Mobile Broadband vs. Satellite Internet

[rekees4300]

One of the many features of a Cradlepoint MBR1000 router is it will balance the usage of 2 air cards plugged in to it at same time.

2 cards would be $120/mo but that's still less than the ridiculous $199/mo VZ quoted for 10GB. I'm looking into a company called Millenicom. For $60/mo they have 10GB VZ plan if you buy their modem for $99. They also have UNLIMITED for $70/mo if you are in the Sprint coverage area.

 

[TheRealBuzz]

Sorry tommu56,

I got ya now.

The alignment is very important...more so than your average TV dish. And it requires a special tool so unfortunately you are at the mercy of the installer for quality in that area.

The things that you can watch for to help ensure a good alignment would be in the mounting . These dishes are big and heavy compared to TV dishes and have a really long nose gear so there's a lot of weight forward. They use a really nice 3 point mount though, the main pole and 2 brace arms, so when installed on solid material it is good and strong. The mounting area for the 3 points will need to be about a 3' square area on the wall or roof. Watch for good geometry in the placement of the brace arms. I've seen a few installs where the brace arms weren't really doing anything because they were placed in the wrong position. The main pole should be good and plumb.

There are 2 coax lines to be run. One for transmit, the other for receive. Most installers use a paired cable. Try to keep this run within 150ft. 200ft is possible but depends on the quality of the cable. You can have the modem in and intermediate location and run another 200ft with CAT5 network cable if a long run is needed. You could pre-run the cable but it's tricky because you would need to be sure about the mounting location and check with the installer to make sure you use the right kind of cable.

The modems run around 30-40vdc I think. Could be a bit risky trying to eliminate the transformer. I hear where your coming from...my dad uses about 90% renewable at his home. No real problem with power cycling other than the usual wear and tear. The start-up time from power to surfing is about 2-3 min

Hope this helps.

 

[dooleysm]

The advertised download speeds are possibilities, not guarantees. Folks close to towers with few other folks using 3G tend to get good speeds. I'm not that far away (1 mile-ish) and doubt there are many other users, yet my download speed today was about .29 Mbps. That's dial-up speed. I may be getting throttled, but I have never gotten anywhere close to the advertised speeds.

bws

0.29 Mbps is not dialup speed. 0.056 Mbps is max dialup, and as with every other connection technology, you aren't likely to see those speeds consistently.

I do see a wide variety of speeds with my air card. I think it's more to do with usage at the tower. I think my signal is pretty reliable, though not very good. I typically max out at .5 Mbps, but the .29 Mbps mentioned above is more typical. When I played with the router on my roof I was seeing speeds pretty close to 1.0 Mbps, which is why I'm probably going to get the zBoost antenna/amplifier.

 

[bubbas45]

0.29 Mbps is not dialup speed. 0.056 Mbps is max dialup...

Doh! Of course. Thanks for the correction.

I'll be interested to hear what your results are when you install the booster and antenna.

bws

 

[dooleysm]

It's going to require attic time, and it's rapidly getting too hot up there to do anything, so it will probably wait until this fall.

Plus, I have to sneak that purchase through my accounting department. That could take a while.