External Antenna Makes Massive Difference For Me!!!

Still holding strong the next day things are looking good still getting 600+/100+.

OK I decided that I was satisfied with the setup and performance so I went perm.

I was on the fence about how to get the cables inside from outside drill a hole/cut a groove in the window frame or drill a hole in the wall. Not wanting to damage Anderson windows for the homes resale value I went with the hole in the wall as it is easy to patch. Drilled a 1 inch hole and it was just big enough to fit the cables as the ends are big and you need to get 2 of them threw the wall. Just made it with the 1 inch hole and these thinner 3 foot cables.

Used dum dum on the outside as it's easy to remove if needed. Also taped the connections as this is recommended by the antenna seller. The connectors do have a rubber seal but they say to tape as a double seal so I did.

Attached are some pics of the outside and inside setup. This is a mostly a unused room so no issue with anyone messing with the setup. Overall I am happy with the layout of the cables and the fact that all will be hidden behind the window blinds.

This has really given me a great setup I now have over 500/100 speeds, good signal, a solid connection, and the service that I originally had hoped for when signing up.

Antenna setup from Waveform $220, shorter cables from Amazon $15 each so grand total of extra parts needed $250. I could have ordered shorter cables from Waveform but those are thicker and same price and over a week for shipping so Amazon was a good option as such short cables does not matter much. Do note using the shorter cables improved all db reading by 1 so it was worth it and so much neater looking.

Hope this helps someone with their quest for TM internet.

Seems like your lucky day is here finally. Going from 75 to 650 is incredible! Is this the biggest leap anyone has gotten with an external antenna on this or what?

A couple of them I've watched or read about, it hasn't helped at all. Or when it did, it was marginal. But I think people in your situation between towers should pay attention as it might do the trick for them also.

I wish they put an external antenna jack on the gateway to make this easy. Even I would try it, although I'm very  happy with my 100 to 350 speeds, and getting over 200 most of the time. I just think you might as well have as much speed as you can get. It's not like there's a speed limit.

So does this antenna need an external power supply, or just hooking it up to the can the way Nater Tater did is it? I'll have to re-watch his video now and take the antenna situation more seriously.

Timsw wrote:

Bond, a bit of good news on your outlaw status. A comment in the comment section of a recent YouTube video by Peter Carcione, another external antenna enthusiast, said they called T mobile about their position on external antennas. I'll just quote the comment:

"I called T-Mobile. Just got off the phone with them and we had a lengthy discussion about adding an external antenna to the gateway that I have. She told me that as long as there is no damage to the device that I would be able to return or upgrade."

From watching videos of it, be careful when getting the tabs that are attached to the bottom out, and use any trick people suggest to do it carefully. The little tabs can break as you are trying to remove the bottom. I haven't done anything to my gateway. But in one guy's video, he cracked a tab. Of course, the bottom of the gateway will still stay on with one cracked tab fine.

Well when you need an ext ant the choice for TM is let them add an ext ant or lose a customer.

I had no issues with the tabs but I have taken things apart since a young kid so maybe that’s an advantage.

Based on the amount of bad refurb units they ship out you could probably send one back half apart with big holes in it and it would get sent right back out to a new customer. I am exaggerating but probably not far off the mark.

I found a Facebook group dedicated to the can I joined that quite interesting.

Read through several posts on the T-mobile Home Internet Facebook group you mentioned, Bond, and one stuck out for me in particular, which is pretty much the polar opposite of your experience with an external antenna. A person installed an external antenna and lost their connection completely and doesn't know what they did wong. One person suggested their sim card might be a little out of position.

Okay, I know that's a worst case scenario, especially if they can't get their connection back without exchanging their gateway, but another reason I can add to the pile of reasons it is taking a risk. My main reason for not getting it is that I'm used to crawl speeds on DSL so the 200 down average I get now with TMHI is blazing.

There was one post on the Facebook group I liked especially of a guy getting speeds in the 200s and very happy to ditch his 1G speeds with Cox at $180/month. Realistically, unless you have like 5 kids all downloading games or watching different 4K TV programs, or a real need for speed because of frequent work-related uploading/downloading, the speed part alone isn't all that important between getting 200 and getting 600.

However, I can see how an external antenna might help some people get better latency and maybe even fewer disconnections, if that is their problem, and that's part of why I would go for it if it were a simple plug-in, although for me my latency is fine (under 50 on the ping test), jitter is usually between 3 and 5 which is very good at my distance. And after the 1609 update, my minor disconnection problem, maybe once every other day, has disappeared. Haven't gotten a single disconnection in over three weeks since the update. And of the past disconnections, all were reconnected in the 2 minutes it took to restart.

The Facebook group is good though, because I found a lot more comments there about, for example, people with faulty gateway issues, what their problems were, and if they were resolved with a new gateway. Again though, I've been fortunate with my gateway, as I notice no overheating issues or other issues.

I think you are probably right about their lack of testing gateways before they recycle them. With electronics though, sometimes problems don't surface until they've been on for a while. If the problem with the gateway is that it starts malfunctioning after it has been on for one hour, the person testing it would not find that issue. I don't even know if they have the means of testing something like this without having to find problems just as a user would.

I'm sure that Nokia is doing fine on this deal but I see TMHI as entering a period of exponential growth in this service. It is revolutionary for rural users who were stuck on slow speeds, as well as people who are sick of having their fees jacked up by cable and other providers. The thing that stops it from exploding into millions of users in a month is the reliability, and the variability of people's experiences with it.

I saw speeds of 23-25mbps down before installing an external. After install I consistently get speeds of 425-450mbps down during peak use times and 550-600mbps down in the overnight hours. Its probably the best piece of gear that provided the greatest improvements that I have ever bought. 

Timsw wrote:

Seems like your lucky day is here finally. Going from 75 to 650 is incredible! Is this the biggest leap anyone has gotten with an external antenna on this or what?

A couple of them I've watched or read about, it hasn't helped at all. Or when it did, it was marginal. But I think people in your situation between towers should pay attention as it might do the trick for them also.

I wish they put an external antenna jack on the gateway to make this easy. Even I would try it, although I'm very  happy with my 100 to 350 speeds, and getting over 200 most of the time. I just think you might as well have as much speed as you can get. It's not like there's a speed limit.

So does this antenna need an external power supply, or just hooking it up to the can the way Nater Tater did is it? I'll have to re-watch his video now and take the antenna situation more seriously.

Agreed I am lucky as in my situation with the location of the towers. Also the fact that this can needs both 4G and 5G to operate at high speeds from the 5G network. Since the 4 and 5G towers are not the same being in different directions that causes the issue for me.

I so far am shocked I did not expect the results I have. I mean yes I thought I had a shot at improvement but wow not this much. Real reason is before I could not hold any of the 5G towers so really I was getting only 4G service and speeds so the big jump is to 5G Ultra vs 4GLTE.

An external ant jack would be great but really so easy to hook this up takes like 10 min to take it apart and put it back together.

Lots of pre-planning mapping towers, taking speed reading, noting position of the n41 antennas, using Google maps to plot angles, finding the best angel and placement to catch the towers antenna. I tried moving the ext ant around to see if it got better and my original position was the best so planning and investigation pays off.

No power supply just hook it up to the leads and you are done. There is a guy on youtube that takes the Waveform ant apart its just looks like some big circuit boards with foil. But he says it is the design and placement inside that makes it what it is.

I think you have to have the right situation for there to be an improvement. If you already have a good signal there is not much to improve. I guess it could not hurt but may not help. Even on there site they say if your in the -90's you many not see much improvement. For me 5G towers were over -100 and 4G tower was high -90's so I could use the boost.

That guy Tater is a bit all over and not sure his testing is accurate. He put all the test antennas in his window or on the desk chair. That's just not a fair test as you need to put an external ant well outside and aim it at the tower you want improvement from. So this test of all those antennas is flawed and inaccurate.

In my pre testing to see if an outside ant would improve things I held the can outside that window. While the can was just 1 foot outside that window there was a huge improvement. I cannot keep the can outside so an ext ant is the answer. If I just put this ant on the inside of the window it does not work because I do not get the 4G tower good. So once outside the window the ant has both angles SW and W to get both when inside there is a wall and roof blocking the W so that's why not 4G inside. This proved that the only way to test an outside ant is outside.

007BondMI6 wrote:

 Even on there site they say if your in the -90's you many not see much improvement. For me 5G towers were over -100 and 4G tower was high -90's so I could use the boost.

All the stuff you wrote is good for people to know. Both my signals, B2 and n41 are between -90 and -98.

I have only the one tower 5 miles away to deal with, but it surprised me with the gateway alone, it’s the same inside the window as it is outside the window, and I get no better signal on the roof, like I do with my 4G phone.

But inside my house, there is only the one window, facing the tower, where I get the best signal, and a lot of places inside the house where the speed drops really low.

Timsw wrote:

007BondMI6 wrote:

 Even on there site they say if your in the -90's you many not see much improvement. For me 5G towers were over -100 and 4G tower was high -90's so I could use the boost.

All the stuff you wrote is good for people to know. Both my signals, B2 and n41 are between -90 and -98.

I have only the one tower 5 miles away to deal with, but it surprised me with the gateway alone, it’s the same inside the window as it is outside the window, and I get no better signal on the roof, like I do with my 4G phone.

But inside my house, there is only the one window, facing the tower, where I get the best signal, and a lot of places inside the house where the speed drop really low.

Probably you would see improvement with the ext ant, worst case you don't and you return it for a refund.

Ok things are still going well both of the tower I want are holding till now and still speeds are 600+/100+.

Some updates seems now that I have speed much more speed then I ever had with Comcast I am finding other issues not related to the can.

• Speeds off my Google Wifi are not the full can speed. Main puck 200 other pucks 50. However when testing in the Google app speed is 400+/100+.
  • The network cable that runs from the can to the main puck was patched to the wall then in a patch panel in the basement then to the main puck. Replaced this cable with a single run from the can to the main puck CAT5e (had it around and it supports 1G) Now same speeds wireless from the pucks but Google app shows 500/100 so new cable improved things 100.
  • Mesh test shows pucks connected at Good (IMO this was better and with updates Google has made the connection worst so you upgrade to the new Nest) anyways decided to run cables to each puck now speeds wifi off pucks is 200 main and 97 remote pucks. So pucks are now connected to main puck via ethernet but they go through a 10/100 switch. I have ordered a new gig switch should come tomorrow. This should put the other pucks at the same as the main puck.
• OK those crazy long 30 foot cables between the can and ext ant. Wanted much shorter and was hoping thinner so ordered a few off Amazon and installed them. They are not as low loss as the original cables but since they are only 3 feet long they are actually better. All readings on all bands have improved at least 1db with the shorter cables. So this shows that you really should only used as long of a cable as you need.

Still thinking how to get the cables from outside to inside. I really don't want to drill or modify the window itself. I was thinking drill a 1 inch hold from the side of the window to outside next to the ant. Need a hold large enough for pass those large connectors. Fill the outside with dum dum and put a plate on the inside. When I move this all is a easy patch.