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BeerHunter
join:2008-06-20
Grande Prairie, AB

BeerHunter

Member

Rocket HUB external antenna question

Preamble:
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Netcomm 3G100WVR2 gets a fairly consistent 2/5 bars and on a good day I can get 3/5 bars.Tower is roughly 6 miles away and I'm surrounded by 40-60' Aspen.
Kinda infatuated with "World of Tanks" now and "World of Planes" is about ready to be released.
2/5 bars and I'm constantly over 200ms ping and can suffer lag. 3/5 bars and I can be as low as 160 ms and lag isn't as predominant.

Thinking of an external antenna : Wilson Model 301103 50 ohm from Bluegear Wireless Store.
I want something really simple so I don't have to mount a pole (lightning magnet) on the roof nor drill holes in the wall.

Question:
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In your opinion , would this unit give me a consistent 3 (or more) bars. Is the 50 Ohm more powerful than the built in antenna?

Bluegar offers a money back guarantee but form past experiences , I know how difficult it can be to hold a retailer to his money back guarantee so thought I'd check here first.

ron_l
@telus.com

ron_l

Anon

I think that is a similar unit to my Telus Smart Hub. I'm trying to remember the specs but I think it comes with a 3dbi gain antenna. This one you are looking at appears to be 5dbi so there may be enough gain to get you to a more steady "3 bar" signal. I assume you just want to be able to get the antenna to a window or something as you said you don't want to drill holes. That can help too. Moving the unit around the house can make quite a difference. I gained 10dbm by moving mine to the left a foot. So, it helps to play around.

Not sure what Rogers service is like, I'm out by Beaverlodge and Telus goes from good to horrible despite having a strong "5 to 6 bar" or -70dbm signal. This morning it was half as fast as dial up and my ping was over 400ms with 6 bars. Tonight 85ms ping and 3.5Mbps down 1.1Mbps up. That's the best I've seen in a couple years. For the past 6 months a good day has been 0.2 - 0.3Mbps down and worse than dial up on a bad day. All with a 5 or 6 bar signal. So signal strength isn't everything. You can get really crappy service from a provider with a strong signal too.

I think my Netcomm hub has a SMA antenna connector. Double check your connector before ordering this antenna.
BeerHunter
join:2008-06-20
Grande Prairie, AB

BeerHunter

Member

I'm in Grovedale and Telus service in this area is from abysmal to non-existent (HUB and cell phone service). So far the Rogers HUB and cell phone service is quit satisfactory with few (though there are some) down times.

For $90 I ordered one as others had reported a one - two bar increase in their signal and a dramatic increase in stability , though not necessarily an improvement in speed.

BTW - in Beaverlodge you could look at GPNet WiFi i`f DSL isn`t available. I had it for a while and it`s a whole lot cheaper and worked fine until the tower became so congested and they couldn`t move me to a closer tower (with much higher speeds ) without me putting up a $4,500 80`tower in my yard to clear the trees.

That`s why Im on a Rogers HUB.

Txs for the reply. Take care.

ron_l
@telus.com

ron_l

Anon

I talked with GPN but wasn't impressed. No encryption so anyone with half a brain can read your email and look at all your photos. The coverage is spotty here due to all the hills. I have a 100 foot tower and said they could use it for free, but they declined. So service was going to be iffy and $50 or $60 a month I think. Smart Hub came out. Picked one up set it on the desk beside the computer plugged it in and that was all there was to it. $35 a month instead of $50. Good service until recently. Hoping they get the system back up to where it was when I first got the hub. Before that I had a USB stick. Worked good too but for $40 a month you had to ration data as the 1Gb would run out in a month. Hub has 3Gb and I've yet to go over that.

I have a rental in town. I could hook up dsl to wifi but not sure if it would make it past the hill. Could possibly set up a repeater to get around the hill. A lot of experimenting and not enough time to play with that. I have a wifi bridge from my house to the main farm yard a couple miles away. Works perfectly. Fast enough to stream TV from my satellite tuner to a computer over there. The wifi covers the whole farm yard so my phone uses that while I'm working there.