Thanks for the Waveform discount code! I just used it. From my perspective an external antenna's main advantage is being able to locate the T-Mobile 5G gateway in any location, not just were the signal is best. Although the gateway works very well on its own, I've decided to go with the Waveform Pro for the above reason. Thanks for posting!
My WaveForm should be here on Thursday for me to start testing a sweet spot to mount it.. That's what I'm hoping for; getting my UpLink up to over 30, and after checking the towers again last night, I think I found one just about a mile from me.. If that's the case, then I should get up around 60Mb/s as well, hopefully..
Good morning... I'm confused...if I have a D-Link Router...one antenna to get Internet from my provider...how I'm going to connect this quad unit which has 4 cables....??? Thanks
Who do you have for your current ISP? Can you provide the make and model of your ISP provided gateway or modem? The antenna isn’t going to connect to D-Link router it should connect to the box your D-Link router is connected too.
Ah I see what you have going on now. You will just use ports 1 and 2 or 3 and 4, but if I had to recommend in this case I would recommend the 2x2 lpda antenna from waveform instead of this one. You can see it here: collabs.shop/z45dh4 Alternatively you could go with the 2x2 MIMO: collabs.shop/z45dh4 I think either of these would suite you better unless you intend to upgrade your D-Link 920v
It would be entirely dependent on the hotspot you chose to use and how well you could solder in some SMA connectors. I’m sure it’s possible. I’d argue the waveform quad mini antenna would be a better fit for your project.
Excellent video and content. I have a remote location where my tower is 13 miles away by map. My power lines run parallel to and about 20 feet above the ridge line of the roof so I’m suspicious that my signal to my dual pole mounted yagi antennas above the roof are being interfered with by RFI even though they are pointed away from the house and power lines. Also, the transformer is on a power pole about 75 feet north of the house and 110 feet north of my antenna system. Add trees and I get 2-10 Mbps down and .2 up. I’ve experimented by disconnecting the 2x2 MIMO modem/wifi router and attached it’s short paddle antennas back on and set it on top of a kitchen cabinet which is directly below the roof ridge line and about 25 feet below the power lines, and actually got an improved DL of 7-14 Mbps and no improvement to UL speed without using a booster amplifier. I’ve fine tuned the router settings with no improvement over the default auto settings. My thoughts are I have 3 problems. Tower distance, trees, and RFI. I’m wondering if I moved the 2 yagis down the pole below the roofline where they are out of direct line of sight of the power lines approximately 8 feet lower and/or add a booster amp. What are your thoughts and are you familiar with the wide availability of different brands of amps that you can recommend one? Most have AGC and a few are adjustable. It’s difficult to find one that shows how much power they have. Thanks for your help.
Honestly it's hard to say. Your antenna is omnidirectional so it's not really shielded from anything. You might have better luck with a mimo 4x4 antenna if you know where your tower is located. In any research I've done power lines can cause RF interference but with everything using digital signals these days the interference to cellular signals is minimal. I am curious if you're getting better speeds not using the antenna then why did you choose to continue using it? I don't have any experience using boosters and I don't want to b.s. you. I know nater tater uses a booster in his home. It might be worthwhile posting the question on his channel.
When you say my 2 Yagi 2x2 antennas are omnidirectional, I’m pretty sure you meant to say unidirectional instead. I do know where my tower is and mentioned it is 13 miles away at a heading of 45° from my mast. The reason I keep using my antennas is because I have over $2,500 worth of cellular antennas, several Wilson and WeBoost booster kits, a Wilson tower locator and frequency meter, LMR400 low loss cabling, 2 Cudy routers, 1 MOFI 4500 MIMO 2x2 LTE router, a MicroTik mAND30 drum parabolic antennaa box full of cable cutters, crimpers, and a wide variety of connectors for each type of cable. I have tried almost every imaginable configuration combination and still get erratic DL and UL results with multiple readings in any of the configurations. I know I can get a variety of booster kits, but, I hear they’re just amplified repeaters and not an amplifier connected between the MIMO antennas and these LTE MIMO WIFI modem/routers that are way more feature rich with their built-in VPN. They are far more secure than the booster kits with extremely limited indoor repeater range that usually only work a few feet from the indoor rebroadcasting antenna. With all this equipment and combinations, my iPhone can give me a baseline for tweaking the components, but, it’s actually higher. Without outdoor MIMO antennas on a mast 25 feet up, and no amplifier. This location is 70 miles from home and I have a lot of $$$$ invested to improve my signals and it still varies using the same setup after repeated tests. I have the equipment. I just need to figure out the right combination, which most should work right out of the box, but, cellular systems and bands requires a lot of fine tuning. If anyone knows which brand and model amplifier can be connected safely to a LTE, 4G, or 5G 2x2 WIFI router, please message me with details.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I have the 4X4 Waveform antenna kit, purchased from Amazon's Black Friday sale. I have an existing 4 year old, T-Mobile Business account with one smartphone and an unlimited everything plan. I've contacted them to add this router, Arcadyan TMO-G4AR, which supports the above antenna. T-Mobile customer service refuses or just impends providing me that router. They are happy to send me a Inseego 5G 3100 with NO antenna ports. I live within a 5G T-Mobile area and can get 256 Mbs Down load speeds on my Google Plus 8 Pro smartphone, but only 3 Mbs upload. Since you live close to the tower, did they balk at providing your antenna? Do you have any suggestions on where I might turn with T-Mobile to get that Arcadyan TMO-G4AR router?
Sadly, I haven’t had any luck getting my hands on that gateway either. The gateways are shipped from a warehouse if you order online. Your best bet is to go to a T-Mobile store and see if they have it in stock or try to find it second hand on eBay or Mercari. T-Mobile didn’t provide my antenna. I got my antenna from waveform and I sent them a bunch of metric before they sent it over for review. Overall it was a good experience. I hope to review more items from them in the future.
My understanding is T-Mobile is pushing business customers towards the Inseego and Cradlepoint routers but I don't know if it's location specific. Personally I would choose the Inseego FX3100 due to having the Qualcomm Snapdragon SDX62 chipset, I believe it supports 3x or more carrier aggregation. The Inseego FX3100 includes two ports for an external antenna and supports the higher sub-6 bands 1700-2700 MHz (Bands: B2/n2,B4,n25,n38,B41/n41,B66/n66) or 3300-4200 MHz (Bands: B48/n48,n77). The external antenna has to be enabled in settings. Waveform recently posted the modification to wire a 4x4 antenna internally, good luck on your project!
Hello, I used a 25mm / 1 inch hole saw. I could’ve technically went a size lower than that but it was the smallest hole saw I had in my kit. I also wanted to have a little room to be able to silicone everything properly. Totally personal preference though.
I get 200 down and 7 up after install of this antenna I get 300 down and 2 up. Up is what I was needing boosted. Any ideas what to to to help? I have tried switching 2 and 3. This is the new white T-Mobile gateway
Really you just have to look at the metrics in the T-Mobile home internet app and make small adjustments to the position of the antenna until it’s good. You might be getting some interference depending on where you mounted it and what’s around you. Did you follow this guide? www.waveform.com/a/b/guides/hotspots/t-mobile-5g-gateway-g4
Very disappointed didnt do anything in my house and even though i bought a complete package incluy the window pass thru which they didnt include so had to return the piece of crap!
Great video, Question my neighbor who is approx 200 yards from my house gets 350 down and 40 up via t-mobile with no additional antenna. My house with no antenna I get about 10 - 20. I purchase wave form and on N71 I get 60 down and 25 up during prime and about 100 during 3 am hours. When I get on N41 I can get about 150 d and 0-5 up but it resets because signal low and that irritates my wife. My waveform 4x4 is in my attic pointing their way but I cannot catch the signal they are getting. I am thinking about this weekend trying all possible connections to see if that might be my problem or this spring trying to attach the 4x4 outside and point toward them. I for the life of me can't figure out how with the antenna and cheetah router I cannot get better speed like they do. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks Vince
So are you saying you’re pointing the antenna towards your neighbors house or towards the location of the cell phone tower? If you move the antenna outside you will get a better signal. With the gateway you’re referring too as cheetah I assume is the same one as the nexpro model I posted a video on recently… if it is then you should be able to lock the gateway to n41… I’m unsure what you mean by it resets. Do you mean the gateway changes back to n71 automatically?
@@helphq thank you. Yeah the same gateway as the nexpro. I will try putting it outside this spring and see what happens. We have tons of wind where we live and I thought the attic would alleviate that. I do get N41 when I band lock it but it is a very weak signal and periodically it will lose it and reset the modem. Reset means its like you had in the video when band lock its starts over. I think if on N41 I got 150 down and 20 up that reset would not happen. I think its because I get 150 down and .5 to 1 or so up and then it goes to 0 it happens. If I keep it at N71 and N41 it will stay on N71 since its the stronger signal. Not sure I have the 4 wires correctly either. I just put them 1,2,3,4 on the modem. at this point N71 is the stable one of the two. Thank you for replying and sorry I am not talking tech terms, this all is kinda new to me. Thanks, Vince
Well I’m unsure where you got the cheetah gateway but if you decide to get anything else I would recommend Haven Technologies. They have a lot of resources for their customers to help them out. Such as how to properly hook up various antennas. fas.st/t/NPNUTn9P That being said I have a sketch for the antenna hookup if you shoot me an email at helphq@gmx.com I can send it to you. Your antenna hook up is not correct so this might partially help your issue.
Still have issues after 8 months with this about to just cancel tmobile home internet at this point. When it works 100% its badass but has been very spotty now
I would agree that when it was an uncommon thing to have for home internet it was better because there was less congestion on the tower. For the most part though I’ve been fortunate enough to not have many issues.
I bought a grounding rod on Amazon and some solid copper wire to run from the antenna mount to the grounding rod. I got everything on Amazon. You’re getting better SINR because your body is becoming an extension of the antenna. You’d only be a ground if you had your shoes off and were standing outside on the actual ground while touching it. Similar concept to touching a tv antenna and it works and when you let go it doesn’t. The grounding is only for lightning or other power surges to keep the antenna from catching fire / imploding.. that sort of stuff. It’s to keep you and your house safe… not to give you better signal.
@@helphq thanks for your response. On tmobile I've read or heard to switch wire 2 and 3. I don't if I see a difference. I have 50mb download and 100 upload.. Everything seems good but SINR.
Thanks for the Waveform discount code! I just used it. From my perspective an external antenna's main advantage is being able to locate the T-Mobile 5G gateway in any location, not just were the signal is best. Although the gateway works very well on its own, I've decided to go with the Waveform Pro for the above reason. Thanks for posting!
My WaveForm should be here on Thursday for me to start testing a sweet spot to mount it..
That's what I'm hoping for; getting my UpLink up to over 30, and after checking the towers again last night, I think I found one just about a mile from me.. If that's the case, then I should get up around 60Mb/s as well, hopefully..
A mile away isn’t bad at all if there isn’t a ton of obstructions. Let me know how it goes!
Good morning... I'm confused...if I have a D-Link Router...one antenna to get Internet from my provider...how I'm going to connect this quad unit which has 4 cables....??? Thanks
Who do you have for your current ISP? Can you provide the make and model of your ISP provided gateway or modem? The antenna isn’t going to connect to D-Link router it should connect to the box your D-Link router is connected too.
@@helphq my router has two antennas....one to connect to the internet provider and another for the home routing. My router is a dwr 920v.
Ah I see what you have going on now. You will just use ports 1 and 2 or 3 and 4, but if I had to recommend in this case I would recommend the 2x2 lpda antenna from waveform instead of this one.
You can see it here:
collabs.shop/z45dh4
Alternatively you could go with the 2x2 MIMO:
collabs.shop/z45dh4
I think either of these would suite you better unless you intend to upgrade your D-Link 920v
Think it would be possible to mod a mobile hot spot with these antennas?
It would be entirely dependent on the hotspot you chose to use and how well you could solder in some SMA connectors. I’m sure it’s possible. I’d argue the waveform quad mini antenna would be a better fit for your project.
@helphq thanks! Hopefully it's easy to modify without soldering. I guess we shall see!
Excellent video and content.
I have a remote location where my tower is 13 miles away by map. My power lines run parallel to and about 20 feet above the ridge line of the roof so I’m suspicious that my signal to my dual pole mounted yagi antennas above the roof are being interfered with by RFI even though they are pointed away from the house and power lines. Also, the transformer is on a power pole about 75 feet north of the house and 110 feet north of my antenna system. Add trees and I get 2-10 Mbps down and .2 up. I’ve experimented by disconnecting the 2x2 MIMO modem/wifi router and attached it’s short paddle antennas back on and set it on top of a kitchen cabinet which is directly below the roof ridge line and about 25 feet below the power lines, and actually got an improved DL of 7-14 Mbps and no improvement to UL speed without using a booster amplifier. I’ve fine tuned the router settings with no improvement over the default auto settings. My thoughts are I have 3 problems. Tower distance, trees, and RFI. I’m wondering if I moved the 2 yagis down the pole below the roofline where they are out of direct line of sight of the power lines approximately 8 feet lower and/or add a booster amp. What are your thoughts and are you familiar with the wide availability of different brands of amps that you can recommend one? Most have AGC and a few are adjustable. It’s difficult to find one that shows how much power they have. Thanks for your help.
Honestly it's hard to say. Your antenna is omnidirectional so it's not really shielded from anything. You might have better luck with a mimo 4x4 antenna if you know where your tower is located. In any research I've done power lines can cause RF interference but with everything using digital signals these days the interference to cellular signals is minimal. I am curious if you're getting better speeds not using the antenna then why did you choose to continue using it? I don't have any experience using boosters and I don't want to b.s. you. I know nater tater uses a booster in his home. It might be worthwhile posting the question on his channel.
When you say my 2 Yagi 2x2 antennas are omnidirectional, I’m pretty sure you meant to say unidirectional instead. I do know where my tower is and mentioned it is 13 miles away at a heading of 45° from my mast. The reason I keep using my antennas is because I have over $2,500 worth of cellular antennas, several Wilson and WeBoost booster kits, a Wilson tower locator and frequency meter, LMR400 low loss cabling, 2 Cudy routers, 1 MOFI 4500 MIMO 2x2 LTE router, a MicroTik mAND30 drum parabolic antennaa box full of cable cutters, crimpers, and a wide variety of connectors for each type of cable. I have tried almost every imaginable configuration combination and still get erratic DL and UL results with multiple readings in any of the configurations. I know I can get a variety of booster kits, but, I hear they’re just amplified repeaters and not an amplifier connected between the MIMO antennas and these LTE MIMO WIFI modem/routers that are way more feature rich with their built-in VPN. They are far more secure than the booster kits with extremely limited indoor repeater range that usually only work a few feet from the indoor rebroadcasting antenna. With all this equipment and combinations, my iPhone can give me a baseline for tweaking the components, but, it’s actually higher. Without outdoor MIMO antennas on a mast 25 feet up, and no amplifier. This location is 70 miles from home and I have a lot of $$$$ invested to improve my signals and it still varies using the same setup after repeated tests. I have the equipment. I just need to figure out the right combination, which most should work right out of the box, but, cellular systems and bands requires a lot of fine tuning. If anyone knows which brand and model amplifier can be connected safely to a LTE, 4G, or 5G 2x2 WIFI router, please message me with details.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I have the 4X4 Waveform antenna kit, purchased from Amazon's Black Friday sale. I have an existing 4 year old, T-Mobile Business account with one smartphone and an unlimited everything plan. I've contacted them to add this router, Arcadyan TMO-G4AR, which supports the above antenna. T-Mobile customer service refuses or just impends providing me that router. They are happy to send me a Inseego 5G 3100 with NO antenna ports. I live within a 5G T-Mobile area and can get 256 Mbs Down load speeds on my Google Plus 8 Pro smartphone, but only 3 Mbs upload. Since you live close to the tower, did they balk at providing your antenna? Do you have any suggestions on where I might turn with T-Mobile to get that Arcadyan TMO-G4AR router?
Sadly, I haven’t had any luck getting my hands on that gateway either. The gateways are shipped from a warehouse if you order online. Your best bet is to go to a T-Mobile store and see if they have it in stock or try to find it second hand on eBay or Mercari. T-Mobile didn’t provide my antenna. I got my antenna from waveform and I sent them a bunch of metric before they sent it over for review. Overall it was a good experience. I hope to review more items from them in the future.
to get the TG4ar router simply open another line on the same account
My understanding is T-Mobile is pushing business customers towards the Inseego and Cradlepoint routers but I don't know if it's location specific. Personally I would choose the Inseego FX3100 due to having the Qualcomm Snapdragon SDX62 chipset, I believe it supports 3x or more carrier aggregation. The Inseego FX3100 includes two ports for an external antenna and supports the higher sub-6 bands 1700-2700 MHz (Bands: B2/n2,B4,n25,n38,B41/n41,B66/n66) or 3300-4200 MHz (Bands: B48/n48,n77). The external antenna has to be enabled in settings. Waveform recently posted the modification to wire a 4x4 antenna internally, good luck on your project!
Thanks for the video, I was wondering what size hole cutter bit you used?
Hello, I used a 25mm / 1 inch hole saw. I could’ve technically went a size lower than that but it was the smallest hole saw I had in my kit. I also wanted to have a little room to be able to silicone everything properly. Totally personal preference though.
@@helphq Hey thanks a lot 👍
I get 200 down and 7 up after install of this antenna I get 300 down and 2 up. Up is what I was needing boosted. Any ideas what to to to help? I have tried switching 2 and 3. This is the new white T-Mobile gateway
Really you just have to look at the metrics in the T-Mobile home internet app and make small adjustments to the position of the antenna until it’s good. You might be getting some interference depending on where you mounted it and what’s around you. Did you follow this guide? www.waveform.com/a/b/guides/hotspots/t-mobile-5g-gateway-g4
question does the number on the antenna matchup to the numbers on router
Well it’s different for every gateway, but in short no.
Very disappointed didnt do anything in my house and even though i bought a complete package incluy the window pass thru which they didnt include so had to return the piece of crap!
Great video, Question my neighbor who is approx 200 yards from my house gets 350 down and 40 up via t-mobile with no additional antenna. My house with no antenna I get about 10 - 20. I purchase wave form and on N71 I get 60 down and 25 up during prime and about 100 during 3 am hours. When I get on N41 I can get about 150 d and 0-5 up but it resets because signal low and that irritates my wife. My waveform 4x4 is in my attic pointing their way but I cannot catch the signal they are getting. I am thinking about this weekend trying all possible connections to see if that might be my problem or this spring trying to attach the 4x4 outside and point toward them. I for the life of me can't figure out how with the antenna and cheetah router I cannot get better speed like they do. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks Vince
So are you saying you’re pointing the antenna towards your neighbors house or towards the location of the cell phone tower? If you move the antenna outside you will get a better signal. With the gateway you’re referring too as cheetah I assume is the same one as the nexpro model I posted a video on recently… if it is then you should be able to lock the gateway to n41… I’m unsure what you mean by it resets. Do you mean the gateway changes back to n71 automatically?
@@helphq thank you. Yeah the same gateway as the nexpro. I will try putting it outside this spring and see what happens. We have tons of wind where we live and I thought the attic would alleviate that. I do get N41 when I band lock it but it is a very weak signal and periodically it will lose it and reset the modem. Reset means its like you had in the video when band lock its starts over. I think if on N41 I got 150 down and 20 up that reset would not happen. I think its because I get 150 down and .5 to 1 or so up and then it goes to 0 it happens. If I keep it at N71 and N41 it will stay on N71 since its the stronger signal. Not sure I have the 4 wires correctly either. I just put them 1,2,3,4 on the modem. at this point N71 is the stable one of the two. Thank you for replying and sorry I am not talking tech terms, this all is kinda new to me. Thanks, Vince
Well I’m unsure where you got the cheetah gateway but if you decide to get anything else I would recommend Haven Technologies. They have a lot of resources for their customers to help them out. Such as how to properly hook up various antennas.
fas.st/t/NPNUTn9P
That being said I have a sketch for the antenna hookup if you shoot me an email at helphq@gmx.com I can send it to you.
Your antenna hook up is not correct so this might partially help your issue.
Still have issues after 8 months with this about to just cancel tmobile home internet at this point. When it works 100% its badass but has been very spotty now
I would agree that when it was an uncommon thing to have for home internet it was better because there was less congestion on the tower. For the most part though I’ve been fortunate enough to not have many issues.
Silly question.. How /where do you ground it.. And does that help. When I touch the antena seem to get a lot better SINR.. I haven't grounded it
I bought a grounding rod on Amazon and some solid copper wire to run from the antenna mount to the grounding rod. I got everything on Amazon. You’re getting better SINR because your body is becoming an extension of the antenna. You’d only be a ground if you had your shoes off and were standing outside on the actual ground while touching it. Similar concept to touching a tv antenna and it works and when you let go it doesn’t. The grounding is only for lightning or other power surges to keep the antenna from catching fire / imploding.. that sort of stuff. It’s to keep you and your house safe… not to give you better signal.
@@helphq thanks for your response. On tmobile I've read or heard to switch wire 2 and 3. I don't if I see a difference. I have 50mb download and 100 upload.. Everything seems good but SINR.
Thanks for not sugarcoating this review.