G4AR Gateway external antenna use

KWS wrote:

sjarriel wrote:

 

 

 

After the tower upgrade I get 200-250 down and 5 up with internal antennas and 400 down and 40 up with the waveform.   I dont know what happened to my upload after the tower upgrade.

Same here in the same ratio.  Lengthy explanation here

sjarriel wrote:

Thanks for the link to Waveform.  It is helpful when using their specific antennas, but I created my own 4x4 MIMO setup using a pair of 2x2 MIMO antennas that are mounted about a meter apart from each other, and clocked to 45 degree offsets from each other.

All the 4x4 and 2x2 MIMO antennas I read up on are direct line of sight.  I know when I had mine off by just 5 degrees signal dropped big time. 

Until a recent tower update I only got 50 down and 5 up internal antennas,  that jumped to 150 down and 15up with my 2x2 MIMO.   then jumped again with the Waveform 4x4 and got 300+ down and 50-60 up.

After the tower upgrade I get 200-250 down and 5 up with internal antennas and 400 down and 40 up with the waveform.   I dont know what happened to my upload after the tower upgrade.

Thanks for the link.  That is similar to some of the devices that have been talked about on the Nater Tater YouTube channel.  The only issue I see with the device you are linking to is that it doesn’t appear to support 5G-SA on the n71 band, which is what I would need for the T-Mobile setup that I am currently working on.

If you’re willing to consider paying big $$$, there are options.  See Peter Carcione on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/gMRfklUD_E4?si=6I1nwgaocPGLKK-y

Yes, thanks.  I actually used the front panel of the device to make that change over.  Where we are located is so remote that without the external antennas you won’t even get one bar of service.  The issue I am seeing now is really just one of the device not wanting to search for the 5G service.  I have read that the G4AR does not utilize the 5G-SA mode, which would force it to use the 5G service exclusively, so that may be a big part of the issue.  And that is something that they could resolve with a firmware update for sure.  Having enough control of the device to be able to set it to SA mode, and be able to do band locking would make a huge difference.

So one more thing….you do realize that in the G4AR control panel (in the TM Internet App), you need to set the switch to “external antenna”, or you will be using just the internal one.  I’m sure you know this, but it doesn’t hurt to mention it.

Thanks for the link to Waveform.  It is helpful when using their specific antennas, but I created my own 4x4 MIMO setup using a pair of 2x2 MIMO antennas that are mounted about a meter apart from each other, and clocked to 45 degree offsets from each other.  I had read in some antenna design lit about the offset giving possibly another 2-3 dB of improvement.  So I spent a couple of hours last night (trying to have a time where traffic to the cell tower might be minimal), and went through all 24 possible combinations of antenna hookups for the 4x4 MIMO array.  Documented what connections were established, and what down/up speeds were achieved.  Turns out that this TMO-G4AR box is only connecting to the B12 LTE band on the same tower, not trying to connect to the 5G n71 band that the Cudy P5 was locked onto.  I could see this using the third party HINT app.  I did find a group of about 4 antenna connection combos that seemed to give optimal LTE service (now getting about 30-35M down and 5M up).  But it is only about half the bandwidth in either direction of what I was getting the the 5G service.  TMO needs to fine tune the firmware on this router to allow it to do a better job of searching for the 5G service.

This may or may not help you, but here is the connection guide from Waveform…

T-Mobile 5G Internet Gateway (Arcadyan TMO-G4AR) External Antenna Guide (waveform.com)

I searched for the same connector assignment but found nothing. I begrudgingly tried all possibilities and didn’t see a difference.  I didn’t check to see what band or tower was chosen each time.  Wild guess here, but if your antenna setup is omnidirectional, maybe a different tower is being chosen?  It should be an intelligent selection, but maybe it’s off.

FYI: I’ve gotten a max of 380 down and average low 200s since my switch.

I have been helping a friend get better internet access at a fairly remote lake house in upstate NY.  Over the last year, we were using a Cudy P5 5G cellular router with a T-Mo 5G hotspot SIM.  The router was locked onto band N71 for 5G, and we saw download speeds of 80M with uploads of 8-10M.  This was working very well, except for the monthly data cap that they kept hitting last year.  When this new T-Mo router came out with the external antenna connectors, we jumped at the chance to get the unlimited Home Internet service for them to use.  I just installed it, with the same 4x4 MIMO antenna array that was connected to the Cudy router.  But I only see 18M download speeds and 1-2M upload speeds.  This device is not connecting via 5G on band N71.  It is only connecting via LTE on band b12, despite nothing being changed with the antenna array.  Does anyone have internal connection ID’s for the Ant 1-4 external connectors?  Typically they are labeled on the main circuit board as d, m, m1 and m2.  I would like to not have to try 16 different combinations of cable to port settings to get the optimal one (that might allow the device to start using 5G service?).