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I live in a fairly remote area and I have a standard 4G wireless ZTE router from 3. The signal I get is usually only 2 or 3 bars and gives me up to 20Mbps download and 5Mbps download. This is ok for most purposes but I would like to get a bit more by getting my own router and external antenna.
Anybody run a setup like this? Did you get a big improvement? Which equipment would you recommend?
Thanks!
I did all this during lockdown and it very quickly gets very messy. First up, does your current router have any facility for connecting an external antenna.? This would be the easiest way to go if possible, having said that there are 2 routes to go even here. Do you know for sure which 4G mast you connect to.? Is it more than one.? If you can definitively answer those questions then you can consider whether to go for an omnidirectional or unidirectional antenna. Unidirectional antenna's have a higher gain and should get a stronger signal but have to be pointed at the correct mast with reasonable accuracy, if you connect ot more than one mast or don't know where the mast is then better to get a omnidirectional. I'd recommend the Poynting antenna's in either case, they need to be no more than 5m from the router otherwise you lose more signal through cable noise than you will gain with the antenna.
Moving on from that, if your current router won't support an antenna, then the Huawei routers seem to be well regarded and are the most user friendly to configure. You want to be sure to get a minimum CAT6 router to be sure that your connection uses carrier aggregation for faster speeds, if your current router is only CAT4 then this could be what's holding you back and a higher spec router would improve speeds even without an external antenna.
Most, if not all the Huawei routers support external antenna's if you need/want to combine them.
If you aren't scared off by the techier end of configuring stuff then I'd recommend Mikrotik LTE routers. They are one piece units with integral hi-gain antennas designed to be externally mounted and get their power over PoE (power over ethernet), an injector is included. I'd suggest either the SXT or LHG, the LHG is a bigger, dish style antenna that's higher gain. This is the one I have, a mate up the road has the SXT and both have been flawless for months. I went from a different router with rabbit ears and getting around 70db signal to the LHG in the loft pointed directly at the mast and getting signal strength between 58db and 63db. Speeds went from a max of 18Mbps to over 90Mbps.
To be clear however, the MikroTik stuff is not easy to setup, I am only using it as a 4G modem bridged to the rest of my network so I'm not using 90% of it's functionality but it's a pretty intimidating interface and support is basically their user forums. If you are setting up a basic network configuration you should be fine but expect it to take you a few nights to get it setup how you want it.
Also be aware that although the MikroTik's function as routers they do not have WiFi included so you'd need a seperate AP or Mesh setup for your WiFi.
Some suggestions....
Oh and if all of that sounds like too much work, I know that if you sign up for 4G broadband with EE they will install an external antenna for you if your signal strength isn't good enough.
https://shop.ee.co.uk/broadband/4g-home-broadband
I have 4G broadband with an aerial from EE - they charge £100 for the aerial install which is actually a fair price given that buying the aerial yourself is about £90. We're in a pretty remote place - we barely get 1 bar of mobile signal on a clear day outside and 20Mbps would be a dream
Thread here https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/broadband-internet-a-thrilling-update-including-a-picture-of-a-man-on-a-roof/ could be useful.
Products I used at the end of that thread. Think there are a couple of new versions of that router since we bought ours.
We started with the Three internal router. Pretty rubbish. 15-20 meg at best and not consistent. The setup ^^ is 55-60 all day every day. With 15 meg up. CellMapper is your friend to work out which cell you will be connected to.
Going external was a no brainer for us. We are 3 miles from the biggest mast in Herefordshire!
Just bookmarking for later
Thanks for the information. I checked my router and there are external Antenna connections. So first thing to try is the antenna. I know there are masts to the east and the west but it depends on the time of the year and the weather which is better so I will try an omnidirectional antenna.
I like the look of the MikroTik routers but I will try the simpler option first. Could also install on the roof because we have a window onto the roof with a platform where I can connect to. I can then use my existing Mesh network to extend down to the other floors and cellar. I will update on my results for those who are interested.
I have a router by 'Outdoorrouter' with a standard EE phone sim in it with unlimited data. Connected to the router is a tenda mesh setup. It's attached to our house gable end wall but second house (holiday house) picks up the wifi from the outdoor router and uses a repeater to repeat the signal around that one too.
Got the router 2nd hand on ebay for sensible money. Only snag is its only Cat 4. Pop the same sim in my iphone and put it in the same location as my antena and it gets faster test results by a fair margin. We are getting 30mb down and 18mb up which is fine for our needs and better than the 2mb I'd get from BT broadband for the same monthly cost. Mrs C can work from home in the dat with the usual teams/zoom meetings and we can watch netflix and catch up tv in the evening so all good.
In terms of antenna, we don't quite have line of sight to the mast even from the chimney (big trees in the way) so we went with an Omni. Still needed to move it about a bit on setup to get the best position in terms of BW. I had a pretty good idea of where to place it based on looking on CellMapper.
One thing we did find was with the higher speeds, our Tenda Mesh was throttling the bandwidth. We did have 6 of them, which is pretty sub-optimal with no dedicated back-haul.
After some testing, we went down the Netgear Orbi route. Expensive but rock solid for the last year. And no throttling.