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MrBill-2552's avatar
MrBill-2552
Freshman
2 years ago

Best setup for repeater operation

Greetings - I'm new here.  I just got service set up and am suffering some issues with my intended operation.  The satellite internet service is intended to replace a cellular mobile hotspot that I use at a remote location.  The setup has a handful of internet devices, three of which are in a metal building that is 115 feet from the HT2010 (formerly hotspot).  The devices include two Nest Protect units and a single 2.4 GHz wifi-controlled air conditioner that connects via the NetHome Plus Android app.  The metal building barrier and the distance are overcome by using a NetGear EX7000 set up as a repeater. The repeater uses an outside coaxial cable-connected directional antenna with 20 dB gain pointing at the modem and a coaxial cable-connected omnidirectional antenna inside the building (it uses this second cable-connected antenna because the repeater resides in an intermediate room in the metal building). The setup worked fine when connected to the cellular mobile hotspot.  After connecting to the HT2010, I was unable to get a reliable connection to the A/C and the Nest Protect units.  The 5 GHz band never connected to the repeater, so I used the 2.4 GHz band. The EX7000 reported signal strength of about 50% in that band.

 

If the problem is not related to the double NAT, would you expect a third party router (I'm looking at TP-Link AX3000) to handle my situation better?  If it is related to the double NAT, do you have any ideas how to determine this is the case?

  • Replying to my own question...

     

    I got the 2.4 GHz band signal strength up to 65% (from 50%) by removing some vegetation between the HT2010 and the directional antenna on the repeater (NetGear EX7000).  I also better aligned the directional antenna's orientation by clamping a mirror to it and using a laser.

     

    So the repeater is now working well, but I still have issues with slow, and variable, web response time for which I started another thread.