Deep in the Woods of Missouri - Long post

mighel

I'll start out with unfortunately we did not get our router and service thru 3Gstore, Out here Alltell seems to have better coverage AND everything I've read here and elsewhere seems to say Alltell means unlimited.

We went from dial up to Directway (now hughesnet) At best the service stank. Yes you got decent speeds with a huge bandwidth limitation. Basically you could work the system and manage about 500 megs a day down, about the same as dial up. The advantage was you could dl files up to about 170 megs fairly quickly. If you went over that your speeds would be knocked down to 45kps for an hour or so. THEN they changed the rules! With no notice given (okay they posted it on their website) they changed the limitations. They stated they "improved it", what they did is they raised the limit to 200 BUT if you went over.....it went to 18kps for 24 hours! (about a 14.4 modem if you remember those)

So we scrambled around and after reading here and elsewhere we decided EVDO was the way to go and Alltell seemed to be the way. We made a few mistakes, first we should have bought a card right out and then got service (no contract that way) AND we should have bought the card and KR! router from 3Gstore. as they say 20/20 hindsight.

We got the service and were hoping for double/triple dialup (1xRTT on maps) That would have been good.

So we have been using the EVDO modem and router and it's not bad. We'd pull 120-170 kbps or about double to triple dial up. Not screaming but not bad, especially here in the woods. We're 20 miles from a payphone!

Okay that being said we were having a fair number of dropouts and when the signal would fluctuate so would the speed.

So we ordered an external antenna from 3G guys (first smart thing we did). We ordered the Omni and pigtail, and had it 2nd dayed. Put it on the roof attached to a mount the previous owners had left (used to hold up a rather large TV antenna so I figure it'll handle this whip antenna fine) That was a whole bunch of fun. Roof was wet (drizzle rain on and off all day) I'm rather achy on good days much less rainy days anyway(even sorer on this one due to testing with the laptop earlier in the week) , I hate heights and there were a far amount of tools needed.

But either way I got it in place and solid.

Okay come in side.... router need to be near the antenna to avoid loss thru the coax cable (ant has 12 feet with a pigtail to the modem) Okay router is up stairs.. BUT....I don't have an ethernet cable long enough to get to my system downstairs......and of course here there's a small Wallie World and a Radio Shack. Even if RS had a ling cable... They'd would have had me over a barrel on price.

so I manage to find an older router in my stuff. I set it up on the stairs and run one cable to it and the next to my system (well hub on my system)... took me forever to get the router dumbed down to a switch (turned off DHCP but forgot to give it a static address).

Okay get it working at the switch, hub was cranky also, just had to switch cables around.

Go back and do speedtest

I'm expecting the 120-150 we've been seeing all week but maybe a better signal and less dropouts (as I said 2x to 3x dial up)

fist thing I notice is in the router I'm pulling 10 bars (10 out of 10)

I do another speed test I'm getting 1100 down and a 100 up! tested multiple times with several servers. Downloaded a 50 meg files in 10 minutes!!

I realize this is around DSL but it's ten times what we expected and even faster than the satellite was!

woohoo!

Thank you 3g guys and Alex you were a lot of help!

cya
mike vincent

be sure and put the external antenna in the white side on the kyocera 650 card (not the black like I did at first)

--
atti, non parole
_________________
atti,non parole

Bigdave · EVDO Addict Joined: 08 Nov 2006 Posts: 1068

Wow!! That's cool! A good positive post about rural Alltel EVDO!!! We welcome the Missouri backwoods to the world of EVDO!!!

EDIT: BTW, atti, non parole? Is this Italian for . . . . Action, Not Words? Just curious.

FFMikeM110 · Posted: Thu May 03, 2007 10:34 am Post subject:

Wow! I didn't think that an antenna would really do THAT much, I knew it'd help considerably, but that's an awesome difference! Makes me want to go put an antenna outside now! lol!

mighel · Posted: Fri May 04, 2007 10:24 pm Post subject:

Trust me I was astounded by the difference also.

When I spoke to Alex at 3g he asked if I had done a site survey. I honestly hadn't thought of it. He suggested I take my router around outside the house and try different directions. I compromised and used my ancient laptop.

The difference was significant. One side of the house I pulled around 100 the over 6-700 and on the roof a cool 1000. After getting the antenna and setting it up I'm delighted. Highest speed so far has been 1300.

My best guess is I'm pulling in a far away EVDO (don't ask me how) and occasionally getting 1xrtt. When I get the slower speeds it's fine for most surfing but If I need the higher speeds I just reboot the router and 9 out of 10 I get it back.

A couple of things I haven't figured out. When I'm pulling fast the router page shows an even 100, the slower speeds just 30 percent. I would have assumed the rtt would be stronger here.

I also get semi regular drop of signal. The router will usually log back in after a few moments but if not a reboot solves it. I'd like to minimize those but not sure how.

I'm also considering getting a mast to get the antenna up a bit and might also do an amp so as to be able to run cable further (upstairs is real inconvenient on my knees)

Last atti, non parole is a personal motto and in Italian means basically what you said "Deeds, not words"

cya
m
_________________
atti,non parole