There hasn’t been a solid replacement yet as far as I can tell…
the 3 plans I have right now are still working, hopefully that continues.
On the road in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska, traveling at about 65 MPH.
On 76 outside of Sterling, CO still at about 65 MPH
Hey,
I live out in the middle of rural nowhere in the NE us. I used a Mofi 4g router and am able to get 80mbit down 60mbit up, I pay 35$/mo using AT&T. You can use external antennas and its great but the default upgraded paddle style ones are great for me, even going through a wall. AT&T has a hidden unlimited wifi plan if you use an ‘ipad’ sim card, which means spoofing an IMEI when u sign up. I get better latency than my copper 6mbit/0.3mbit connection for gaming.
Anyone have a suggestion for a directional LTE antenna? Working on a solution for my parents who live in rural IL and the nearest tower is about 5 mi away.
- Mike
I’ve got the Netgear Nighthawk MR-1100 and it works well. What I love about this hotspot is the inclusion of an Ethernet port so that I just plug in the hotspot to my router.
As mentioned, AT&Ts carrier-grade NAT doesn’t allow a lot of stuff, like gaming, WebRTC, or reverse proxy. I just got a VPS set up and need to set up a VPN to try and get around that.
I have had much better connection speeds in the past, however for basically free internet (it was a full write-off via taxes) it’s great for me! I get around 6.5-9MB/s on downloads. But I finally got around to publishing a “worst case” at home speed test; please also consider these speeds during covid-19 which have been slower.
Here’s the test via ethernet (wifi-bridge)
Here’s the test directly connected to the MiFi puck:
I have gotten consistent speeds at around 65Mbps before this pandemic, so yeah, not bad for basically free.
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I’m in the same boat with my parents
They use Verizon Mifi and have had the same Jetpak for YEARS. They live in rual southern Arkansas and Verizon is basically the only option.
Ideally if I could get something like a GL.iNet and pop in a SIM card…that would be great. The internet works ok sometimes but tends to fade out I gather they are on the edge of Vzw coverage area. The outdoor antenna I got my dad a few years ago never worked worth a darn.
New here so be gentle.
For an antenna you have allot of options but generally speaking none are better than a Yagi. They are very directional and provide allot of gain in a very compact antenna.
For those that don’t know each carrier is licensed certain bands.
At present i use an Android app called “network cell info” to get the pertinent connection information as well as the cell site location to point at. In the case of my area and carrier, Verizon, my connections come on band 13. Broadly speaking this means 700MHz - 800MHz. Yagi antennas with a gain of 12dB are readily available for cheap and will provide massive improvements in throughput.
The down side. Losses at this frequency in regular coax get pretty massive very fast. So much so that I invested in Andrews 1/2" coaxial hardline to keep most all the free power gain of the antenna going into the port of the modem. So if you can’t place the modem at or very near the antenna then things get real complicated rather quickly to keep the RF losses to a minimum. In my case going from a stock built in antenna on an old Kyocera cellular modem to the roof top mounted antenna the signal went from a -103dBm to -56dBm. And this with 35 feet of hard line on the B1 channel (2.1GHz) and a home grown Yagi!
If there is interest I will be happy to elaborate more on the subject. But for the money and at a fixed location an external directional antenna is the best investment I can think of.
I am putting the parts together to roll my own portable cellular link for use on trips so this site is kind of helpful, thanks.
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So I found and ordered one of these boards. ALIX-APU-4D4-AMD-G-Series-GX-412TC as well as the case for it. I also ordered a battery UPS for it too to regulate the power and keep crashes to a minimum. NUC-UPS it will have a 128GB SSD as well. I ordered a Dell Dw5821e Snapdragon X20 4G/LTE CAT16 for the modem duties. Just waiting for parts and then the fun begins trying to get it all working as envisioned! Need to pickup a SIM card from Verizon as well soon. Still need to find or build an antenna though.
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Doing pretty good on highway 80 across Ohio at 70 MPH.
This is with the dell laptop using Rooter OS.
I really get great cell quality from all the significant transporters since I live close to the interstate, and with an outer recieving wire I surmise you can get a strong sign for a few miles or more.
I’ve seen that site, that person has a decent arrangement, however Verizon no longer offers boundless information plans.
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JDM. First off welcome to Denver… sorry to hear the office isn’t covered well.
Second, I assume you’ve run across these folks. Chris does a LOT of hardware and testing and they’re often the canary in the coal mine when any great news of a plan or really amazing hardware comes out.
Not trying to push them in any way, just know one of their family members personally and they really put serious effort into it.
Chris is definitely deeply in the tech tribe. Bright guy.
Hope it helps some folks.
The uplink side speeds are painful if people have to do video meetings for the business… ouch.
I feel their pain living in the prairie East of the city. Microwave internet 25/4 is the best any fixed service can do out here.
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I have come across them! I’ll keep an eye on their website for updates. Good stuff for sure.
Actually, my office internet situation was back in PA. Now that I’m in Denver, I’m using it for a backup network, and for my smart home devices.
Are you a commercial or recreational pilot? I’m out of the industry right now but looking for a way back in. It’s hard with the shutdowns.
Ummm. Both I guess. Ha. Flight Instructor as a side thing, flying since I was 19, but day job is IT, telecom, etc.
Currently in the middle of a nasty medical issue that has me grounded for at least another year, probably.
Denver recreational aviation is mostly all one big multiple-company entity nowadays, the folks who own Aspen Flying Club at APA slowly bought up numerous clubs at most metro airports, which hasn’t turned out to be too bad… they seem to have their “stuff” together at each location for the most part.
My Commercial and CFI tickets I did with a smaller highly focused school with only a handful of older instructors, but like me, the principal and owner had a medical issue crop up and he decided it was time to close it up, just before Covid stuff.
There’s also the “specialty” places like the place that has piles of Cirrus aircraft at APA. They do other instruction but their specialty is Cirrus. APA, FTG, and BJC all have at least one competing school or club to the Aspen owned clubs.
The one guy at APA I would unhesitatingly recommend as an instructor sadly moved to KS recently. But my airplane co-owner reported recently that he used Aspen to find a solid instructor who would fly in privately owned aircraft, and the experience was professional and solid.
Looking forward to being back up, but there’s still a lot of things that have to align perfectly for me for a special issuance medical or BasicMed and symptoms have to be stable for a year after treatment to even apply.
If you do get a chance to do it, you’ll love it!
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Ah, I was never on the Pilot side of things. I was an RPO for 4 years and CWO for 6. I have 2 years to decide if I want to do ATC, but with the way things are looking, I’m not sure that’s the path for me.
I grew up around airplanes and I’ll likely end up doing something related, eventually.
FAA Tech Ops has been hiring for a long while now and always in need of people. Maybe not as lucrative as some private sector tech gigs but nice bennies and probably a “forever job” once you’re in.
A friend does it and likes playing with all the radios, data links, telecom, radars, and general geekiness — while all still aviation related. He’s getting close to retirement with a pretty nice pension and such. A couple decades of regional travel though, with the occasional further travel for centralized training in things, is the only part he sometimes disliked, depending on location and hotel quality! Ha.
Too of some mountain somewhere swapping out a dead radio after a snow cat ride, is a pretty cool “office” he sends photos from sometimes though!
Sorry to hijack this thread.
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@JDM_WAAAT Which image did you use for the ROOter OS? a x86 one?
Here’s the link to the latest firmware: ROOter by Of Modems and Men
Yes, I used the x86 build.
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Thank You.
To be specific the “x86-64bit” at: GoldenOrb 2020-03-01 Firmware for 16meg Routers
https://www.ofmodemsandmen.com/download/GoldenOrb/16meg/x86-64bit-GO2020-03-01.zip
Appreciate your help!