Skinny Broadband Speeds

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Ahuriri62

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#204542 6-Oct-2016 10:34

I have been on Skinny Broadband for 6 weeks and my download speeds range from 4.5 Mbps to around 29-30Mbps depending on time of day and weather conditions.

The Modem shows full 3 bars, is placed at a window pointing to the cell tower, download speeds tested using Fast.com.

On fine days I can get up to 31Mbps which then drops off to 4-5Mbps at around 7.30pm.

When it’s raining or has been raining the best I get is 7-9Mbps during the day

I am approx. 1 km from Sparks Wakefield cell tower (assuming I am connecting to this tower and not the Brightwater tower) The Wakefield tower is located on a hill within a pine forest and up until three years ago was clearly visable to me, but now the pine trees around the tower obscure the view and are 4 or 5 metres taller then the tower. Cell tower antenna height is 26M and trees around 30 M.

Just wondering are these normal speeds for 4g broadband for my location, I assume the speed drop off in the evenings is due to load on the cell site.

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#1646447 6-Oct-2016 10:50

Interested to know about this. I'm currently looking at buying a house... Skinny seemed like it might be a decent option for a couple where they only have crap ADSL available... but I've always been of the opinion that wired is better than wireless ;-)

Also, my parents had a visit from an apparently very convincing Spark salesman who was pushing them to change their internet from VDSL (They currently have quite a good VDSL connection, like 60-70 Mbps I think) to a 4G broadband plan. I told them no way, don't do it, especially since UFB will soon be rolled out on their street.... It sounded a bit odd.

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cynnicallemon

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#1646538 6-Oct-2016 11:47

You will get various speeds depending on how well aligned your Skinny router is in relation to the tower. As you said, weather, load on cell tower etc will vary and hence your speed will too.

Best indicator for signal strength is shown on the Huawei B315 routers homepage. Anything with four or five bars will yield a pretty good signal/speed usually. If you go into Settings > System > Device Information it will show you how strong your signal strength/quality is. The values to note are, RSRQ, RSRP and SINR, these are discussed here. Here are my current readings,

RSRQ: -5dB
RSRP: -88dBm
RSSI: -63dBm
SINR: 14dB

Running a speedtest just now returned,

Down: 25 Up: 35 Ping: 39ms

BTW, the weather is shocking here at the moment!

I am about 1Km from my cell tower, downhill, trees and houses in the way and the router is sitting on my desk going though the brick wall of our house.

The best I have had out of it so far is,

Down: 55 Up: 35 Ping: 19ms

Down: 62 Up: 36 Ping: 35ms

So it's no too shabby eh!

The Huawei B315 router is capable of 150Mbps down and 50Mbps up if memory serves me correct. Personally, the router does its job fine but its options are locked down so bad and just feels cheap to me. It takes a few seconds for it to respond if I go to its status/config pages so it seems a little underpowered in performance. Also I hate the timeout on the pages too, seems a way to short and I can't see anywhere to change it.

You could try to use an indoor antenna but most of the cheap Chinese ones that claim a 35dB gain are just useless, at most they might give you about 6-10dB if you're lucky. If you decide to use Skinny Wireless full time then you may want to look at some nice outdoor antennas such as this one. Note, best to get two of them (plus good low loss cable) for MIMO to take effect.

In summary, Skinny is a fairly good offering for those stuck in with ADSL albeit it's going to cost a lot more than ADSL if you have kids/teenagers - just watch that data go!

Ahuriri62

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#1646554 6-Oct-2016 12:02

cynnicallemon:

You will get various speeds depending on how well aligned your Skinny router is in relation to the tower. As you said, weather, load on cell tower etc will vary and hence your speed will too.

Best indicator for signal strength is shown on the Huawei B315 routers homepage. Anything with four or five bars will yield a pretty good signal/speed usually. If you go into Settings > System > Device Information it will show you how strong your signal strength/quality is. The values to note are, RSRQ, RSRP and SINR, these are discussed here. Here are my current readings,

RSRQ: -5dB
RSRP: -88dBm
RSSI: -63dBm
SINR: 14dB

Running a speedtest just now returned,

Down: 25 Up: 35 Ping: 39ms

BTW, the weather is shocking here at the moment!

I am about 1Km from my cell tower, downhill, trees and houses in the way and the router is sitting on my desk going though the brick wall of our house.

The best I have had out of it so far is,

Down: 55 Up: 35 Ping: 19ms

Down: 62 Up: 36 Ping: 35ms

So it's no too shabby eh!

The Huawei B315 router is capable of 150Mbps down and 50Mbps up if memory serves me correct. Personally, the router does its job fine but its options are locked down so bad and just feels cheap to me. It takes a few seconds for it to respond if I go to its status/config pages so it seems a little underpowered in performance. Also I hate the timeout on the pages too, seems a way to short and I can't see anywhere to change it.

You could try to use an indoor antenna but most of the cheap Chinese ones that claim a 35dB gain are just useless, at most they might give you about 6-10dB if you're lucky. If you decide to use Skinny Wireless full time then you may want to look at some nice outdoor antennas such as this one. Note, best to get two of them (plus good low loss cable) for MIMO to take effect.

In summary, Skinny is a fairly good offering for those stuck in with ADSL albeit it's going to cost a lot more than ADSL if you have kids/teenagers - just watch that data go!

Thanks for that , I have tried the outdoor antenna you mentioned it didn't make any difference at all, only tried with one though. so may get another one and try with two.

Just ran another speed test, its still rainning here

Down 13.69 Up 36.8 Ping 55ms

michaelmurfy

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#1646558 6-Oct-2016 12:07

I was just in Wakefield (Foxhill) around 3 weeks ago as this is where my parents live however.

- Speeds of the Wakefield cell tower is around 25Mbit down over LTE700.
- It covers a massive area really (versus somewhere like Wellington).
- I know what you mean about the trees. I was wondering if it had moved but nope.

I'd say it is purely reaching capacity due to the area this cell site covers (88 Valley Road and Pigeon Valley which have limited or no broadband). The Brightwater tower is not "visible" from either Pigeon Valley or 88 Valley (assuming where you are here) so you will be connected to the Wakefield one but an interesting fact about the rain as I noticed this too when I was there, you're not just seeing things.

I've asked somebody from Spark about it... Lets see.

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Ahuriri62

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#1646563 6-Oct-2016 12:13

michaelmurfy:

I was just in Wakefield (Foxhill) around 3 weeks ago as this is where my parents live however.

- Speeds of the Wakefield cell tower is around 25Mbit down over LTE700.
- It covers a massive area really (versus somewhere like Wellington).
- I know what you mean about the trees. I was wondering if it had moved but nope.

I'd say it is purely reaching capacity due to the area this cell site covers (88 Valley Road and Pigeon Valley which have limited or no broadband). The Brightwater tower is not "visible" from either Pigeon Valley or 88 Valley (assuming where you are here) so you will be connected to the Wakefield one but an interesting fact about the rain as I noticed this too when I was there, you're not just seeing things.

I've asked somebody from Spark about it... Lets see.

Will be interested in Sparks reply, I am in the Wakefield village, retired here after 45 years working in Forestry and IT

cynnicallemon

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#1646566 6-Oct-2016 12:19

Ahuriri62:

Thanks for that , I have tried the outdoor antenna you mentioned it didn't make any difference at all, only tried with one though. so may get another one and try with two.

Just ran another speed test, its still rainning here

Down 13.69 Up 36.8 Ping 55ms

Just done another here, still cloudy but not peeing down

Down 32 Up 38 Ping 40ms

I would say that's about average for me.

In regards to your external antenna, did you connect it to the correct terminal at the rear of the router - there is a 1 and 2 connector. Single antenna gets connected to the "1" or left-hand connector as you look from the back of the router. The antenna settings on the router should be set to auto so it should detect it.

Ahuriri62

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#1646567 6-Oct-2016 12:22

cynnicallemon:

Ahuriri62:

Thanks for that , I have tried the outdoor antenna you mentioned it didn't make any difference at all, only tried with one though. so may get another one and try with two.

Just ran another speed test, its still rainning here

Down 13.69 Up 36.8 Ping 55ms

Just done another here, still cloudy but not peeing down

Down 32 Up 38 Ping 40ms

I would say that's about average for me.

In regards to your external antenna, did you connect it to the correct terminal at the rear of the router - there is a 1 and 2 connector. Single antenna gets connected to the "1" or left-hand connector as you look from the back of the router. The antenna settings on the router should be set to auto so it should detect it.

Yes was conneted to 1

cynnicallemon

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#1646572 6-Oct-2016 12:32

One curious thing I've noticed since using this wireless is that Google domains seem to be quite slow to resolve especially if it's loading Google fonts/API's then it may halt noticeably for some seconds before loading the page.

michaelmurfy

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#1646591 6-Oct-2016 12:54

@Ahuriri62 interesting how you say that. If you're in the Wakefield Village I would think you would get better coverage than the 3 bars on your router. Have you got the router facing the Wakefield cell site next to a window? There could be a small chance you're connected to Brightwater in this case.

BarTender

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#1646594 6-Oct-2016 12:58

Just checking these tests are done over a wired connection. Since otherwise all bets are off.

Ahuriri62

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#1646595 6-Oct-2016 12:59

michaelmurfy:

@Ahuriri62 interesting how you say that. If you're in the Wakefield Village I would think you would get better coverage than the 3 bars on your router. Have you got the router facing the Wakefield cell site next to a window? There could be a small chance you're connected to Brightwater in this case.

Sorry, my mistake its 5 full bars, and is next to the windows facing to where I could see the cell site 3 years ago.

Ahuriri62

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#1646598 6-Oct-2016 13:01

BarTender: Just checking these tests are done over a wired connection. Since otherwise all bets are off.

Yes all tests over a wired connection.

cynnicallemon

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#1646600 6-Oct-2016 13:02

Ahuriri62:

michaelmurfy:

@Ahuriri62 interesting how you say that. If you're in the Wakefield Village I would think you would get better coverage than the 3 bars on your router. Have you got the router facing the Wakefield cell site next to a window? There could be a small chance you're connected to Brightwater in this case.

Sorry, my mistake its 5 full bars, and is next to the windows facing to where I could see the cell site 3 years ago.

5 bars should be pulling in a pretty good signal, whats your signal strength values RSRQ etc from routers web page?

Ahuriri62

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#1646604 6-Oct-2016 13:06

cynnicallemon:

Ahuriri62:

michaelmurfy:

@Ahuriri62 interesting how you say that. If you're in the Wakefield Village I would think you would get better coverage than the 3 bars on your router. Have you got the router facing the Wakefield cell site next to a window? There could be a small chance you're connected to Brightwater in this case.

Sorry, my mistake its 5 full bars, and is next to the windows facing to where I could see the cell site 3 years ago.

5 bars should be pulling in a pretty good signal, whats your signal strength values RSRQ etc from routers web page?