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dib22
join:2002-01-27
Kansas City, MO

dib22

Member

Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars... and get a very slow downstream and a very fast upstream?

In one rural area I can have 5 bars... get 5-10kbps down while still getting 400-700kbps upstream.

This entire area was getting faster download speeds (1000kbps down) months before.... upload has always been good.

I can 'relocate' several miles north south east and west of the area and it works normally...perhaps a tower fault?

I have tried contacting Virgin Mobile and their support 'script' seems to end without anything getting solved.

Anyone know a good site with accurate sprint tower locations/colocations?

BrandonNPal
@spcsdns.net

BrandonNPal

Anon

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

Yes, this does happen to me sometimes, it could always be the other way around for me, or just the normal way & even sometimes the same speeds. I get full bars too but 6 bars though.
sometime sprint has time where it can be slow since I also live in a rural area but its takes a few days a fix, tower could be over crowded but for me my speeds always been hitting for up / down always over 1000kbsp don't worry, you should be find.

tomupnorth
join:2005-01-14
UpperMidwest

tomupnorth to dib22

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to dib22
said by dib22:

Anyone know a good site with accurate sprint tower locations/colocations?
I certainly do not. I was in an area yesterday with very strong (Excellent, Full bars) signal, and yet Sprint's and others' cell tower maps did not show any towers for 15 miles--there had to be a tower nearby.

dib22
join:2002-01-27
Kansas City, MO

1 edit

dib22

Member

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

said by tomupnorth:

I certainly do not. I was in an area yesterday with very strong (Excellent, Full bars) signal, and yet Sprint's and others' cell tower maps did not show any towers for 15 miles--there had to be a tower nearby.
Yea the maps out there (cellreception.com seems to be using fcc data?) seem incomplete... either that or sprint has some fancy RF engineering going on... I thought the practical range of a cdma tower was 8 miles but its looking like the one I am hitting is around 12 miles away?

I am starting to wonder if its a case of vegetation... early spring it wouldn't have been there... now its all greened up.

I'm thinking I might try to install an antenna at this location and see how that works.

If Cellreception data is correct I have one east (the 12 mile one) then several along a highway 15 - 18 miles out... I might try a Yagi so I can aim at individual towers?

Wonder if radio shack still sells those antenna rotators?

And yet I come back to the upload... It seems weird that a little battery powered device can get a signal back to the tower at 700k while the tower with much more power at its disposal cant muster even 100k?

Anyone know a CDMA RF engineer I could IM?
wirelessdog
join:2008-07-15
Queen Anne, MD

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That is very typical of tower congestion.

dib22
join:2002-01-27
Kansas City, MO

dib22

Member

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

said by wirelessdog:

That is very typical of tower congestion.
I thought that initially since I tried it again after months away when summer break started (I had visions of minions of high school kids using all the bandwidth)... but it has been like this 24/7 (been messing with it days at a time over the last month)... you would think there would be a point where it would go back to normal speeds... instead of ALWAYS topping out at 10k.

I am trying to get ahold of my friends sprint card to narrow down to tower or perhaps the virgin mobile vlan setup is weird on that tower?

It's really sad when the at&t card at this location is a faster download (it's an 2g/edge area) ..of course for any large attachments I need to send I jump over to the virgin mobile as 700k up is snappy compared to edge uploads speeds .
wirelessdog
join:2008-07-15
Queen Anne, MD

wirelessdog to dib22

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to dib22
If the tower has little bandwidth allocated for broadband it only takes 1-2 users to eat it up.
wirelessdog

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to dib22
I would ride to the tower and connect very close to it and run speed tests. That should tell you if the issue is congestion or signal related.

compuguybna
join:2009-06-17
Nashville, TN

compuguybna

Member

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

A sprint device had 4 bars EVDO (u760).

the VM device only registered 2 bars, and hopped back and forth from 1XRTT to EVDO.

Same tower. Same location.

something weird about this Virgin Mobile Device.

dib22
join:2002-01-27
Kansas City, MO

dib22

Member

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

said by compuguybna:

A sprint device had 4 bars EVDO (u760).

the VM device only registered 2 bars, and hopped back and forth from 1XRTT to EVDO.

Same tower. Same location.

something weird about this Virgin Mobile Device.
that almost sounds like a defective device... go swap it out for another one... while the routing is different for VM the actual RF connection should be the same.

compuguybna
join:2009-06-17
Nashville, TN

compuguybna

Member

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

I did have 2. guy at radio shack knew something was wrong when I brought back the second one!
said by dib22:

said by compuguybna:

A sprint device had 4 bars EVDO (u760).

the VM device only registered 2 bars, and hopped back and forth from 1XRTT to EVDO.

Same tower. Same location.

something weird about this Virgin Mobile Device.
that almost sounds like a defective device... go swap it out for another one... while the routing is different for VM the actual RF connection should be the same.
said by dib22:

said by compuguybna:

A sprint device had 4 bars EVDO (u760).

the VM device only registered 2 bars, and hopped back and forth from 1XRTT to EVDO.

Same tower. Same location.

something weird about this Virgin Mobile Device.
that almost sounds like a defective device... go swap it out for another one... while the routing is different for VM the actual RF connection should be the same.
said by dib22:

said by compuguybna:

A sprint device had 4 bars EVDO (u760).

the VM device only registered 2 bars, and hopped back and forth from 1XRTT to EVDO.

Same tower. Same location.

something weird about this Virgin Mobile Device.
that almost sounds like a defective device... go swap it out for another one... while the routing is different for VM the actual RF connection should be the same.
said by dib22:

said by compuguybna:

A sprint device had 4 bars EVDO (u760).

the VM device only registered 2 bars, and hopped back and forth from 1XRTT to EVDO.

Same tower. Same location.

something weird about this Virgin Mobile Device.
that almost sounds like a defective device... go swap it out for another one... while the routing is different for VM the actual RF connection should be the same.

dib22
join:2002-01-27
Kansas City, MO

dib22 to wirelessdog

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to wirelessdog
said by wirelessdog:

I would ride to the tower and connect very close to it and run speed tests. That should tell you if the issue is congestion or signal related.
im doing that right now will update what i find
dib22

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said by wirelessdog:

I would ride to the tower and connect very close to it and run speed tests. That should tell you if the issue is congestion or signal related.
well that is definitely the tower that is serving a GIANT area...

just outside of the tower it performed normally was getting 700-1000k down and 700k up... so when i went back from testing i took another highway back and when there was thick vegetation between me and the tower the down would drop to 0-10k and up remained at 700k!

i guess it is simply a case of summer vegetation growing up between the location and that tower.

ill grab me a directional antena and update when/if i ever get it mounted!
wirelessdog
join:2008-07-15
Queen Anne, MD

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Member

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You probably want to add an amp to that setup to offset the line loss from the coax run.

dib22
join:2002-01-27
Kansas City, MO

1 edit

dib22

Member

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

said by wirelessdog:

You probably want to add an amp to that setup to offset the line loss from the coax run.
ok with the aid of cellreception.com and google maps i checked the distances between each tower... indeed the one that i appear to connect to well in the cooler months is 10 miles... then they fan out 15 miles, 14 miles, 16 miles, 13 miles

currently i think i'm going to get this:
»www.amazon.com/2-4GHz-24 ··· 01J1Y7IA

Here is Jim in VAs article on the general design: »evdotips.blogspot.com/20 ··· nna.html

what amp do you suggest?

also looking for a nice remote rotor control for cheap
Max Signal
Premium Member
join:2008-03-07
Buffalo, NY

Max Signal

Premium Member

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

Here is Jim's review of Cyfre amplifier kit
»evdotips.blogspot.com/20 ··· wed.html

dib22
join:2002-01-27
Kansas City, MO

dib22

Member

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

wowza... 200 bucks... unless i can figure out how to expense it I think I will live with EDGE service

Ordered an antenna well see how it works with just the antenna... signal levels are not an issue at that location... looks like vegetation is the real issue.
wirelessdog
join:2008-07-15
Queen Anne, MD

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Member

to dib22
Did you by chance note the latency difference too?

dib22
join:2002-01-27
Kansas City, MO

dib22

Member

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

said by wirelessdog:

Did you by chance note the latency difference too?
i will be out at the fringe area again tomorrow and ill do more test but generally the ping dropped a bit...

looking at the data from the speedtest.net iphone app (didn't wanna take the laptop) it appears that their results history ping data is much higher than the ping data they display when you run the test... hmm.

i will try to gather better info tomorrow.

iLive4Fusion
Premium Member
join:2006-07-13

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Somehow I just don't see you picking up off a Sprint tower at 1900mhz and have full signal at 10 mile's. Most do good to have 8 on fringe. It's usually the VZW or AT&T tower's that run on 800mhz that can run 10-15 miles but thats sometimes pushing it for data. Chances are there is a much closer tower to your house with an issue on the EVDO side of it. The tower map site's are pretty incorrect, it doesn't accurately reflect my area at all.

If vegetation had to do with it then your signal you drop down a lot as well.

dib22
join:2002-01-27
Kansas City, MO

dib22

Member

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

said by iLive4Fusion:

Somehow I just don't see you picking up off a Sprint tower at 1900mhz and have full signal at 10 mile's. Most do good to have 8 on fringe. It's usually the VZW or AT&T tower's that run on 800mhz that can run 10-15 miles but thats sometimes pushing it for data. Chances are there is a much closer tower to your house with an issue on the EVDO side of it. The tower map site's are pretty incorrect, it doesn't accurately reflect my area at all.
I hear you... I thought 8 max as well...

I got my parabolic in the mail... I will get out to mount it up in the next couple weeks and ill spin it around and perhaps find the hidden tower.
tomupnorth
join:2005-01-14
UpperMidwest

tomupnorth

Member

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

said by dib22:

I got my parabolic in the mail...
Please advise, how well was it packed and are you happy with the way it looks. I'm looking to buy that same antenna.

dib22
join:2002-01-27
Kansas City, MO

dib22

Member

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

said by tomupnorth:

Please advise, how well was it packed and are you happy with the way it looks. I'm looking to buy that same antenna.
Was packed well (plastic air pockets)... came FedEx pretty quickly (faster than the stated date)... It's from computer geeks but ordered via amazon.

The antenna itself looks ok... there is one spot where the enamel/paint has a defect... just gonna slap some clear coat/sealer on that little part before mounting it.

Performance... not sure yet still waiting on the cable... thinking I should go with LMR 400 for cost? Also some mentioned RG58 would work decently for the cost performance... still wondering.
tomupnorth
join:2005-01-14
UpperMidwest

tomupnorth

Member

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

Thanks. I got LMR400 (from amazon also). In fact, here's exactly what I did:

50' LMR-400 N Male Ends SKU CM LMR400-50-BLACK $53.99
971107 Wilson N Female to FME Female Connector $6.99

Both of the above from CCMACCESSORIES

Then the Wilson RF Adapter Cable (Male FME to VM760) 359927 sold by Amazon.com $9.99

I've been hoping for a FREE SHIPPING deal from geeks but guess I hafta bite that $13 bullet... I had bought the Wilson 301124 Yagi antenna but am hard-pressed to tell any improvement over the VM760 internal antenna!!!?!!
Max Signal
Premium Member
join:2008-03-07
Buffalo, NY

Max Signal

Premium Member

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

Keep in mind Yagi antennas are very directional. It takes a great deal of time and patience to aim them properly as they are not very forgiving . Also with a Yagi you also need direct line of sight for them to be really effective.
tomupnorth
join:2005-01-14
UpperMidwest

tomupnorth

Member

Re: Any EVDO experts? Is it possible to have 5 bars...

said by Max Signal:

Keep in mind Yagi antennas are very directional. It takes a great deal of time and patience to aim them properly as they are not very forgiving . Also with a Yagi you also need direct line of sight for them to be really effective.
Thanks for that. I knew they were directional, though not just HOW directional--I spent quite a long time with the thing on a tripod, aiming out a window, and was able with the DEBUG screen of the VM760 to observe differences when I moved it, though just a few db at a time. I guess I was naive to think it would vastly improve my signal strength.

But while I suspect putting it-up outside (above my roof peak) will enable it to work *better*, it sure ain't obvious that that would be the case, or that I'll be happy with it.

It's a 14db gain and the grid antenna is a 24 so for $50 bucks I'm going to give the grid ant a try.