Cheap $20 a month Stand Alone Unlimited Rural Internet through AT&T Wireless

[Xfaxman]

Usability is almost unusable on TBN right now:thumbdown:

Signal is 103 dBm, speed is terrible.

Download:

 

[TemporaryKubotaOwnerMark]

Impressive, I am getting 4 bars of signal, would doing something like this really help me? I am getting mid 20s down most of the time.

If you are at 4 bars, I would not bother with the antenna. You are doing just fine. I don't get 20 mbps on my Comcast cable connection!

How can I find out why my speed is so slow?

Today with -101 dBm:

Where are you seeing those signal strength measurements? Is there a unit that is displayed, maybe something like "RSRP"? Or is it just saying "dBm"?

Second, when I talked to ZTE support about the problem of my Mobley's signal light not coming on he indicated that anything below -90 dBm (i.e. your -101 is lower) is "extremely bad signal that is almost unusable. I took that with a grain of salt, because with -92 dBm I was getting I was reliably getting 25-30 Mb/s download. But still, signal strength plays a major role.

Rob

You needed more like a couple of pounds of salt! That's nonsense. -101 (assuming this is RSRP) in the LTE world is not bad. But what matters more is SINR (Signal to Interference Noise Ratio). You can have a strong signal and still have a very poor quality signal, and your speeds will reflect that. It's a lot less common in a rural areas, but it could happen. If you are sitting on a hilltop and getting strong signal from multiple sites, you can get clobbered and have poor service, with full bars showing.

 

[Xfaxman]

how are you finding the Mobley signal strength?
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Where are you seeing those signal strength measurements? Is there a unit that is displayed, maybe something like "RSRP"? Or is it just saying "dBm"?

Go to 192.168.1.1 and log in.

Click "ABOUT", signal strength is near the bottom.

It updates rapidly, so you can change location and see the resulting signal strength.

Lower number is stronger signal.

Note the 3 bars indicator at the top

And 2 bars with a weaker signal.

 

[zimy]

Go to 192.168.1.1 and log in.

Click "ABOUT", signal strength is near the bottom.

It updates rapidly, so you can change location and see the resulting signal strength.

Lower number is stronger signal.

View attachment 507659

Looks like you have 3 bars of signal.... sure your not to far away from the mobley wifi signal wise.

 

[Xfaxman]

Looks like you have 3 bars of signal.... sure your not to far away from the mobley wifi signal wise.

Yep, not too far, it is 8 feet, line of sight to the window.

Task manager shows 5 bars wifi signal:

 

[sodamo]

I bought one of these for $26: Amazon.com: GLI Mini Travel Router GL-AR15 with 2dbi external antenna, WiFi Converter, OpenWrt Pre-installed, Repeater Bridge, 15Mbps High Performance, OpenVPN, Tor Compatible, Programmable IoT Gateway: Computers & Accessories

It tethers to the USB port out of the box and works pretty well. And as a bonus that little router (it is tiny) is powered by a USB cord so I can power both the modem and the router by USB.


BTW: I bought mine from Best Buy on eBay for $80 and it arrived very quickly. I found it impossible to activate the thing over the phone with AT&T. None of the people I talked to knew what this thing was or understood the plan. However, when I carried it into the local AT&T store they took care if it in no time at all. They did make a mistake, when I got the first bill it included a $45 activation fee and a contract. But I took that back to the store and said that since I purchaced the device myself I shouldn't need a fee or contract. They apologised and fixed the problem and removed the fee very quickly. I have to say I was rather surprised, the local store had really good service.

So you tethered the Mobley by USB and were able to connect to the Ethernet port or just wireless. Did you have to change any settings, DNS, etc?
I need to tether and get the Ethernet connection, so looks like a good alternative.
Thanks

 

[wsc9tt]

So you tethered the Mobley by USB and were able to connect to the Ethernet port or just wireless. Did you have to change any settings, DNS, etc?
I need to tether and get the Ethernet connection, so looks like a good alternative.
Thanks

The Mobley connects to the router using USB and it appears to be another network device on the router. I just remembered I did have to make one small tweak. On the modem, under advanced settings, you need to use custom DNS servers. I used google at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. After that you can connect via the routers wifi connection (which is a lot stronger than the Mobley's) or via ethernet on the LAN connection. My LAN cable goes to a switch to allow multiple connections.

That little $26 router runs OpenWrt which is very powerful and can be customized to do all kinds of things, but it is not a beginner friendly software package. However in this can after changing the DNS settings, everything just worked out of the box.

The only problem I have had is that my Mobley doesn't seem to start up correctly after being unplugged with that USB tethering cable installed. So far I have needed to mess with the cables after a power failure.

 

[BigBlue1]

I bought one of these for $26: Amazon.com: GLI Mini Travel Router GL-AR15� with 2dbi external antenna, WiFi Converter, OpenWrt Pre-installed, Repeater Bridge, 15�Mbps High Performance, OpenVPN, Tor Compatible, Programmable IoT Gateway: Computers & Accessories

It tethers to the USB port out of the box and works pretty well. And as a bonus that little router (it is tiny) is powered by a USB cord so I can power both the modem and the router by USB.

How much power does that little wifi router have? i.e. Does it offer good coverage and signal strength? Looks like a nice solution but in my house all the routers I've tried have a pretty limited range (big house, multiple floors, maybe someone lined the walls with lead?). So if this doesn't put out the power of a 'normal' wifi router it wouldn't be too useful for me.

Thanks,
Rob

 

[Dutch445]

ended up finding this last night, and we had -110 for a signal,
not all that great but still decent speed compared to this DSL

but over night the devices seemed to disconnect, or the mobley fell asleep, i had to
unplug and reconnect, but otherwise not really doing to bad...

Go to 192.168.1.1 and log in.

Click "ABOUT", signal strength is near the bottom.

It updates rapidly, so you can change location and see the resulting signal strength.

Lower number is stronger signal.

Note the 3 bars indicator at the top

View attachment 507659

And 2 bars with a weaker signal.

View attachment 507664

 

[wsc9tt]

but over night the devices seemed to disconnect, or the mobley fell asleep, i had to
unplug and reconnect, but otherwise not really doing to bad...

In the picture above, do you see the software version with V1.0.1? New devices start with V1.0 and then update to a new firmware over the air. After your device has updated to V1.0.1 you can set the device timeout to "never sleep" in the advanced settings somewhere. If it just updated your brower may have the old version of that page cached and you might need to look from an incognito window to see the new option.