EVDO Works! Now - how do I get it back and keep it?

Kao · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 12 Jul 2007 Posts: 17

Like many others on here, I have put a fair amount of time and money in to getting a broadband connection in an area where traditional services are not available.

For 2 years, a Wilson trucker antenna, Wilson dual band amp and a KPC-650 card have kept me on Verizon National Access.
Typical download/upload speeds have been 180kbps/100kbps.
Typical ping times have been ~500ms to 800ms.
Typical RSSI readings have been -75dBm.

A couple weeks ago I replaced the trucker antenna with a parabolic grid and replaced the KPC650 card with the KPC680.
The only thing that changed was my RSSI reading.
Typical RSSI reading now is -60dBm.

I was very disappointed when I did not get any improvements in speed or latency. As can be seen here:

I tried aiming the antenna every which way.
I tried locking the KPC680 card in HDR mode and could not get a connection at all.

I was pretty much ready to give up.

However a funny thing happened yesterday. I had left the computer on and connected over night and when I woke up yesterday morning, the Verizon Access Manager software said I was connected to BroadBand RevA. My RSSI reading was -53dBm.

At first I thought it was a fluke...I would sometimes get the message that I was connected to RevA, but it would never pass any traffic and always reconnect to National Access.

But this wasnt reconecting. So I did some speed tests. I was getting ~1.5mb downloads and ~500kbps uploads.
As can be seen here:

I was at a loss to explain it. Happy, but at a loss.
I hadn't changed anything on my end. I went to bed connected to National Access and woke up with RevA.

So yesterday I had this nice fast connection. I did many speed tests, screens shots, and went in to service mode on the KPC680 card and saved the data.

Last night, after being connected to RevA all day, my KPC680 locked up. No lights. This has happend about 4 or 5 times now and the only solution is to reboot the laptop.
Of course when I did this, my connection went to National Access and my RSSI went back up to -60. I tried locking in to HDR mode and could not get a connection.

Goodbye RevA Sad

I have not been able to connect to RevA since.

I highly doubt that verizon changed anything on their end, but I didn't do anything on my end either.

Obviously I can get and use RevA. But I don't know how to get it back.

I would really appreciate any suggestions or advice on what to try next.

I'll post screen shots and information I pulled from the KPC680 card later when I have more time.

onedavester · Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 9:35 am Post subject:

It's possible that you are in a similar situation like I was with Verizon. You may be pointing your antenna in the direction of two different towers. One has 1RXtt only and one has both RevA and 1RXtt. You need to try to catch the edge of a lobe of the tower that has RevA while trying to get the antenna to ignore the other tower.

This takes a lot of patience and time. Because the Parabol has such a narrow beam it takes a little luck sometimes as well. I also learned that higher up is not always better.

Kao · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 12 Jul 2007 Posts: 17

Kao · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 12 Jul 2007 Posts: 17

Ok...have had some time to tinker with things.

I get my best signal when my antenna is pointing north. About -59dBm.

Starting from north, I have rotated the antenna over 90 deg to the east and over 90 deg to the west in about 5 degree increments.

I found that I almost never left my tower (#488) no matter where I pointed the antenna and never went over -90dBm.

There was a short period where I connected to a tower #304 to the North east at about -90dBm. National access only.

I know there is a tower (280) to the south east of my house because I have parked next to it in the past, but I could not connect to it from my home as it is too far away. Even pointing my grid at it, I was still getting a stronger signal from the tower that is closer (488).

I gave up, pointed my grid back to the north, got my RSSI to -60dBm, locked my card to HDR and tried to connect. RAS error 678 - the remote computer did not respond.

So I called tech support. Got a friendly tech that has been working there for 3.5 years.
I didn't tell her that I had the card locked to HDR nor did I tell her I had an external antenna. I just went through the motions.
I was surprised/somewhat impressed she didn't have me re-install the software.
She had me re-activate - which actually worked while locked into HDR mode.
She said she could see that I was connected to RevA on Wed for several hours and that if I got the signal then, I should get it now.
The only thing I thought was odd...is when she asked me what my RSSI was and I told her -60dBm. She said that was bad and that it should be between -69dBm and -89dBm. hhmmm...OK.
Anyway she had me hit CTRL-T to bring up a terminal window. Typed in an AT command AT$QCMIPEP=1
That didnt help either.
She did confirm that the closest tower to me was about 9.4 miles.

In the end she put in a trouble ticket for someone to do something at the local tower. She will be calling me back next week after the tower has been checked.

She agreed that it seemed very odd that the national access was so stable at -60dBm and that the evdo bars were bouncing from 1 to 2 to 3 then back to 1. The pattern repeated over and over and would never connect.

Here is an aerial map of the towers in relation to my house:

Here is a screen shot of when I did have RevA a few days ago:

I really feel that there is a problem on Verizon's side simply because I did nothing to my equipment or software when RevA just appeared like magic one night. I used it all day until my modem locked up, then when I reset the connection...poof! No more RevA.
Just doesn't make sense.
I'm pretty much out of options right now. I guess I'll wait for the trouble ticket to be looked into.

Here is some information pulled from the csv file I created while I had RevA:

---------- CDMA ----------
Slot Sycle Index - 2
SID - 316
NID - 1
FER - 28%
RSSI - 59
Pilot PN - 488
Ec/Io - -4
Cnannel# - 425
Band Class - Cellular Band [800MHz]
Active Set PN Offsets - 488
Active Set Ec/Io (dBm) - -4
Candidate Set PN Offsets - blank
Candidate Set Ec/Io (dBm) - blank
Neighbor Set PN Offsets - 304 472 136 104 80 72 216 504 336 320 184 408 152 384 264 272 280 328 0
Neighbor Set Ec/Io (dBm) - -598.5
PREV - 6
Packet Zone ID - 1
Last Active Call State - CONNECTED
Last Active Call Type - NONE
Dormant State - ACTIVE
Last Call End Reason - RELEASE_NORMAL
Last Call Error - Success
Service Option In Use - 0x80ff
Call State - CONNECTED

---------- EVDO ----------
UATI024 - 0x0000
MAC Index - 126
Subnet Mask - 0x68
Color Code - 0x9c
EVDO RSSI - 53
EVDO Pilot PN - 488
EVDO Ec/Io - -3
EVDO Cnannel# - 589
EVDO Band Class - Cellular Band [800MHz]
EVDO Active Set PN Offsets - 488
EVDO Active Set Ec/Io (dBm) - -3
EVDO Candidate Set PN Offsets - 304
EVDO Candidate Set Ec/Io (dBm) - -10
EVDO Neighbor Set PN Offsets - 152 320 472 384 16 136 56 72 408 280 216 328 272 336 432 192 184 48 344 504 80 240 352 144 232 360 464 96 312 480 168 24
EVDO Neighbor Set Ec/Io (dBm) - -1142
AT State - CONNECTED
Packet Error Rate(PER) - 0%
IP Address - 75.252.xxx.xxx (51e6xxxx) ( I put the x's in.)

widgetman101 · EVDO Junkie Joined: 02 Apr 2008 Posts: 211

Well I see you finally got your grid up and running. It sounds like your describing a tower interference issue.

When I had my Yagi I also had that problem. I'd see full bars of Rev-A service aimed at a specific tower. It connected fine until this summer. I then went to a tower that was closer but slower to get my Rev-A.

I then started to notice that by connecting to the slower one then spinning the antenna I could stay connected to the faster one.

When aimed at the slower one I'd watch my signal jump erratically from time to time. It was doing this because it was trying to connect to the other tower. But if aimed at the other tower for some reason the connection manager seemed to want to connect to the other tower and I'd get that Ras error also.

When I got my grid it singled out that tower and took away all my Ras error problems.

I think your getting interference from another tower somewhere. If your seeing a full Rev-A signal and it drops out after you connect and get the connection failed message. Are you sure there is not another tower in the area.

What I'd recommend is bringing up the connection manager and lock the card into HDR. Slowly rotate the antenna in 10 degree increments. Give it a few minutes and try and connect. I think you just need to find the sweet spot.

As for your Rev-A signal being lower than your national access signal that's normal. Mine's always lower than my National Access signal.

Check out www.antennasearch.com and see if you've got any other possible towers in the area that may be conflicting with your current aim. Use different address's to search all around you.

It takes time and patience. It took me 1 week to find a crappy Rev-A signal. It took me 3 months of playing around to find a great signal. That was the signal I lost in the summer BTW. Late summer I switched to the grid and that great tower signal came back with no issue's. I didn't even know that tower was there when initially setting up my equipment.

Kao · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 12 Jul 2007 Posts: 17

Well...that kinda worked Wink

My closest tower (488) is to the north. If I start spinning the antenna to the east in slow 5 degree increments, I start seeing other tower numbers - 304, 104, and 80.

I tried locking in to HDR and I couldn't connect no matter where I had the antenna pointed.

However...I found that if I kept the card in Automatic mode, connected to NationalAccess and started spinning the antenna to the east until I was on tower 304 (weaker signal - about -75dBm), then hit disconnect, locked the card in to HDR and Reconnect - THEN I was able to get RevA/EVDO!
However the evdo tower in the field test was listed as #104...not 304 or 488.

My speeds and pings were not very impressive..but much better than NationalAccess.
So after it connected to RevA, I spun the antenna back to the north (RSSI down to -58dBm) and I got great speeds (1.5mb down/560kb up).
Looking at the Field Test I was connected to tower 488 - the one closest to me.

The connection stayed stable for a few hours...then dropped and would not reconnect. It was getting late so I just went to bed.

I'll have to keep playing with it.
With such a strong RSSI to tower 488...and good bandwidth, I'm still confused as to why I cannot just connect to it on a regular basis.

zeg · EVDO Newbie Joined: 17 Dec 2008 Posts: 5

I have the exact same problem with bell Canada same deal. I have a yagi and a omni setup. One in the truck the other one on a telephone pole. Bell is looking into it. They have CDMA 2000 whit 889 mhz . I have 3 towers close to me only one have evdo and its about 15 km (7 miles).

I have full bars in ev only with rssi to 65 and then the signal drops to 1 bar then back to full bars. The tower with ev is at 129deg and the one without the ev is at 112 deg. The one that only have 1x is about 4 miles from me so I think it may be a logic problem. It use to work fine for about 8 month and just stop working one day look at my old post

evdoforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=11243&highlight=connecting

later

zeg · EVDO Newbie Joined: 17 Dec 2008 Posts: 5

Since the ping fix i have been online and flying at 1.5 mb for over 6 hours without a single reconnection .