LTE solution for poor broadband area

charlie_says

Hello this is repost from Net and Comms

I was wondering if anyone has had any experience or successes with something like this

https://www.irishwireless.net/precon...x-lte-solution

It's a Mikrotik router and a CAT 4 LTE modem with a directional antenna ready to be wall mounted on an exterior wall.

I have tested the area with a 4G dongle and received decent 50 MBit + down and 25 MBit up speeds so expect to receive better speeds due to the higher gain antenna. I have the direction to the nearest tower via siteviewer.

Any tips on these kind of systems? The area is quite wooded and I tested in the winter months where there is little leaf growth in the area - would this have a significant effect on the speeds?

Area is just outside of Fibre coverage and I don't expect anything soon. Going with Eir 50GB bundle for €30. Have calculated the monthly usuage at roughly 40 GB per month so far on the crap DSL connection.

I have found using a retail LTE router too variable in speed and have experienced very choppy connectivity indoors. It was TP Link LTE with stock internal antenna.

srsly78

Test at different times. Probably becomes useless during peak hours - the same can be said for some fixed-line broadband as well tho.

ED E

charlie_says wrote: »

I have tested the area with a 4G dongle and received decent 50 MBit + down and 25 MBit up speeds so expect to receive better speeds due to the higher gain antenna.

Hold your horses there. Thats like saying I'll go faster on the M50 with my Ferrari than my Golf. Not how it works

The antenna will only improve things if signal strength is your issue which I suspect it isn't at those rates. If its a CAT4 sector then there is only 150Mb for the whole area, you seeing 1/3 of that is pretty good.



If your DSL line is crap then expect your usage to increase significantly on a faster connection. 50GB is pretty low.

charlie_says

Thanks.

It's a small office and a home on the one site connected via Ethernet locally.

I've gone for a Dual WAN router and going to stick the LTE on schedule during the day for the office as the usage is limited there but really poor DSL connectivity has been the issue and the poor upload speed is the real culprit.

My LTE tests were done in office hours.

I'm going to put the DSL on WAN schedule for the evening.

After going through all possible fixed wireless providers this seems like the only play out at this site.

ChunderTunt

charlie_says wrote: »

Thanks.

It's a small office and a home on the one site connected via Ethernet locally.

I've gone for a Dual WAN router and going to stick the LTE on schedule during the day for the office as the usage is limited there but really poor DSL connectivity has been the issue and the poor upload speed is the real culprit.

My LTE tests were done in office hours.

I'm going to put the DSL on WAN schedule for the evening.

After going through all possible fixed wireless providers this seems like the only play out at this site.

Hi

Did you ever go with the Mikrotik LTE kit from irishwireless? Im thinking of buying one myself, but cant find alot by way of reviews of the device....

cheers

charlie_says

Yes, that's what I got.

I still have it due to the customer delaying everything due to some issues with the building and other stuff.

Overall from the little I have played with it, seems OK but some weird things to note:

IW have this yoke preconfigured and had to be hassled to allow me into the config, then then said that they couldn't and wouldn't support it afterwards if they handed me the config passwords.

Also they sent me a dud unit first time round. It's an easy and cheap solution though. Time will tell how well it survives outside.

Limited to CAT 4 LTE specs also