Hi guys,
I have an issue why maybe is the wrong place to post here. However.
I tried to use an atl18. Thats my result:
Is it worth to try other mikrotik hardware with external antennas?
Thanks for feedback!
B20, mentioned in your screenshot, is 800MHz band. None of Miktotik’s antennas are particularly good at sub-GHz frequencies (to put it mildly). And I imagine there isn’t any usable signal in higher frequency bands (B3-1800MHz, B1-2100MHz, B7-2600MHz, etc) or else your ATL would already be using it. Unless orientation of your ATL is wrong - ATL’s antenna is narrow-beam directional antenna and you have to direct antenna directly at cell tower.
RSRP at -96dBm is not great, a decent external antenna might increase it above -90dBm (which is still not great but useful) and improve RSRQ by a few dB (which would help as well).
But you should not expect miracles: if there aren’t any signals on higher frequency bands (for CA), then you’re limited to around 100Mbps (DL) which is throretical maximum of a 10MHz cell with 2x2MIMO (a norm on low-frequency 4G and 5G cells) … and you have to share air time (read: throughput) with the rest of active users, served by same cell.
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Thank you for your explanation.
I could scan the bands with my alt but didnt saw any other. Are there some tools to scan without simcard? because i tried 2 diffrent providers and with the better one i got like 10db better as with the other. Also I moved the alt and at one point i got like 4db better…
However. I would give a try with an lte survey - i mean for wifi we use ekahau - but is there something like for lte bands?
Thanks mate
There is quite good LTE related video on Mikrotik Youtube channel, so look those up.
There is also cellmapper.com where you lookup where the tower are located & that also shows bands by carrier. While “Jungle” is not what I associate with Germany, publishing maps of cell tower locations is something they may do as alternative to cellmapper.com.
As @mkx says the “beam” is very narrow, so ideally it’s “pointed” at/near a tower. But in terms of software, if the ATL LTE scan isn’t showing anything… I’m not sure much else would (outside some test rig). Keep in mind leaves are very bad for signal, so if you point any direction without dense forest that might change scan results. But where it’s pointed is going to affect the LTE scanner.
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Kinda OT: I learned only recently there are quite a few white spots in Germany with close to zero cell reception. Even in regions where it is totally not expected (e.g. zones around Aachen and Köln).
So “jungle” might apply, it seems …
@holvoetn Yeah. Great germany. Does many things but cant provide lte for the whole country…
I will try to use starlink. Maybe that will work better…
I sitting somewhere here:
The problem is that there are “big” mountains… I could get like 10mbit download at max…
Straight connection up to satellites is preferred then …