internal antennae and Ethernet outputs so you can repeat the signal around the house with Home Plugs, and also has the two sockets for external antennae should they be needed.

Then walk around the top of your house seeing where the signal is strongest. When you get the best location leave it there. And only move onto antennae once that stage is proven.
 
Also living in suffolk and have an average of between 1-1.5mb and no chance of fibre and and have down the EE 4G route, the Huawei B593s-22 is a fantastic router that i have up in the loft and run a network to the switch that supplies all my network ports though the house.

The mobile signal is not brilliant here and with the supplied antenas i was able to get between 1 and 2 bars of 4G signal but i used an Ponyting X-Pol A0002 is a good directional antena and put on the the TV pole on the house pointing to the nearest EE Tower.

IMG_0450.jpg


But the antenna is a bit pricy and are some cheaper models about but this has given me a full strength 4G signal and a couple of other houses in the village have gone the same route.
 
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Thank you very much for taking the time to compose such a detailed response.

I think I need to establish whether or not there is a mast within line of sight of the top of the house, which I will do when I am up there tomorrow.

I am dealing with a few variables here. The top of the chimney, indeed anywhere that is likely to have line of sight to a mast is going to be at least a 10m cable run to a dongle plugged into my router, which would involve extending the cable. I was intending to use some redundant Sky dish coax for that, which happens to run into the same cabinet and is, so went my thinking, convenient. If I can't extend the cable then my options seem to be to run a length of powered USB cable to a waterproof location within reach of the antenna or, as you say, buy a new modem, put it in the roof space and run some cat6. If I do the latter, I lose the load-balancing functionality on my Draytek should I choose to keep the BT line as well.....trade-offs....

It is not so simple to remove one's dependency on BT!
 
The signal you gain from high-up positioning can be frittered away with a long co-ax cable or join in the cable, rendering it pointless.

I'd suggest that B593 modem as high as you can put it (not in the loft, by a window on the right side of the house will probably be better especially if you have lead/slate tiles) with the Ethernet out (Ethernet can have longer cable runs) from that into your Draytek assuming that it has two WAN ports and can failover between them.

If you mean failover as opposed to load balancing. I haven't read of anyone load balancing between 4G and ADSL; where we are, for example, load-balancing between VDSL and 4G would probably achieve nothing since the upstream of 4G is 37 to 50 Meg, and the likely upstream of VDSL would be about one tenth of that. It might actually be worse/more latent than simply having 4G by itself.

The £150 spent on the Huawei modem would be the best use of any money you spend in your position as it is a nice piece of kit that performs very well by itself, is quite functional and reliable, has very good built-in antennae and "works out of the box".
 
The signal you gain from high-up positioning can be frittered away with a long co-ax cable or join in the cable, rendering it pointless.

I'd suggest that B593 modem as high as you can put it (not in the loft, by a window on the right side of the house will probably be better especially if you have lead/slate tiles) with the Ethernet out (Ethernet can have longer cable runs) from that into your Draytek assuming that it has two WAN ports and can failover between them.

If you mean failover as opposed to load balancing. I haven't read of anyone load balancing between 4G and ADSL; where we are, for example, load-balancing between VDSL and 4G would probably achieve nothing since the upstream of 4G is 37 to 50 Meg, and the likely upstream of VDSL would be about one tenth of that. It might actually be worse/more latent than simply having 4G by itself.


All noted, thank you.

The Draytek 2860 has 4 WAN ports but sadly only one of them can be ethernet, the others are ADSL and two USB ports. I do mean load balancing; there are pretty configurable rules as to what kind of traffic goes via which connection or, based on the speed of the connections or the volume of traffic (ie it can be restricted to 30gb a month via a USB modem, the 3 tethering limit) it will balance between the two. Failover, of course, is also an option.

I will do a little more research on the mast location first and make subsequent decisions based on that, despite my innate impatience to get cracking!
 
I suspect that if you want to try load balancing you might need two routers to accomplish what you want. Or something quite sophisticated, the "Firebrick" thing springs to mind.

If you can get a decent 4G signal and good speeds, the desire to even bother with the load balancing might well fall away.

I thought about doing that here, having VDSL for the TV streaming and 4G for large uploads or where speed is needed, but then we got the EE Home 4G 100GB/mo package and that suffices for both.

Just to add that you'll need a data SIM and plan for the Huawei modem. It won't work with a phone SIM.
 
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Hi,

I have a DrayTek 2860Vac router, and I Load Balance my ADSL connection with a 4G connection.

I use the TP-Link Archer MR200 router (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unlocked-Configuration-UK-Archer-MR200/dp/B0161ACBE0/) in an upstairs window. I then connected this via Ethernet cables to a set of Powerline Adapters, similar to: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01M16AZTI/ - one upstairs close to the 4G router, and one downstairs by the DrayTek 2860, which then connects into WAN2 (Ethernet) using another Ethernet cable. This seems to work quite well (using Session-Based Load Balancing at the moment).

The TP-Link Archer MR200 seems to have good antennae for 4G reception (I'm in a marginal signal area, and can't get 4G on my phone - you can also force the MR200 into 4G mode, or 3G mode, or "Auto"). I do have the omni-directional antenna you mentioned (https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/15383-solwise-4g-xpol-a0001/), as I don't have line-of-sight to my nearest cell mast - I haven't connected it yet, but I *may* well need to use it soon, as we're surrounded by trees, and the 4G signal has slowed as the leaves emerge - once they are fully out (and the signal is at it's lowest), I'll try the omni-directional antenna (as if it works ok then, it should work any time). My 4G link was 25-35Mbps down / 10 - 20Mbps up earlier, but is now around 15-18 down / 1-5 up - so still a huge improvement over my ADSL.

I followed this guide to set up load balancing: http://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk/draytek-2920 (although they use a different router, it's similar, & principles are the same).

As I use my 4G link as a kind of "turbo boost" to my ADSL (the ADSL has unlimited data and I get speeds of 2.5 to 3.5Mbps down, 0.3Mbps up - my 4G is with EE, I snagged a special offer of 32Gb of monthly data for £14.50 per month on a rolling 30-day contract [SIM-only DataSIM], they do similar offers every 3-6 months I believe), I couldn't really rely on 4G alone (not enough data), so it makes sense to Load Balance between the 2 connections, I feel it makes the best use of both connections (plus the 4G connection also acts as an automatic "failover" [backup] if the ADSL ever goes down, & vice versa).

Kind regards,
Adam.
 
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