Success in the Wilds of Kansas

jfulmer · EVDO Heavy User Joined: 30 Jun 2007 Posts: 114

I've been an unhappy Internet User for awhile. A little background:

I live in eastern Kansas. This may seem like a technological backwater, but I had been on broadband cable since 1994, as I am a network/security engineer, and I helped beta test the local cable company's new broadband solution. It was very, very good.

And then, in 2004, after almost 10 years of broadband access... I moved to the middle of nowhere. First, i did ISDN, which strangely was available. It was expensive, unreliable, and slow.

After two years of that, I tried business class satellite. This was expensive, laggy, and fast. And everything was okay until Hughesnet changed their service and went from a 500MB, with a few hour penalty (speed reduced to 100kbs) for exceeding it, to a 500MB cap with a 24 hour penalty (speed reduced to ~30kbps). This was unacceptable, especially for the cost.

So... I noticed that Sprint had recently upgraded their tower nearest to me to EVDO Rev A, and that I was on the edge of their service area (their 'boundary' literally cuts through my land). I thought I would give it a shot.

I ordered a S720 pcmcia card and an external omi-directional antenna from 3GStore, and I can't say enough good things about dealing with them. Especially after I accidentally ordered the U720 and they kindly dealt with the 7 Levels of Heck that is dealing with Sprint Telephone Support.

Two days later, I have the the EVDO card, the antenna, and a PCMCIA/PCI adapter for a spare PC. I plug the EVDO card into the computer, install the Sprint Connection Manager and..... Nothing.

No signal. Nada. Zip. I try it on 1xRTT and I get a little signal, but no connection. To say I was a little disappointed, is an understatement.

So, then I plug in the external antenna. And.... I get an EVDO Rev A signal. Holding it in my office I get 1 bar strength (95dbi ish), 200-300kbs down, 100kbs up. Which was promising.

I drilled a hole in the wall, ran the antenna outside, mounted it on a ~12ft pole and went back. I now get 4 bars signal, or about 80-84dbi strength, rock solid. Keep in mind that my nearest tower is 7 miles away and I don't exactly have clear line of sight to it due to quite a few trees.

Now I get 200-700kbs on the average, depending on the time of day. While this is slower than the satellite, my latency is about 100-250ms (ping round trip), compared to the 800-1500ms on satellite, and no download cap. While I was hoping for a somewhat higher speed, it is more than acceptable and so far has been very stable. I'd say I'm 90% satisfied, which is pretty good in this day and age.

So... the big thing I've learned is that if you have any kind of metal siding or expanded metal in your house frame you MUST use an external antenna of some sort. You are essentially living in a Faraday cage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage), and must get something outside the shielding to pick up a decent signal. Also, if you are mounting an omni-directional antenna to a pole, mount it to the very top of the pole, so that the pole's grounding doesn't interfere with the antenna at all.

Anyway, so far this as been a very positive experience, and if you can get enough signal from your tower, I would highly recommend it.

Edit:

Well, one month later, after some fixes, 5 hours with Sprint tech support about a disconnect issue I had to figure out myself, tweaks, directional antenna, and changing to a tower farther away but with a stronger (directional) signal, I have a very nice, reliable connection, ~1250kb/s down, 100kb/s up, which I am EXTREMELY happy with.

xenophon · EVDO Addict Joined: 30 Aug 2005 Posts: 1969

Might also try forcing roaming in the Connection Manager as Alltel likely has EVDO in your area. Not sure if it's a good idea to always roam (no signs of limits yet) but it's an option.

Alltel has EVDO is most of KS...
http://alltel.com/business/enhanced/mobilelink_coverage.jsp?state=ks

jfulmer · EVDO Heavy User Joined: 30 Jun 2007 Posts: 114

Actually, I did get a strongish 1xRTT roaming signal with no antenna. But, according to the map you linked, it looks like their EVDO stop well to the west of me.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the speed issues have more to do with the networking portion than the actual wireless. The tower may be somewhat oversubscribed, since it's the only one for 15 miles around where it is. I also ended up changing my Home Agent, since they were back hauling me to Indiana or somesuch...

Walter · EVDO Junkie Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 307

jfulmer · EVDO Heavy User Joined: 30 Jun 2007 Posts: 114

Walter · EVDO Junkie Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 307

You must have some nasty critters out there in Kansas!
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