[US] Recomendation 5G/LTE gateway w/ external antenna connector?

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Jona

New Member
Dec 2, 2021
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Massachusetts
n.ethz.ch
I'd like to connect a house to the internet via 5G/LTE with an external directional antenna.
Can you guys recommend a gateway capable of at least LTE Cat5 (w/ link aggregation)?

The gateway can be placed indoors with 3 to 4 m (9 to 12 ft) cable runs to the antennas on the roof.
 
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zer0sum

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Mar 8, 2013
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5G is still very much an emerging tech and I haven't found the routers to be mature yet.

A rock solid 4G router is the Netgear LBR20 as it will do LTE Cat 18 up to 1.2Gbps.

You might have better luck building your own with whatever LTE modem you think will fit your area best.
Something like this = WG1608D-M 5G Ready Cellular Gigabit Router with Dual Band (2.4GHz-5.8GHz) WiFi

The best spot for in depth information on all things 4G/5G/LTE is LTEhacks forums.
They have undergone a recent name change though - WIRELESS JOINT - Index page
 

Stephan

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Apr 21, 2017
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You didn't mention budget so this being STH I am going with the Porsche variant here.

Recommend a high-gain directional antenna by Poynting like XPOL-2-5G-US - Poynting Tech - Antenna Solutions, South Africa, USA & Europe. Make sure the model fits your local ISP's LTE/5G frequencies correctly. Link here shows a US model, other countries use slightly different frequencies. They have a nice selector. You get what you pay for, a Chinesium antenna can be off-band by 100 MHz and you will never know. Youtube has some videos about Poynting to give you an idea. If you know you live next to the base station you can try indoor omnidirectional 2dBi stick antennae and possibly cheap out.

4m of cabling necessitates more expensive, low-loss, thick, shielded, 50 ohms cabling. Check LMR/CFD 300 or even 400 specs and do not settle for anything much worse. At 600-900 MHz cheaper cabling like LMR/CFD 100 might work ok, but anything above 2 GHz will cost you the entire Poynting's gain lost in the cable (>>0.5dB/m loss at 5 GHz, losses depend on frequency). Make sure you get the right connectors, because RP-SMA is not SMA and not type-N or whatever. LTE stuff is usually SMA while Wifi is usually RP-SMA but double check what you need.

Router Netgear Nighthawk MR1100 is reasonably cheap. LTE only but reasonably priced and speedy LTE Cats. Doubtful 5G will gain you much more speed in 2022. Or the one zer0sum recommended.

A metal rod sticking out of the roof holding an antenna might attract lightning. So give lightning protection a second thought. If the cable is exposed to sunlight, it has to be UV resistant. Service life will then be 20 years easy. You may well find though that you can mount the antenna under the roof i.e. indoors and it will work just fine because of the huge gain being directional.

No affiliation with any of the products mentioned.
 
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Jona

New Member
Dec 2, 2021
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Massachusetts
n.ethz.ch
Thanks for your suggestions. One of the advanced LTE (cat > 6 ) is all I really want.
That's what I went here for.

I am not close to the tower but actually have a reasonable spot outside and under the roof pointing to the tower.
Mounting a gateway closer to the antennas is an option.
Now back to WWAN gateways:
The Netgear LBR20 looks like what I am aiming at. It supports all my bands, external antennas and even two GbE ports.
This connectivity/price is what puts ahead the competition for my use case.

Can anyone confirm the two GbE ports can be run as a link aggregation group? (I would be pleasantly surprised if they could.)