Ubifi Rural Internet

[dmccarty]

Somehow I missed this discussion! :confused3:

We have cell tower nearby, but in the past, trying to use ATT, we did not get good connections. I sent a note off to Ubifi this morning and they answered quickly. :thumbsup: Which is very encouraging as a sign of service. My quick web searches indicated that the company has very good service. They said the tower now has ATT so it would seem like this would work.

Will talk this over with the wife but I think we will give the service a try. Replacing Century Link would be a good thing and getting faster speed would be a bonus.

I have tethered the cell phone to have Internet access during a power outage and I got very fast download speeds. Forgot exactly but it was much, much faster than our 1.5mbps.

Later,
Dan

 

[tractorshopper]

Update - so my Mofi should arrive today. I have been fooling around with speed tests and network cell lite and watching a bunch of videos and reading to get the best understanding I can about all this tech.

My home Verizon internet gets about .5 to .6 mbps most of the time. My AT&T cell phone gets about 5-6 most of the time, but about -110 to -117 dB, but also drops below 1 sometimes too and is spotty on 3G or 4G connections. I believe I'll need a signal booster system to get the most out of this. I climbed up on my roof last night to the peak and ran the speed test on my phone and got about 20 mbps down. halfway down the roof with open sky to the same tower location, it dropped to about 6 down.

I'm thinking about possibly having to buy the signal booster system and would like to ask people who know what I should be looking at? The WeBoost or the Surecall?

 

[STx]

You'd be better off getting high gain antennas and putting them on the roof. The Mofi already has the radio at the max power so a booster doesn't really gain for it like it does for a cell phone. Put one of these on a pole and connect it to the Mofi and you should see a significant performance increase.

Proxicast 4G/LTE Cross-Polarized (MIMO) 7-10 dBi High-Gain Fixed-Mount Panel Antenna https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NBSLNJ6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_K7qnCbSZY7J34

 

[jaydee325]

I've been looking at this too. I sent an inquiry to Ubifi with my street address and this was their reply:

With the address provided, it looks you are in a good coverage area and the closest tower is 2.9 miles west of the address. The signal does tend to fade before reaching you, so an external antenna would be recommended. The external antenna I would recommend is a Wilson Directional Panel antenna which is $84.99 plus the cost of cable. The antenna would need to at least clear the roof line and point in the direction of West.

I just might try it. All I'll be out if it does not work is my time and the 15% restocking fee.

 

[TheMan419]

I will be getting a directional antenna in the summer. Currently I can only get attached to the tower to north. The one to the south has more bands that it uses.

My hope is with the directional antenna I can connect and get greater speed. If not I can get a better connection to the tower to the north.

Should boost me from 10mb to 20+.

 

[tractorshopper]

Thanks for the quick replies.

I set up the system last night and wow, what a difference already. On my Verizon system, I had been connecting my phone via wifi and checking the speed test and routinely coming up with 0.6 range down; sometimes higher in the 3 range. With my AT&T phone by itself, I am usually in the 3-5 range, but on 3G. Connecting to the new Mofi wifi, the lowest I would get for short periods was in the 5 down range, but I had many times 8-10 and many times in the 15-20+ down. I can't tell on the speed tester I'm using whether it's 3G or 4G when hooked up on my phone though, because it just shows connected to AT&T network.

All that said, Netflix actually plays previews of whatever movie or show is highlighted. I never knew this because this has never happened on my home TV before. Also, when you open it or Prime, all the Icons are there as you scroll. In the past about 30% of icons would be there and as you moved category to category, they would slowly come up one at a time.

I streamed a movie on the TV in the best picture I've ever seen from streaming and one of my kids also hooked up and was streaming on her laptop at the same time and Alexa was running and on my phone I was running speed tests and still impressed.

So, long story short, I have the best internet I've ever had (even better than dsl years ago when I lived near the city). The Mofi must be already be boosting the signal or receiving it much better than our phones ever have.

On DirecTV, the only thing I can't quite do is get the on-demand working fast enough (It would never even start before; it would download maybe one minute of viewing for record for later every 20 minutes or so before). Now it will download a minute for about every 2 minutes, but not quite to where it would be able to just play live when you really want it to. So, I still want an antenna.

I was thinking signal booster system like Surecall or WeBoost, but with your responses above, I believe I'll try to antenna instead as a much cheaper alternative, since I'm just trying to get smidge more out of this. In any regard, I have no disappointment at all with this new system. I'm very happy with it right out of the gate.

 

[STx]

We stream all of our live TV over Gears TV (Omar's Videos), it gives us every US, UK and Canadian channel for $15/mo. I'm including the link because there are a lot of scam sites that claim to be Gears but will just take your money and not give you anything. Omar's Videos is the actual streaming servers, it's a very basic looking site but it wotks well, we use the Mayfair Guide as the actual viewer, it gives guide listings and has a Gears viewer built in so go to Omar's to sign up, then to Mayfair to get the guide, another $3.50/mo (Subscribe) and install it. During install, it'll ask if you want to use it's Gears add on, say yes.

We use Ttanium TV for on demand viewing, there are lots of tutorials online for installing this.

Both run in our Fire TV. We still stream some stuff from Amazon Prime, we're not going to get rid of that subscription anytime soon because of the shipping savings but, we're probably going to cancel Netflix.

If you use Titanium TV, or KODI for that matter, it's worth buying a Real Dedbrid Premium Subscription, at the current exchange it comes to just over $3/mo and gives you a lot more quality streams.

So, with all of it, our total monthly cost now for internet and TV is $101 ($80 for Internet, $21 for TV), that includes all the premium channels, all sports channels, all ppv events and almost anything we want on demand. At some point, I'm going to try a $30/mo unlimited AT&T SIM in the Mofi and see what happens after 22GB, that's the point they say that you're subject to.throttling based on network congestion, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Sorry for the hijack, back to just Internet discussions.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I bought a weboost but havent installed it. I stream using my AT&T mobley, it's been great. Have gone way over 22GB.

 

[tractorshopper]

We stream all of our live TV over Gears TV (Omar's Videos), it gives us every US, UK and Canadian channel for $15/mo. I'm including the link because there are a lot of scam sites that claim to be Gears but will just take your money and not give you anything. Omar's Videos is the actual streaming servers, it's a very basic looking site but it wotks well, we use the Mayfair Guide as the actual viewer, it gives guide listings and has a Gears viewer built in so go to Omar's to sign up, then to Mayfair to get the guide, another $3.50/mo (Subscribe) and install it. During install, it'll ask if you want to use it's Gears add on, say yes.

We use Ttanium TV for on demand viewing, there are lots of tutorials online for installing this.

Both run in our Fire TV. We still stream some stuff from Amazon Prime, we're not going to get rid of that subscription anytime soon because of the shipping savings but, we're probably going to cancel Netflix.

If you use Titanium TV, or KODI for that matter, it's worth buying a Real Dedbrid Premium Subscription, at the current exchange it comes to just over $3/mo and gives you a lot more quality streams.

So, with all of it, our total monthly cost now for internet and TV is $101 ($80 for Internet, $21 for TV), that includes all the premium channels, all sports channels, all ppv events and almost anything we want on demand. At some point, I'm going to try a $30/mo unlimited AT&T SIM in the Mofi and see what happens after 22GB, that's the point they say that you're subject to.throttling based on network congestion, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Sorry for the hijack, back to just Internet discussions.

Wow, now I have to go learn a whole bunch about streaming. I guess I will be able to get rid of the satellite bill soon once I figure all of this out. That will be an added bonus.

 

[grsthegreat]

The one problem i see with ubifi, it uses 4g lte technology. That technology is going away next year. Maybe they will switch to 5g?

 

[grsthegreat]

Sorry. Deleated

 

[STx]

The one problem i see with ubifi, it uses 4g lte technology. That technology is going away next year. Maybe they will switch to 5g?

Verizon has said they're turning off 3G next year, it's going to be some time before 4G goes anywhere, they haven't even set a standard for 5G yet.

 

[kcflhrc]

The one problem i see with ubifi, it uses 4g lte technology. That technology is going away next year. Maybe they will switch to 5g?

No way in **** will 4G LTE be gone in 2020

 

[TheMan419]

The one problem i see with ubifi, it uses 4g lte technology. That technology is going away next year. Maybe they will switch to 5g?

It is not "going away". Heck there are towers that still support 3g. 5g will roll out and be supported along with 4g for some time. Of course if you can go 5g it will be a lot faster.

Of course in a few years 6g is coming so why invest in 5g? Wait did some one say 7g is "just around the corner"???

 

[tractorshopper]

Yeah, I thought about 5G coming out, but like others have said, it will still be supported for some time. Then, at some point, we should also have options to upgrade to 5G equipment and service I would suspect.

In any regard, this 4G LTE option for me is by far the best option I have ever had. Without doubt.

I ordered the Wilson directional antenna. Should get it Friday or Saturday. More updates next week.

 

[dmccarty]

The wife and I have been running Internet speed tests on our cell phones since last weekend. The results are interesting.

We have run 22 tests on various days and times. Our average is 10.28 down, 6.13 up, and 40.18 latency. My phone is older than the wife's the averages for down/up/latency are 8.11/5.97/40.0 vs 13.4/6.35/40.44. Most of these numbers are from inside the house but we have started to go outside where we have a direct line of sight to the tower. My best numbers from outside are 20.9/14.1/38 while the wife's best are 25.3/12.9/39.

Got all of this in a spread sheet which I need to modify again because the few outside tests results are so high they are inflating the averages. Just looking at the data and it looks like the outside tests are 3-4 times faster than the inside the house tests. That says we need to get a directional antennae. :thumbsup:

Back to the averages of 10.28/6.13/40.18. Those numbers are sooooo much better than the 1.5/.75 DSL service we have. We have two 1.5 lines which we can cancel with one Ubifi network.

Our old Directv dish is on a pole to get a line of sight to the satellite. I should be able to use the same pole and existing coax to mount a directional antennae for the cell. Hope that works.

Later,
Dan

 

[kcflhrc]

Speed tests can be very misleading. The path you take this time can be completely different the next time, and the next, and the next. Devices have a lot to do with it. And wireless is a crap shoot at best, so many variables with it. I'm using the AT&T Mobley connected to an Asus Router and I can consistently run over 10 meg, and for $22 a month it's a keeper. I'm pretty sure all Ubifi is doing is reselling services from AT&T or some other provider and then jacking up the price. In my area AT&T is doing the Connect America Fund build out using wireless towers, where my company is doing Fiber to the Node.

 

[STx]

It is AT&T but, it's truly unlimited, never gets throttled. The Mofi also supports carrier aggregation and has higher powered radio with external antenna capabilities so it can perform better than a phone or the Mobley.

 

[dmccarty]

Speed tests can be very misleading. The path you take this time can be completely different the next time, and the next, and the next. Devices have a lot to do with it. And wireless is a crap shoot at best, so many variables with it. I'm using the AT&T Mobley connected to an Asus Router and I can consistently run over 10 meg, and for $22 a month it's a keeper. I'm pretty sure all Ubifi is doing is reselling services from AT&T or some other provider and then jacking up the price. In my area AT&T is doing the Connect America Fund build out using wireless towers, where my company is doing Fiber to the Node.

Yes, the paths can be different but that is what we are doing multiple tests on different days and times. It all averages out. The average numbers we are seeing right now are 14 to 18 times BETTER than the crappy Century Link 1.5 DSL server we pay too much for. If Century Link would upgrade our network, for which they have taken tax dollars, and provide 10 mbps service for $22 a month, we would keep it, but we are paying around $130 a month for two 1.5 mbps lines and phone service.

Century Link has a monopoly in our area and we have no other service providers except cell service. We are not out in the middle of no where either.

ATT has a similar service to Ubifi which costs $50 a month but it is sorta capped. If on exceeds a limit, they charge you another $10 for a bunch of data. They will repeat that up to I think it was $200 in total charges. My guess is that Ubifi, and similar companies, are buying ATT access, charging a bit more and either paying for un capped data or they have figured out that the average of all of their customers will not violate some ATT limit.

Later,
Dan

 

[butlmd]

I've had UBIFI for a few months now (thanks theman!). I"m about 4 miles from the nearest tower; there are two towers that have decent links. One thing to look at is to limit the bands you use on the Mofi so it switches between those that have good levels. I'm using an external antenna fed with lmr400. Initially I tried to use a directional antenna, but couldn't get a good signal. Then I purchased a 9 dB omni antenna which worked well and is what I'm using at this time. As far as speeds go, it ranges from 2 - 47 MB, usually in the range of 10 - 30 MB. Only saw the 47MB once, though. I also kept my fixed wireless link through Rise Broadband, so I've actually got redundant links, which is nice.

Mark