Considering a complete modem/antenna changeover

donbaloo · EVDO User Joined: 12 Jul 2007 Posts: 27

Hi folks. I'm still around and have a few more questions. My current setup is a U720 modem with a booster antenna from 3G. After messing with this stuff for another couple weeks I feel a little more confident in the information I can relay at this point. Right now, my standard connection is staying relatively stable at -83 dB to -85 dB. There's some occassional signal swing but nothing too extreme these days. Typical speeds are 475 to 750 down and 100-150 up.

The speeds are okay, and I'm relatively happy with them. However, I have been trying to utilize my connection for Xbox Live online play and its been, eh, sketchy. Although the actual internet connection at the computer never (or very rarely I should say) disconnects I'm very frequently disconnected from Xbox Live (I'm sharing the internet connection from the computer). I'd like to stop that if possible.

Lately I've been running a continuous ping to google.com while I'm online and I've noticed that everytime I'm disconnected from Xbox Live I can go and scroll back through the ping log and there will always be one really bad ping time (usually around 1600ms or more) or even a "timed out". Those blips never disconnect the internet connection but they do seem to be kicking me off my online game.

All that background, to lead into the following. I now know that I have one sprint tower that I assume I'm pulling my connection from, its just over a mile to the north of me (like 1.2 miles maybe). I do not have line of site to this tower as it is blocked by a thick treeline on a hilltop. However, there is another tower to the northwest of me that I do actually have line of site to, but its about 4.5 miles. There's another one 4.5 miles to the northeast of me as well that I'm pretty certain I don't have LOS to. Those towers run along the east/west interstate to the north of me. Furthermore, I don't anticipate any towers ever being added to the south of me as there's about 10,000 acres of National/State park there.

All that being said, I'm wondering if I'd be better off with maybe the 595U and the Wilson roofmount antenna. Or even a directional antenna. I've only really got the one close tower which is blocked by a hill and trees and the one LOS tower that's nearly 4 miles off. Anyone want to suggest a better setup for what I have availabe to me, in hopes of eliminating my disconnect problems? Thanks in advance.