Verizon 5g

[Tech Junky]

Lay people should just leave the antennas alone...

That's obvious in some of the stories floating around from people that aren't sticking with it. My building is a cell site though so, pushing things a bit was a goal prior to sign up for the service. I have RF shooting out 2 sides of the building covering 360 degrees around the building. The antenna arrays on the building are N side. However cell locator sites say the signal is coming from the W side of the building which doesn't appear on the map within reason considering the distance 5G would have to travel on N41 it's not logical.

So the square is the antenna array and circle is my N side window but, I have the gateway in the W side which is more central to my unit for placement. I still have a decent enough signal to hit 5 bars on the stupid GUI depiction.

Looking at the SNR values and overall signal on the APP though matches the signal monitoring I have running except the monitoring isn't picking up the correct bands in use but, the other metrics are in line with the app reports.

One observation though is that when putting a load on the connection causes some funky variations in the RSRQ numbers until the load is removed and then they pop back to normal.

Since setting the timer / reboots every 8 hours though I can consistently hit 200/60 or higher during the daytime hours and in the middle of the night typically hitting 300/80. Not that I use a ton of upload bandwidth it's nice to have and w/o the data cap I'm more inclined to leave DL/UL running in the background longer than before.

Before ordering I was looking into other modems and ways to setup my own "gateway" and just use the TMHI SIM in that device but, from poking around it seems like the SIM is bound to the IMEI it ships with which sort of makes sense because they're paired as a MSISDN. The whole point of using a SIM over ESN is you can pop it into any compatible device and service works. For testing purposes though using the GW as setup w/ SIM is fine. When I get bored with it I might venture into the 5G modem DIY setup more and I know there's another option for 5G unlimited SIM w/ TM for another use case that I found but didn't bookmark for RV users. Same $50/mo plan but not tied to a particular modem. The other issue with DIY 5G and shooting for the most bands for compatibility is the price of the modem itself.

 

[Tech Junky]

@Ellenswamy

Fetched 10.1 MB in 1s (10.2 MB/s)

This is the sort of speed I'm getting when downloading updates on my server but, in larger downloads hitting 20-30MB/s or 200-300mbps. The VZW connection should be able to get those sort of speeds with what you stated about the performance. If it's not then I suspect they might be throttling things based on the traffic it's picking up. Also, I'm using a VPN that masks everything going through the gateway and to avoid the IPv6 issues associated with the route it takes from me through TM to get out to the internet.

CC does provide a stable connection though and is what I switched from. Having the 1GE connection and dropping to 200mbps I thought would be abysmal but, it's really not that big of a hinderance so far. If things get problematic it might be time to invoke some QOS to reserve bandwidth for other apps when doing multiple downloads but, there seems to be enough bandwidth overall. I do have my phone set to VoWIFI while in the house and even w/ CC it stuttered a bit on calls so, I'm not putting too much emphasis on that side at the moment. Considering I'm using an expired SIM to route Google Voice to the handset and not using any provider LTE/5G data as a backup for voice calls it makes sense there might be some packet issues. I do have a SIM ready to go for activation in the phone since there's 2 SIM slots but, seeing how long I can draw out the delay of activating the service on the phone.

At least there are options when it comes to 5G broadband. ATT even offers it directly and indirectly through Cricket. In some cases coming up with your own DIY setup might be the better option and just using the SIM they provide. The problem with ATT / Cricket is they're notoriously slow. There might be some other options though locally depending on your location.

 

[Ellenswamy]

@Ellenswamy

Fetched 10.1 MB in 1s (10.2 MB/s)

This is the sort of speed I'm getting when downloading updates on my server but, in larger downloads hitting 20-30MB/s or 200-300mbps. The VZW connection should be able to get those sort of speeds with what you stated about the performance. If it's not then I suspect they might be throttling things based on the traffic it's picking up. Also, I'm using a VPN that masks everything going through the gateway and to avoid the IPv6 issues associated with the route it takes from me through TM to get out to the internet.

CC does provide a stable connection though and is what I switched from. Having the 1GE connection and dropping to 200mbps I thought would be abysmal but, it's really not that big of a hinderance so far. If things get problematic it might be time to invoke some QOS to reserve bandwidth for other apps when doing multiple downloads but, there seems to be enough bandwidth overall. I do have my phone set to VoWIFI while in the house and even w/ CC it stuttered a bit on calls so, I'm not putting too much emphasis on that side at the moment. Considering I'm using an expired SIM to route Google Voice to the handset and not using any provider LTE/5G data as a backup for voice calls it makes sense there might be some packet issues. I do have a SIM ready to go for activation in the phone since there's 2 SIM slots but, seeing how long I can draw out the delay of activating the service on the phone.

At least there are options when it comes to 5G broadband. ATT even offers it directly and indirectly through Cricket. In some cases coming up with your own DIY setup might be the better option and just using the SIM they provide. The problem with ATT / Cricket is they're notoriously slow. There might be some other options though locally depending on your location.

Yea I dunno, I was downloading at 90 kb/s, my plan said I would get between 80-300mb/s. with up to 10mb/s upload

 

[Tech Junky]

my plan said I would get between 80-300mb/s. with up to 10mb/s upload

Yeah, that's where the suggestion of giving a 1/4 turn to see if the signal / speed improved but, it sounds like my hunch based on their MVNO speed testing is why I avoided them as an option. So, the update captured above would put the download at ~100mbps. You haven't had the VZW box that long and I would suggest using it on its own in different locations and testing it with your phone periodically to see if things improve in different locations in the house. You might catch better RF on one side of the house from a stronger tower vs the other side of the house where it's reflecting in from an adjacent house.

My issue is being directly under the RF array which is designed to push out to a broad area vs nearby. Though being closer to the array and catching RF bounce back from buildings isn't too bad. The RF cones are pushing the signal out several blocks away in all directions for maybe 1/2 mile or so.

From the W exposure this is what the RF looks like from the remote tower

The Array on top of the bldg is shooting N / SW

The secondary site eNB is shooting more like a wireless backhaul for other sites.

But, the story is that There are sometimes more than one connection being made depending on the direction of the unit. Some of the info gleaned from the maps though can be clues to what they're being used for though too. When you see a focused cone on the map it's a good indicator it's probably linking sites together vs broadcasting for customer use. Like the last capture shows shows the North cone not within reach of other sites. This would be customer focused and the south cone overlaps with the other site to the south. The other eNB I can't upload though reaches off to the S / SE to connect with a couple of other sites not in the image above.

So, if one site has a stronger signal but a bad backhaul it could give you bad speeds. If it's a wireless backhaul in a dense environment and the pipe on the "main" site isn't big enough to carry all traffic it might be deprioritized due to Voice needing to be guaranteed vs the data.

 

[Ellenswamy]

Yeah, that's where the suggestion of giving a 1/4 turn to see if the signal / speed improved but, it sounds like my hunch based on their MVNO speed testing is why I avoided them as an option. So, the update captured above would put the download at ~100mbps. You haven't had the VZW box that long and I would suggest using it on its own in different locations and testing it with your phone periodically to see if things improve in different locations in the house. You might catch better RF on one side of the house from a stronger tower vs the other side of the house where it's reflecting in from an adjacent house.

My issue is being directly under the RF array which is designed to push out to a broad area vs nearby. Though being closer to the array and catching RF bounce back from buildings isn't too bad. The RF cones are pushing the signal out several blocks away in all directions for maybe 1/2 mile or so.

View attachment 42104

From the W exposure this is what the RF looks like from the remote tower

View attachment 42105


The Array on top of the bldg is shooting N / SW

View attachment 42106

The secondary site eNB is shooting more like a wireless backhaul for other sites.
View attachment 42107
But, the story is that There are sometimes more than one connection being made depending on the direction of the unit. Some of the info gleaned from the maps though can be clues to what they're being used for though too. When you see a focused cone on the map it's a good indicator it's probably linking sites together vs broadcasting for customer use. Like the last capture shows shows the North cone not within reach of other sites. This would be customer focused and the south cone overlaps with the other site to the south. The other eNB I can't upload though reaches off to the S / SE to connect with a couple of other sites not in the image above.

So, if one site has a stronger signal but a bad backhaul it could give you bad speeds. If it's a wireless backhaul in a dense environment and the pipe on the "main" site isn't big enough to carry all traffic it might be deprioritized due to Voice needing to be guaranteed vs the data.

yea I tried that and it got worse lol

 

[Tech Junky]

yea I tried that and it got worse lol

Give TM a call and try it out. Or you can go to a Metro store and pick up a device for $100 I think and not wait on the shipping nor the return of it when you change your mind.