EVDO not all it's cracked up to be....

bozzchem

I've lurked a bit and have tried a number of the fixes posted here. I'm being a bit selfish and rather than spending another hour or two looking for answers, I'll just ask my questions and see what response I get.

Having recently moved from a home that had Cable access to one that I'm lucky to get EVDO access, my complaints are what they are. It's difficult to go from watching a You Tube video to having to download one to watch it. I'm in Franklinton, NC so will deal with it as I must.

I am currently using a Sierra 595U card via the Sprint network. I have an external antenna as well as an amplifier. Without the external setup, I get around -105dB EVDO. With the external setup, I can get about -85dB. On great days I've even hit in the mid to upper 70's.

It's perplexing that my signal strength shows as 4 -5 bars but can't achieve a download speed greater than 300KB/s.

I've used the DrTCP as well as the TCPOptimizer applications but saw no appreciable difference with either one. Again, I'm glad to be out here in the sticks and still downloading at speeds much better than dialup but figured there would be ways to up my download speeds. Hell, if this is the best I can do with 4 bars, I have to guess the traffic at the Sprint tower is so congested that I'm fighting for every spare scrap of bandwidth available!?

$250 for external antennas and amplifiers while not seeing an appreciable increase in download speed (NOT signal strength! Signal strength has increased dramatically as I stated above) has me wondering about all of this. Again, I'm thankful that I didn't have to resort to dial-up but have found that the cost of EVDO and it's associated hardware is quite high compared to the return on investment speed-wise.

I've considered going with a Yagi style antenna but wonder if it's worth the money. I'm starting to wonder if it's a bandwidth problem at the Sprint tower rather than an equipment problem on my side.

Any help/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

xrayman

n6gn

xrayman · Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 11:01 am Post subject:

Excellent evaluation of the problem by n6gn. You can read more about a dish antenna for the PCS frequency band in the links listed below. Also use low-loss high quality antenna cable like LMR-400 or LMR-600.

http://www.evdoforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=5106
http://www.evdoforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=4215

bozzchem · Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 8:56 pm Post subject:

Looks like I got sucked into this too quickly and purchased what I thought would be the equipment to up my download speeds. $250 down but will spend quite a bit more time doing the research before dropping that kind of coin again.

Yep, I got the "maximum signal" with little gain in the process. Go figure. Hell, I've hit the same download speeds without the amplifier as I've hit with it. One more paperweight to add to my collection.

Thanks all.