techwrench

I was coming in last night in bad weather after getting my Tri-Band Hotspot up and working when I heard it change modes in a Wimax area. Praise the Lord!!! 4G LTE is on!!! I ran some quick speed test that I thought would be interesting to the Forum members. 100% Signal - 35.8M down and 15.6 up. 60% signal - 18.5M down and 11.2M up. 10% signal 8.52M down and 2.53M up. 0% signal - 5.35M down and 1.32M up. Pretty amazing!! Im Still trying to figure out the new Hotspot so if anyone can tell me how to figure out which tower I'm on I would appreciate it. The area that is on right now is in The Woodlands, TX (77380) between South Panther Creek and Sawdust Rd. I'll try and drive more area today to see what else is on. I beleive this is coming out of the Sawdust Rd. tower on the edge of the Golf cousre but am not sure. I want to try and figue it out because whoever set the downtilt on the panel screwed up. The signal on my street drops from 100% to 10% in 5 houses. If it is the Sawdust antenna (approx 2 miles from my house as the crow flies) raising the panel an sixteenth of a degree would give me 80% or better without hurting anyone elses service. It is missing about 100 homes to the west of the tower as close as I can figure due to the fact that the top of the 100% signal is htting about 10 feet below the top of a ridge that runs through the subdivision.The slight shift would allow every one on the other side of the ridge to have decent signal. Any ideas how to figure out which tower it is?

The cradle point allows me to switch to a different internet connection as well.....failover/fallback as you will. It works, but is not nearly as reliable as a seamless handover on the same network would be.

I notice that there are forums for a lot of Different 4G LTE equipemnt. How about one for data modem devices such as the new tri-band modem and the upcoming data cards?

I use the 4G in motion in Houston constantly with a data card through a cradle point which allows me to track signal strenth. The biggest problem is that there are gaps between tower coverages that cause disruption......especially the beltway on the NW side and on I-45 North. If 4G goes offline in motion it takes about15 seconds minimum (sometimes longer) to reacquire the next tower. It's sad that Sprint won't accept any outside help for equipment testing or coverage testing. I drive 1,000 miles a week in the Houston area and I am constantly using the data network 10 to 14 hours a day. Seems they could use the information that is readily available to them to help trim out the services. As far as the 3G to Wimax handoff is concerned all of the equipment that I have seen so far will not allow simultaneous connection on Wimax and 3G so one service has to shut down before the other can start. I though maybe it was a power usage issue but from talking to the cradlepoint tech support people they told me that they are using the same beacham chipset in their custom sprint modem and it will allow simultaneous service on both 3G and Wimax with one band in standby to allow seamless network switching but Sprint will not allow it on their network. I am getting ready to put the new Tri-band modem through the rigors. It is due here next week and they managed to have the cradle/dock in stock which is supposed to boost signal strength so they are sending that as well. It was a tough decision to pruchase based on all the problems I have had with sierra wireless hotspots in the past. Stay tuned for more updates on network and the tri-band modem.