do home antenna repeaters for cell reception work?

or are they hype, like those in-phone antenna boosters.

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› See More: do home antenna repeaters for cell reception work?

On 20 Dec 2006 19:02:51 -0800, [email protected] wrote:
>or are they hype, like those in-phone antenna boosters.
>
No measurable effect at all (except in your wallet).

[email protected] wrote:
>
> or are they hype, like those in-phone antenna boosters.

Exactly which repeaters are you referring to?

Notan

Notan wrote:

> Exactly which repeaters are you referring to?
>
> Notan

i tried finding the particular unit i was looking at and couldn't find
it. but my query was general in nature anyway....unless you know of a
particular in home unit that works for gsm(t-mobile/cingular)

btw,,,,new york city

[email protected] wrote:
>
> Notan wrote:
>
> > Exactly which repeaters are you referring to?
> >
> > Notan
>
> i tried finding the particular unit i was looking at and couldn't find
> it. but my query was general in nature anyway....unless you know of a
> particular in home unit that works for gsm(t-mobile/cingular)

Head over to http://wilsonelectronics.com.

Notan

[email protected] wrote in news:1166747180.575795.255970@
79g2000cws.googlegroups.com:

> btw,,,,new york city
>
>

A repeater in NYC probably will make no difference as signal LEVEL is not
your problem. UHF signals bounce off anything conductive, like steel
reinforced buildings, airplanes (always overhead in NYC), towers,
bridges, almost anything that sticks up as it's all metal. On your old
UHF TV on the little loop antenna, these reflections, taking a longer
path to get to the little loop than the direct signal from the TV station
to the loop, arrive at a different time than the original signal, at a
different phase. At 850 Mhz, 180 degrees in phase if only 3 3/4". At
1900 Mhz, it's half that, so either way you don't have to move but just a
few inches from having two, or many more, signals that reinforce each
other....or just a few inches more...cancel each other. TV viewers of
analog TV call them "ghosts" because TV scans from L to R across and the
reflected signal looks like a ghost, always to the right of the main
signal. Many times you could see lots of ghosts, removed from each other
in time. As the airplane passes overhead, the ghosts move in and out of
phase and you see them move and, worse yet, "flutter" as the
reinforce/cancel/reinforce/cancel each other.

Everything in "data" revolves around TIME. When two signals in data
arrive at different times, computers go crazy. When the signals cancel
each other in phase, data just stops! No amount of sales hype will
change basic propagation physics. The "cure", if you want to call it
that, is for data to go SLOWLY so the time changes are a small part of
the time differences. (Cellphones use 8Kbps or 11Kbps slow data rates
because to go faster is simply suicide....like cellular broadband.)
Physics is also why wifi isn't going to work from one place over miles of
territory. It ain't gonna happen. We use lots of little
territories...cells if you will.

In the city, the other problem is the awful LOAD of everyone talking at
once. There is only so many channels, so much time, so much data any
network can handle. Once overloaded, pandemonium sets in. We're not
supposed to say "oversold" as it makes the company nervous. Your signal
must compete with the other 48,802 people all talking when you are on
this cell sector designed for half that much. Someone's gonna loose...

I don't think, in a high density area like NYC, you're going to see any
difference. Out in the country, where the towers are too far apart and
the load is almost zero, it makes a helluva difference. That's where my
3W linear and high gain antenna operate, quite successfully by the
way.... In even our small city, it's useless.

Man, I'd like to take my wifi Netgear Skype phone to NYC. There must be
thousands of wifi hotspots open all over the place.

thanks...i'm waiting for a good gsm cell/skype phone. although i'm not
current, i don't think hotspots proliferate the city as much as you
think, although believe it or not, there's tons of unprotected
wifi.,,,about 16 as i look on my laptop right now. these wifi's give
better connection than my own wireless router just 3 rooms away from
where i sit......it's nutz


Larry wrote:
> [email protected] wrote in news:1166747180.575795.255970@
> 79g2000cws.googlegroups.com:
>
> > btw,,,,new york city
> >
> >
>
> A repeater in NYC probably will make no difference as signal LEVEL is not
> your problem. UHF signals bounce off anything conductive, like steel
> reinforced buildings, airplanes (always overhead in NYC), towers,
> bridges, almost anything that sticks up as it's all metal. On your old
> UHF TV on the little loop antenna, these reflections, taking a longer
> path to get to the little loop than the direct signal from the TV station
> to the loop, arrive at a different time than the original signal, at a
> different phase. At 850 Mhz, 180 degrees in phase if only 3 3/4". At
> 1900 Mhz, it's half that, so either way you don't have to move but just a
> few inches from having two, or many more, signals that reinforce each
> other....or just a few inches more...cancel each other. TV viewers of
> analog TV call them "ghosts" because TV scans from L to R across and the
> reflected signal looks like a ghost, always to the right of the main
> signal. Many times you could see lots of ghosts, removed from each other
> in time. As the airplane passes overhead, the ghosts move in and out of
> phase and you see them move and, worse yet, "flutter" as the
> reinforce/cancel/reinforce/cancel each other.
>
> Everything in "data" revolves around TIME. When two signals in data
> arrive at different times, computers go crazy. When the signals cancel
> each other in phase, data just stops! No amount of sales hype will
> change basic propagation physics. The "cure", if you want to call it
> that, is for data to go SLOWLY so the time changes are a small part of
> the time differences. (Cellphones use 8Kbps or 11Kbps slow data rates
> because to go faster is simply suicide....like cellular broadband.)
> Physics is also why wifi isn't going to work from one place over miles of
> territory. It ain't gonna happen. We use lots of little
> territories...cells if you will.
>
> In the city, the other problem is the awful LOAD of everyone talking at
> once. There is only so many channels, so much time, so much data any
> network can handle. Once overloaded, pandemonium sets in. We're not
> supposed to say "oversold" as it makes the company nervous. Your signal
> must compete with the other 48,802 people all talking when you are on
> this cell sector designed for half that much. Someone's gonna loose...
>
> I don't think, in a high density area like NYC, you're going to see any
> difference. Out in the country, where the towers are too far apart and
> the load is almost zero, it makes a helluva difference. That's where my
> 3W linear and high gain antenna operate, quite successfully by the
> way.... In even our small city, it's useless.
>
> Man, I'd like to take my wifi Netgear Skype phone to NYC. There must be
> thousands of wifi hotspots open all over the place.

On 2006-12-21, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> or are they hype, like those in-phone antenna boosters.

What helps is a good antenna mounted outside your house and as
high as possible. If you are in a deeply marginal area a directional
antenna pointed at the nearest tower will help even more. This
isn't hype.

The function of the repeater isn't really to improve your
reception, it is instead to let you make use of a good antenna
you've mounted outside your house without having to wire it directly
to the phone. You'd in fact be better off wiring the antenna
directly to your phone, but the repeater is more convenient.

The improvement in reception comes from the antenna. If you buy
a good one and get it mounted high up and in the clear, the
improvement can be substantial.

Dennis Ferguson

[email protected] wrote in news:1166761938.928788.75560@
80g2000cwy.googlegroups.com:

> thanks...i'm waiting for a good gsm cell/skype phone. although i'm not
> current, i don't think hotspots proliferate the city as much as you
> think, although believe it or not, there's tons of unprotected
> wifi.,,,about 16 as i look on my laptop right now. these wifi's give
> better connection than my own wireless router just 3 rooms away from
> where i sit......it's nutz
>
>
>

The Netgear SPH101 Skype Phone will connect to the strongest one that is
unprotected. It's like a rabid racoon connecting. Skype uses little
bandwidth and won't cause slowdowns, even when you are talking on it on a
broadband system. No porting is required. Skype (even on the little
wifi phone) opens an unused port just like a browser and opens the return
path for incoming return data.

I have a router with high gain antenna 50' up a tree in an inverted
bucket. It's purposely unprotected so anyone can use it in range.
Several Pringle's can antennas on the air force base are pointed at it.

If everyone would simply SHARE their bandwidth like I do, you use my
bandwidth in my neighborhood and I use your bandwidth in your
neighborhood, we'd all be very dangerous to these corporations,
indeed....(c;

Most bandwidth just goes wasted, anyways.

Larry
--
Why is it, in any city, all traffic lights act as if they have rotary
timers in them, like they did in 1955, and are all set to create
maximum inconvenience and block traffic movement, entirely?

[email protected] spake thusly and wrote:

>or are they hype, like those in-phone antenna boosters.

The ones that are made for trucks and go up on your roof on a
mast and connect to your phone by a wire certainly do. (at least
for us), but they aren't cheap and the cable is even less cheap.

We have one of the "in home" ones on the way to test so I will
let everyone know how it compares after I mess with it.
If it works I believe it will be one hot product for us.

Steve
--
www.sellcom.com for firewood splitters, ergonomic chairs,
office phone systems, "non-mov" surge protection, Exabyte,
CA, Minuteman, Brave Products, Fisch, TMC, Panasonic and more
http://www.phonelabs.biz cellphone docking now here!

[email protected] spake thusly and wrote:

>We have one of the "in home" ones on the way to test so I will
>let everyone know how it compares after I mess with it.
>If it works I believe it will be one hot product for us.

<sigh> well so much for that one. The unit we tested did nothing
that I could see.

However we did find that the Dock-N-Talk seems quite compatible
with the TMC EV4500 phone system so now we have a cell phone on
our line two.

Steve
--
www.sellcom.com for firewood splitters, ergonomic chairs,
office phone systems, "non-mov" surge protection, Exabyte,
CA, Minuteman, Brave Products, Fisch, TMC, Panasonic and more
http://www.phonelabs.biz cellphone docking now here!