External antenna

[Steve-2019]

Hi, I purchased an External Antenna due to thick solid walls in my old house and did a quick test with the antenna next to the Huawei b525 router, internal antenna gave 0.8mb per second, external gave 6mb per second.

Stuck the antenna outside on the wall and got 38mb per second and 6mb upload.


Then I tried it high up on a pole but got 20mb download loss of 18mb but an increase of upload to 21mb upload...

Why didn't my download also increase?

Its an Omni antenna, should I have went with directional? I know where the mast is but dont have pure line of sight due to trees and big house or 2 in the way

Im with Three unlimited data


Thanks

 

[Meatball]

A useful read may be https://www.solwise.co.uk/4g-lte-antenna-considerations.html

If you can't get line of sight I would say Omni.

Speed tests can throw up exceptions. Best always to go by the mobile signal strength. Huawei software should allow you to select between internal, paddles or external (ensure not both). If you haven't a professional meter to monitor the signal the best option is to use the router interface to display the signal level. Moving the antenna can change what frequencies it picks up and these are different for each provider so just go for the best.

I have only minimal experience of 4G antennas so far but have concluded already there is theory and practice. The wall may have had an effect hence the improved download. Download will invariably be higher than upload but performance on mobile can vary significantly depending on time/day and weather. I used free SIMs from different providers to test and those results were also inconsistent so every install is different.

 

[Jake4]

Do you know how far away you are from the cell tower (Sight Distance)?

 

[Mark8253]

You need to measure multiple times to get a true idea of speed, as 3G/4G are much more variable than wired connections. "Ideal" antenna position is not always obvious, and will need experiments. We use Three's 3G service with a TP-Link router (can't get their 4G here) and my router is mounted on the wall inside an eave cupboard in an upstairs bedroom! This consistently gives a stronger signal (4 out of 4 signal bars on the router and faster download speed) than even by an open first floor window directly facing the mast over reasonably open countryside (2-3 bars). We found exactly the same when we used 3G from EE off the same mast a couple of years ago, so I can only assume that there is something acting as a "lens" (house wiring perhaps?) and fortuitously concentrating the signal onto the antenna. We've not tried with Three, but an external antenna (Solwise onmi-directional unit) did not improve EE reception in any position relative to the supplied rabbit ears.

I have a Raspberry Pi on a wired link to the router that measures and logs speeds and latency automatically every hour by calling speedtest.cli. Over the past month, the mean download speed has been 19.7 Mb/s, with a typical range of 10 - 25 Mb/s. Interestingly, if I compare measurements made between 18:00 and 22:00 with those made between 02:00 and 06:00, the former set is slower by only about 2 Mb/s on average, which is not statistically significant - i.e. much less dependence on time of day than I might have expected.