What AMP ??

moejama · EVDO Newbie Joined: 02 Aug 2007 Posts: 5

The plethora of wilson amps confuses me. So far, my experience with EVDO is rather horrible and months of the service are mostly useless for me as I get disconnects constantly.

I have a yagi installed on an antenna pole about 30 feet.

My next step, I supposed, will be to purchase an amp, though my better senses tell me that a taller antenna mast and higher DB antenna would do more good.

An amp will be easy, but, which one.

Now, it would be convenient to get a repeater, but for my fragile signal I fear the extra db loss.

Does anyone have info on the real difference between direct connect and a repeater. I have sprint internet and verizon phones and a repeater would just be a lot easier than running more cat5 through the attic and buying another router and blah blah blah.

We have a need for at least 2 EVDO accounts. I have sprint right now, but I'm on the edge of coverage and surrounded by trees. I have a friend coming over to test Verizon's speed at my house.

So it would make sense to AT least get a dual band amp so if I switch to Verizon all I have to do is sign up and swap out the card. Plus I CAN'T FIND A 1900 mhz amp well prices to save my life.

GSM/PCS amps are cheap, but for some reason the CDMA amps are not which is what I need for Sprint.... right.

It's rather confusing what you consider it's called sprint PCS but the PCS/GSM amps are for Nextel, not Sprint.

So, I am BY FAR concerned about internet speed so I lean toward direct connect to be safe, but I fear that the amp will have a minimal positive effect since I'm surrounded by trees, not distance.

Being on the edge of a the fringe zone AND surrounded by tress I have to overcome both. My signal strength varies A LOT and drops perhaps a dozen times a day, but when connected I usually get ok speeds. About
60 k/s download on average but up to 100+ sometimes. So I HOPE an amp will put me over whatever hurdle it is I need to get a stable signal of at LEAST 60 K/b a second. That kilo bytes not bits of course.

Also my upload is HORRIBLE. It's half the speed of my pathetically slow ISDN connection. That's right I said ISDN and YES some people still have that.

In fact, if I cancel it, Verizon will NEVER turn it back on. I already fought with them for months to turn it back on because we were late on the bill.

AND it's 120 a month for 100kbps both ways.

HELP ME get off ISDN. For now we have both mostly because the KR1 losses connect and doesn't automatically reconnect sometimes so I have to manually restart it.

I'd also like to say the KR1 is a horrible router. I'm on my second one and it still occasionally needs rebooting and that's just not cool.

Dlink in general need more reboots that most routers, though they are the cheapest router out there and less crippled by firmware.. Still, mandatory router reboots are not cool.

This is the price we pay for 'cutting edge' cellular internet I suppose. At least it's not as bad as satellite (my only other option, but too much latency)

Anyway... thanks for any help.

My main concern is what amp should I buy. Wilson I suppose, but what model number and why exactly. It seems they have more than one model direct connect amp these days.

Alex · Site Admin Joined: 19 Sep 2006 Posts: 1893