Background:
- House we are building in Pittsboro, NC has no high-speed internet options available. Cable, DSL, WiMax, etc. are all not available where we are right now.
- Dial-up is not acceptable, Satellite is crap, an a T1 is prohibitively expensive per month.
- We've come up with a solution utilizing a Cradlepoint MBR 1000 router, and, plugging in an aircard to the router. Basically, it allow laptops to connect via Wifi to router with actual data coming from aircard itself.

The cell signal is about two bars on average. Not bad, and not great by any means. Never had a dropped call at the house. Data speed tests at the house have shown acceptable results thus far. Longer-term, technology will improve and a better solution will become available to replace existing setup.

Looking for personal recommendations for a repeater to purchase to help boost the signal primarily for data purposes. Read some reviews, but, looking for any personal testimonies from TWW. Thanks.

[Edited on August 29, 2009 at 6:35 PM. Reason : .]

8/29/2009 6:32:58 PM

What carrier are you guys gonna use?

Most "unlimited" plans top out at 5GB per month. I'd expect that a typical household would go over that pretty quickly.

Your overage costs might be tremendous, and something worth factoring into plans.

8/29/2009 8:03:04 PM

just leech off your neighbor's wifi

8/29/2009 8:09:46 PM

my favorite wifi to leech off of is McDonald's on Western while I'm sitting in Taco Bell across the street.

8/29/2009 8:11:25 PM

you can get a T1 circuit for like 400-600/mo these days

8/29/2009 10:27:22 PM

yeah we pay $500ish at a site in SC right now. not cheap..but not really that bad considering how high commercial internet is from other providers

8/30/2009 12:32:22 AM

^but who's dropping 6 bills on home internet?

8/30/2009 1:21:24 AM

I have an interesting situation that might help us both out. Could possibly get you cheap broadband. Shoot me a pm

8/30/2009 3:11:53 AM

Quote :

"just leech off your neighbor's wifi"

Sadly (or fortunately?), my neighbors are at least 1000ft away in any direction.

Quote :

"Most "unlimited" plans top out at 5GB per month. "

Agreed. Plan I'm on is unlimited, even reading through the fine print (trust I checked several carriers before picking one). I'm sure I'll get a notice if I exceed 5GB / month, but, I won't get the overage charges on my bill automatically. Or, if I do, we'll have a nice chat with the carrier about what is listed on the terms and conditions of the plan.

Commentary welcome on alternatives to our current proposed setup, as we aren't 100% committed to this yet. Thoughts on the repeater greatly appreciated, as http://www.repeaterstore.com/ only helps out so much.

8/30/2009 10:40:53 AM

A repeater aint gonna help you if you arnt getting signal in the first place. If anything its gonna fuck it up more. Read up on amplification. It also amplifies noise, not just signal, which with what you wanna do is gonna cause a bunch of bad packets.

Why is satellight crap in your opinion? (Im not saying its not, just wanna hear why)

This is why living in the boonies sucks. Blame the govt and tell Oboma to speed up putting broadband out there. </soapbox>

Read what kiljadn said. Cellphone internet sucks normally for caps and also just general speed issues. It was designed for business use as it costs an ass load and corporations who need their field guys connected dont care about money.
* addendum* Ok so they say unlimited but that doesnt mean they cant cut your contract when you start running 250GB a month and they claim its financially unfeasible to support you. Happens all the time.

Best bet is be an EE and rig up some sorta parabolic antenna and send wifi from someone/where that does have broadband...

8/30/2009 12:54:30 PM

Quote :

"Why is satellight crap in your opinion? (Im not saying its not, just wanna hear why)"

because satellite internet is crap no matter how you look at it. extreme latency ftl. and it's slow as hell, from what i've seen.

8/30/2009 3:02:47 PM

satellite also requires a landline uplink, generally in the form of dialup

8/30/2009 4:13:14 PM

nuh uh

8/30/2009 4:43:07 PM

Evan, Note I know its crap, the way he said it he specific reasons, not the generic latency problem, which I will admit is a killer.

8/30/2009 4:48:09 PM

satellite hasn't required a landline uplink since DirecPC circa '96

What kind of latency are you getting with two bars of cell signal?

Dual ISDN ITT?

8/30/2009 4:54:33 PM

I installed a Wilson system at the factory I work for to bring in signal.



Works like a champ as far as I am concerned. Had about 1 bar before, now we have full signal within a large area, including the basement.

8/30/2009 5:16:27 PM

Quote :

"Why is satellight crap in your opinion?"

Personal feedback from co-workers who also live out in the sticks, my job for a time entailed troubleshooting network connections over various types of networks, and, I interviewed with Hughes once upon a time.

Quote :

"corporations who need their field guys connected dont care about money"

There is a very large customer located in Raleigh whom I helped saved a couple hundred thousand dollars a year by significantly reducing the amount of traffic that goes out over their aircards. They DO care about money, but, perhaps not in the same way a home/residential consumer might.

Quote :

"when you start running 250GB a month "

This is starting to turn into a typical Slashdot discussion that tends to only view things at the extreme ends of the spectrum. Yes, it will likely be more than 5GB a month. No, it won't be as high as 250GB a month. Yes, if a conflict arises we'll deal with it. No, I'm really not expecting one to crop up, as we aren't going to keep the machines connected 24/7 streaming Netflix or downloading "Linux distributions".

Quote :

"Best bet is be an EE"

Agreed this is the best solution given an infinite amount of time and ability to research / implement. Don't have that luxury, unfortunately, as have many other house and work related items to attend to. If it doesn't work out of the box, probably won't work for me.

Quote :

"What kind of latency"

Varies, 150ms-250ms. Not good enough for gaming, but, acceptable enough for most other applications. Speed is 20 on the low end, 60 on the high end.

Quote :

"Read up on amplification."

Thanks, this is where my limited understanding fails me and I need help ... something like
http://www.wilsonelectronics.com/ViewProduct.php?ID=100

which is what ^ AVON recommended?

Again, discussion welcome by all means.

8/31/2009 8:13:30 AM

http://www.wilsonamplifierstore.com/wilson-801245-soho-ultimate-kit

8/31/2009 8:23:47 AM

http://www.wildblue.com/

http://www.hughesnet.com/

No phone required.

8/31/2009 10:05:02 AM

BUMP

Reception has always been bad in my apartment, but with my new phone it's horrible. I'm thinking of going with this repeater:

http://www.spotwave.com/residential/products/z1900.asp


Anyone have any experience, or other suggestions (besides that $600+ wilson system above)?

6/3/2010 6:51:33 PM

^So to clarify, you want it just for your cellphone, not to tether to a computer?

Whos your carrier? Pending on, a lot of them are doing femtocells nowadays if you ask them nicely.

6/3/2010 9:10:51 PM

Yes, only for my cell phone. I have AT&T

6/3/2010 9:30:25 PM

+1 on the wilson amps. They're amazing.

Ours has a directional antenna outside on a lightpole pointed toward the nearest tower (you can look locations up online) and one of the 180 degree domes in the 12K-foot shop.

The only thing of note is DO NOT skimp on the cheapo wire from Radioshack. We doubled our signal when we ran a second line of the high-grade stuff from the Wilson store.

6/3/2010 9:40:25 PM

http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/why/3gmicrocell/

6/3/2010 10:37:54 PM

^

Quote :

"House we are building in Pittsboro, NC has no high-speed internet options available. Cable, DSL, WiMax, etc. are all not available where we are right now."

2nd line, mang

6/4/2010 3:46:05 AM

i was talking more to llama

6/4/2010 8:24:05 AM

^^ Yes this doesnt have anything to do with internet, just basic cell reception.

6/4/2010 8:58:27 AM

well the microcell requires you to have a broadband connection

6/4/2010 10:23:06 AM

So, $115 for repeater or $150 for AT&T Microcell

There's mixed, but mostly positive, reviews of the Z1900. The Microcell sounds like it would work better for me, but really limits me if I want to change carriers/get rid of the thing.

6/4/2010 2:49:46 PM

you can usually talk at&t into giving you one for much less

especially if you have other services from them

i got mine for free

6/5/2010 4:57:45 PM

$15/month unlimited minutes, free box on sprint

6/5/2010 8:10:37 PM

Quote :

"Blame the govt and tell Oboma to speed up putting broadband out there."

[NO]

Constitutional [FAIL].


Also, is cell phone internet really going to be better than satellite?

6/6/2010 4:30:47 PM

The z1900 came in the mail today, and I just finished installing it. Went from no signal to 2 bars in the middle of my apartment, though I am currently sitting about 3 ft away from the coverage unit. If I walk into the living room, which is closer to the middle of my apartment building, and away from both the coverage unit and the network access unit(located in my bedroom window), I have about 1 to 2 bars. All in all not too bad for $30 on ebay.

6/12/2010 3:56:45 PM

^^ In speed yes. In latency, mostly, but not always.

^ Good to hear it worked out for ya.

6/13/2010 7:46:56 PM

well damn i've been thinking about getting a microcell for at&t.. anyone else have one? what did you pay for it?

6/18/2010 9:54:56 PM

^ I've used the sprint one - which I'm assuming is basically the same deal.

My experience was it was great for the 3000 foot^2 office. And it's $15/month for unlimited minutes and like 3 concurrent devices on sprint. I hear it's more on ATT/Big Red.

6/19/2010 12:43:39 AM

I've had satellite and I currently have access to (but don't use) a tether-able cell phone on sprint. The latency on the cell network is only high for the first packet from idle, about 200ms, then 80ms while active, dropping back to idle after one second or so. Speed was nothing great, but with two bars I got almost 1mbps. Packets rarely dropped. The satellite was crap in comparison, latency was over 1.5 seconds and it often dropped packets, so web pages would occasionally hang for several seconds as several cycles of requests and replies were lost and had to retry. Worst of all, the download speed capped out at 250kbps.

[Edited on June 19, 2010 at 11:16 AM. Reason : (fixing recallection)]

6/19/2010 10:58:15 AM