Hi, I have an RUTX50 hooked up to a 4x4 MIMO antenna which is mounted on the roof of a boat. Since I installed it, this setup has proven to be incredibly unreliable and I’m a bit baffled as to what is causing this extremely poor performance.
We are currently in an area where the signal strength is generally poor which is a perfect example of this. The connection from the RUTX50 is essentially unusable, download speeds are ~0.3mbps. However, if I remove the sim card from the router and put it in a phone, speeds are an order of magnitude better, ~30mbps. Bearing in mind that this phone is also inside the boat and therefore essentially inside a metal box, I cannot understand how the performance difference is this large.
Open to any and all suggestions, I’m completely stumped.
Are they mounted near any other communication stuff such as radar, are they near any other electrically powered things?
How are they connected up to the router, which cable to which port on the back?
How long are the sma cables, are there any joints at all?
Have you updated the firmwares to latest versions, there are two firmwares to update, update the device firmware first then the modem firmware secondly.
Can you give us a screenshot of this page: STATUS > NETWORK > MOBILE
I would also make a note of the admin password on the label on the underside of the device and keep it somewhere safe. Photograph it, write it down, print it out. If the device is rattling around somewhere where the label may become damaged and the label becomes unreadable, you could be permanently locked out of the router in future if you ever have to do a factory reset or apply a firmware update “without saving settings”.
Hi, I certainly can, screenshot is here. Answers to your questions are below:
The antenna is a Teltonika PR1KC640. There’s no other communication equipment anywhere on the boat, this is the only antenna of any kind. Neither is there any other kind of electrical equipment mounted near it. The 4 antenna connections are connected to the 4 mobile antenna SMAs on the back of the router, cables are 3m long with no joins. The router’s device and modem firmware are both up to date as well.
Thanks for the tips! For my own sanity, would you mind explaining why you think this antenna would be better for my purposes? To my untrained eye, an antenna with a gain like this would struggle more when it doesn’t have direct line of sight to a tower (which is often true in my case). It’s also SISO not MIMO so can’t take advantage of that functionality in the RUTX50, had a look at the 4x4 MIMO version of this antenna and it has roughly the same peak gain as the PR1KC640? Please correct me if I’m misunderstanding anything.
I guess my main point of confusion is how could an externally mounted antenna, even one that’s not especially powerful, result in 100x poorer performance when compared to the built-in antenna in a phone? In the meantime, I’ll try disabling the lower bands in the router and see if that makes any difference. Thanks!
I hadn’t spotted that one, you’re right. Looking at your screenshot not knowing how far away you were at the time from the mobile mast that you were connected to, the signal strength is very poor indeed and the two bands being used at the time are 10 & 15Mhz, so the speed will have been very slow and because of the poor signal i’ll bet your experiencing a lot of disconnections too.
A much better, more expensive (Omnidirectional) antenna will serve you well, and i believe the greater the gain the better. Someone else may be able to help better re the choice of a better antenna to better suit your problem. Poynting antennas are excellent, that’s my experience.
I had connectivity issues, as soon as i bought a xpol-24 (Directional antenna) WOW… the difference was staggering. My application is different though, the antenna is in a fixed position with my nearest masts 2.6 to 5 miles away. I can see the masts though across an open, exposed valley. Others on this forum have expressed good experiences with Poynting antennas too.
Poynting’s customer service (My Experience) has been excellent both over the phone and by email before i bought. Get in contact with them, discuss your situation and see what they reccomend you buy for best results.
