Middle of Nowhere Update

I went back to Albin over the weekend. Prior to that, I sent my son up there with a Cradlepoint router and a Verizon Wireless USB EVDO cell phone modem. This particular Cradlepoint has an external antenna. Once again it worked fine. And by worked fine, I mean if you were in the garage with it, you got a great WiFi signal from the Cradlepoint (and its MIMO rigging.) However, the garage is detached and 40+ yards away from the house. Within the house, the signal only penetrated 1/2 a room--so you had to be almost staring out the garage-facing window to use the WiFi-Cell router.

I had brought a Netgear wireless router and about 50' of Cat5E. However, the reason the Netgear was scrapped became obvious. Although the WiFi on it was working fine, the WAN port apparently was not. So, I got a nice signal from the Netgear but a signal to nowhere.

And on that note, I'm full circle--back to the middle of nowhere. I don't plan to return to the hinterlands for a while, so I've terminated the Verizon Wireless account. (As always, Verizon Customer service was quick, knowledgeable, and efficient--no joke.) There was at least one other bit of good news. There were many other folks at the family reunion, many sporting AT&T phones, mostly iPhones, and they were able to get a cell signal much of the time at the north end of the house.

The Middle of Nowhere

I took the MiFi to PhilBurn Pharms, northwest of Albin, WY. Yes, this is one of those middle of nowhere places.

I set up the MiFi in the detached garage and got a very nice EV-DO signal--1Mb down, 400 Kb up. More than sufficient for this type of remote access. However, I noticed the signal / connection varied a lot depending on unknown factors (though potentially my location with respect to the MiFi.)

After the successful garage test, I tried to connect to the MiFi's wifi router from the house. There are 50 yards are so from the house to the garage. No joy. My laptop couldn't make a solid connection to the Verizon SSD over that distance. I then repositioned the MiFi within the garage trying to get a connection to the house. No location provided a connection.

The next step was to try the MiFi itself in the house. The MiFi never saw an EVDO signal. I could generally get a low grade 1xRTT signal (19-90k at times), but that is no better than dial up (which is already available in the house.)

The garage is situated south of the house on slightly higher ground. Anecdotally, some folks were able to get cell phone coverage on the south end of the house or on the porch steps at the south end of the house. So I next positioned the MiFi on the Southeast corner of the roof of the house. Bingo. This provided an EV-DO connection (albeit somewhat slower than the garage's connection.) It also was a bit flakier than the garage connection. I might get an EV-DO signal long enough to run a dslreports.com test but then have it decay to 1xRTT immediately thereafter. (The signal type is reported by the MiFi web gui.)

I then proceeded to try the other three corners of the house and the ridgeline on the north and south sides of the house--no joy. Only the southeast corner of the roof would pickup a signal. Also, it seemed vary dependent on how the MiFi was oriented. No signal at all at times and a flakey signal at best. At this point, I tried to regain a strong signal in the garage. No luck. It appears to be very, very transient and spotty. Here is the Verizon wireless coverage map. Select Broadband and V-CAST and see what coverage is near Albin, WY. Lot's of pockets where there is no connection and nothing much north of Albin more than a mile or so.

It's also difficult to assess where there cell towers might be located as there is no clearly defined direction from the map.