Home 4G Broadband - Rural location - Speed/Coverage Help please

Kirsty_&_Pete

I live in a rural location. I have Vodafone 4G with a Gigacube router and SIM card. The cube is ethernet connected to my main sky TV box.  I also have an external antenna but this is not connected yet as I do not know how to accurately do this. I have contacted Vodafone and all they have said to me is the best mast is in a named place and I need to point the antenna towards that place.
Additionally, the signal is weak in some spots of the house, we try and watch TV using the sky mini box in a room furthest from the router and main Sky box and it frequently loses connection with both the main box and the internet. 
The signal is also weak upstairs where I work on my laptop which always shows one bar of signal.
So, I am a novice as you have probably noticed - do I need a booster? Do I need a powerline adapter kit? How do I work my antenna? So sorry for the long post !  Thank you 

Mark_d

Given you have a rural property, your walls are likely too thick to get good wifi performance.The upside of thick walls is that it's unlikely you get interference when using a powerline adaptor kit.  So this is what I'd recommend.

I don't have any experience using a 4G modem with an external antenna.

cymruchris

Getting the external antennae up would be a good start to ensure you're getting the best available signal at the router. If you're not technically minded - are you a member of a local facebook group who might be able to recommend someone to come and set it up for you?

Internally some kind of repeater/booster would probably be helpful. I haven't used a powerline adapter kit so can't say much for those - but there are a whole range of boosters and extenders available through the likes of Amazon.

Sam_666

First  things  first. Are you  getting good mobile signal?  Have you  checked all other mobile networks signal in your house? When you find mobile network with best signal  and 5G coverage, go  with them. You can get 5G mobile router  from ebay for under £100.  Get sim only deal.

Once you got that sorted, work out wifi coverage in house. Powerline plugs can help.

polymaff

Being in an edge-of-town location I get very weak, one-bar, reception of 4G - and that only from Vodaphone.  I've addressed this by finding the best point for a phone to be in my house - a window in the upper hallway - and have BluTacked a Samsung S5 to that window and set it up as a hot-spot.

Every installation is different, but it is how things have to be to get anything other than 2G here - and it gets a better bitrate than FTTC.

To me, the biggest worry is what happens if Vodaphone and Three merge and they take out the Vodaphone equipment.  Back to 5Mbps - if I'm lucky - FTTC.

5G? You must be a townie!

Essex_man

Getting a decent speed on mobile broadband in a rural location can be a bit of a challenge.  There is a website cellmapper.net which has coverage data for all networks worldwide compiled from crowdsourced real data (not the coverage maps you get from the operators).

Have a look where your nearest Vodafone masts are, you may discover that other networks have better coverage.

Generally speaking, the higher you can place the Gigacube the better.  Also look at the Gigacube web GUI, it has a page that shows stuff like signal strenght, that is much more accurate than the four or five bar display.  Move the Gigacube around slowly or turn it slightly and check whether you can find a spot where the signal strength improves.  A few inches can make a big difference.

You may also want to go to the ispreview.co.uk forum, there is a section discussing problem just like yours.

M25

Don't expect an external antenna to do anything but boost the problem you're already having.

I'm not saying it won't improve things just don't invest massive amounts of time & money. I'd get a very long extension mains cable and take the router outside and move it to different areas to see what results you get. If you get an unexpected good result then maybe house the router temporarily in that area and run an ethernet cable to the house to a switch and access point for wi-fi.

Have you thought about https://www.starlink.com/gb ?

Have a look at this guy's videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaYzOcHZqPQ

He has videos before and after about his journey to get a decent signal.

HaroldWhistler

Kirsty_&_Pete said:

I live in a rural location. I have Vodafone 4G with a Gigacube router and SIM card. The cube is ethernet connected to my main sky TV box.  I also have an external antenna but this is not connected yet as I do not know how to accurately do this. I have contacted Vodafone and all they have said to me is the best mast is in a named place and I need to point the antenna towards that place.
Additionally, the signal is weak in some spots of the house, we try and watch TV using the sky mini box in a room furthest from the router and main Sky box and it frequently loses connection with both the main box and the internet. 
The signal is also weak upstairs where I work on my laptop which always shows one bar of signal.
So, I am a novice as you have probably noticed - do I need a booster? Do I need a powerline adapter kit? How do I work my antenna? So sorry for the long post !  Thank you 

First things first, you want to think about the Signal your Home receives (coming into the House) and the Wifi signal strength at locations inside your home as two different things. Think of the Internet like the Water pressure. That's the Signal coming into the House. That Signal (water pressure) will get shared by all your devices that are working at that particular moment in time within the House. In turn, the strength at which you can disperse the Internet (the Water) across the House is going to be determined by the strength of your Internal Wifi and/or Cabling.

1. Signal Being Received by House

Where is the 4G signal the strongest? Is this one end of the house, or a particular room, or upstairs for instance? 

You want to try and position the 4G Router (the Gigacube) in that location. The best way to test this might be to pop the SIM (or a 4G SIM) into a phone and see the number of signal strength bars appear as you go around the house. Then place the Gigacube/4G Router in places where you found the best strength and run a Speed test from the same testing device (like a Phone or Tablet or Laptop) connected by Ethernet or Wifi (same test conditions whichever you choose) directly to the Gigacube/4G Router at those different places in the house.

At that point, you can work out the best place for your Gigacube/4G Router to reside in the House to receive the best 4G signal coming from Vodafone. 

2. Signal within the House to Devices

At this point, you will know you have a certain speed at your Gigacube in Mbps. If it's a 4G signal, that usually fluctuates depending on area and might go up to the 45-70Mbps range. Now you want to try and get as much of that "Water pressure" as possible to your devices. 

The best way ideally would be to use an Ethernet cable from your Router (the Gigacube in this case) to your device which is what you were doing with the Sky TV box. It might be the case though that in Step 1, you found the Gigacube gets a better 4G signal in a different location/room/floor of the house. So you could either run a longer ethernet cable to the TV, or use another method to disperse the Internet within the house.

The Internet Bandwidth always gets shared across the entire home for any devices that are working at that exact moment in time. The maximum speed anything can get will be what is coming into the House if that device was the only one accessing the Internet. You can disperse the Internet (Water pressure) throughout the house using different methods. Such as:

1. Ethernet cables - these can be connected directly from the Router to a Device, or from a Router to a something called a Network Switch and then from that into your Device.

Think of a Network Switch as something that can create more Ethernet Ports on your Router and/or extend these ports further away to different locations in your Home. So for instance, let's say for example that you had a Computer and a Laptop and a Television Box in a room 200m away from your Router and multiple thick walls in between that are blocking the Wifi strength in that room. Rather than running 3 long cables from your Router to that room, you'd have just 1 long cable running to somewhere near/or in that room to a Network Switch. And 3 shorter cables running from that into your 3 devices. Note that the Internet bandwidth (like the Water pressure) at that Network Switch is then shared across those 3 devices if all 3 were working at the same time. 

2. Mesh systems that use Cables or Wifi to Interact - these are an internal Network of Wifi boosters that form a seamless Wifi network in the house. Usually you connect one main Node to your Router using an Ethernet Cable and then place the Mesh system's Satellite nodes around the home. These Satellites connect the main Node.

The maximum speed will be the 4G speed into the house. So you can buy a Mesh system accordingly that is able to disperse that speed around the house. For example, something like the BT Whole Home Wifi Discs or the Asus Zen Wifi XT8 Nodes or TP Link Deco X55 3 pack. These can be used with any Broadband provider. Each of these can help disperse your Internet signal throughout the house and also have Ethernet ports on each Satellite for you to connect your devices to with an Ethernet cable if you wish. Those Satellites effectively are also Network Switches. 

So for example, if your Gigacube is getting better signal somewhere else in the house, you could place a Satellite Mesh node nearby your Sky TV box and connect it by ethernet cable into that. 

Now Mesh Systems communicating Wirelessly inside the house will have to contend with walls, distance and interference. Theoretically you can also use Ethernet cabling as the link between each Satellite of your Mesh system to get the Maximum Water Pressure to each Satellite. However, at the 4G speeds we are dealing with, in practice this might not be necessary as the Wireless Capability of the Mesh Nodes would likely be more than the actual 4G speed coming into the House, and those tend to have powerful antenna/transmitters to communicate with each other and help guide you to place each node as required.

3. Powerline Mesh nodes/systems that use your Home's Electrical Circuit to Interact - these units plug into your power sockets and deploy a similar strategy to the Wireless Mesh systems, except they use your power cabling throughout the home to get the Internet signal to other Nodes instead of Ethernet cables or Wirelessly talking to each other. You can still connect by Wifi to the Powerline nodes (and with some models, also use an Ethernet cable to connect your Device to them also). 

This makes them relatively easy to plug and play. Furthermore, some Powerline systems like the TP Link P9 or TP Link P50 3 packs are Mesh systems which form a seamless wireless network. You just plug the first unit nearby your Gigacube router and connect them by Ethernet cable. Then plug the other two Satellite units to wherever you want to boost your Wifi signal strength or get Internet in your home. Then connect by Wifi or Ethernet to that Satellite. 

Because the electrical cabling of homes is copper and is being used by your home's electrical appliances, and the different Powerline nodes may be communicating across different electrical circuits in the house, there is a lot more interference and loss of speed than using Ethernet cabling. However, again, in practice at Internet speeds up to say 100Mbps (which is faster than the maximum 4G speed entering the House anyway!), you will be more than able to cover the Home's actual Total Water Pressure. 


You can of course use a combination of the above to get the Wifi strength up around the house. I'd probably say go for a Powerline Mesh system if the Speeds are 4G. The main thing you want to achieve first is to get the 4G strength (the Maximum Water pressure) at its absolute best by getting the Gigacube/Router in the right location. Then you can buy Powerline units and place them around the home and connect up to your devices as per above. Hope that helps.