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JasonHand
@myvzw.com
| reply to xrayman
Re: Clear WiMax Service Now Available in Atlanta
I live in Duluth and according to their address-level map I am just outside the range of two towers and I can barely get 1 bar from anywhere in the house and unfortunately cannot get any better than around 1mb/.06mb speed.
I am using the motorola cpei 25150 home modem and have tried it in every feasible place. I also get bad cell service inside the house so I believe that I am just down in a valley and will have to stick with the AT&T DSL 6mb which works great but I really wanted to look at a better alternative in the long run. | |
bigjohn
join:2005-05-26
Woodstock, GA
| Depending on what you do with your home network, you might be better off staying with DSL or Cable anyway.
These damned CLEAR boxes are not configured to work as modems. They have NAT and routing enabled, and so your ROUTER does not get an external IP address.
What that means is any rules, routing, forwarding, etc; that you might have set up on your router has to be duplicated - unless you put the router in the DMZ, and that won't work 100% of the time...
BLEH!
Just got off the phone with their tech support, and they have no intention of changing this.... SO - I guess I test it for a couple more days, but if it's not a perfect feature for feature function for function replacement for Comcast (and it's not so far), it goes back to Best Buy. | |
Happysin
| reply to xrayman
bigjohn, or you can do what I did and put your router into bridge mode. A lot of Linksys and other routers don't support bridge (or DHCP forward) mode, but you can flash most all routers with the DD-WRT replacement firmware (»www.dd-wrt.com/) to allow them access.
Then you just handle DHCP, Address Reservation, and Port Forwarding through the Motorola modem.
I have mine set up that way, and my wireless devices, my Windows Home Server and everything else are quite happy with each other now. That's more than I can say with AT&T, my old provider.
Also, I actually am able to use my Windows Home Server remote access as well, which is a first. And very nice. 
I'm still new to Clear, but the setup I just went through was pretty painless, and I'm not complaining. It's a bit slower than my DSL (maxing at 4 most time, versus 5-5.5 on DSL), but if it's more stable, I'll take it. | |
rwizard
Premium
join:2004-04-20
Roswell, GA
 ·Vonage
| reply to bigjohn
I have to agree. With the home "modem" NAT is locked on. I can only get one or two bars, with the occasional drop out. There doesn't seem to be an external antenna option, and I'm not setting up a 2.5ghz passive coupled bi-amplifier and a yagi just to use Clear. At least not while I have other options. So I canceled, and I am shipping my hardware back tomorrow.
I got a survey from Clear which included a "what would you like to tell our CEO" question. I "told him" that the NAT being locked on had contributed to my cancellation.
With the USB device, indoor sensitivity is poor, and driving around with my laptop doing coverage checks, I find the coverage to be spotty and fairly limited.
I will say that (so far) they have been pretty pleasant and professional about the cancellation. Although it took some convincing to get them to understand that there isn't much that sending a "tech" to my house could do. What could he suggest that I hadn't tried? Relocating my wiring closet to my roof? Cutting down all my trees? Leveling off the top of the hill that is in the way of the LOS to the tower? Of course, we will see if they actually get it canceled and refund my money. If they do that right they will have a fan, even if it didn't meet my needs.
I'm sure less technically demanding folks will like it fine for fixed use if they have good signal. Can't say much positive about using it mobile in my area (N. Fulton). If I wanted to use them for that I would be sure to get the new combo device which includes support for Sprint EVDO as a backup. | |
rwizard
Premium
join:2004-04-20
Roswell, GA
·Vonage
| reply to Happysin
Happysin,
Simply "bridging out" your existing router is not a good solution for more serious networks. I spent a long time searching for a really secure and reliable router, and paid good money for it. I didn't do that just to take it out of the equation. More than that, my router is a load balancer with automatic failover, so Clear would have been one of two connections to the Internet. "Shorting out" my router in that scenario just doesn't fly. In fact, if you are going to do what you suggest, why wouldn't you simply remove your existing hardware and let the Clear gateway handle it all - that's pretty much what you are doing anyway. | |
bigjohn
join:2005-05-26
Woodstock, GA
| You can pop your router into the wimax DMZ, turn off DHCP on the wimax, and run reasonably well - I'm using Tomato firmware on a WRT54GS.
But it blocks loop-back connections, probably hard coded in the NAT module.
On the subject, how do I get the USB device to work correctly on WIN7 Ultimate 64? | |
Reverse
join:2009-10-20
1 edit | reply to xrayman
If you don't like the Clear (Motorola) modem, you could instead go for the USB stick, and then buy the portable wifi router from Clear ($139), or a home wireless router from Cradlepoint (MBR1000 for instance - $299 I believe).
I have the portable router, and it works very well. Has all the usual settings (interface looks like my DLINK router).
The home router is like any wifi router, except that it has a usb port that accepts 3G and Clear's 4G usb sticks. There's also a port l that accepts PC card based 3G.
»www.cradlepoint.com/products/mbr···s-router | |
sami
@bellsouth.net
|  reply to xrayman
equipment need?Re: Clear WiMax Service Now Available in Atla
I have Bellsouth DSL'extreme'...decent download avg 5.8Mbps, .5 uploads...use a 2Wire Modem/router. Problem is reliability. Ethernet pretty reliable, wireless laptops however crash connections frequently---Especially the MacBook Pro (10.6.1). Have worked on advance settings, Bellsouth out twice etc...still poor. A technician recommended a switch to Clear. Question--a) is it reliable and b) what equipment would I need aside from the Modem and service plan (i.e. I am assuming I would need to purchase the router since the Modem with Clear is not a combo---what is the recommended router?) . If I only have the home plan, is the wireless adapter recommended to improve reception within the home? Advice from those who have been there/done that very much appreciated | |
knighthawktf
@clearwire-wmx.net
| Sami,
The short of it is this, if you have good services with BS overall and it sounds like you do overall and don't need 4g around town keep it. My BS service is for total crap so I switched. Sounds like your paying ~50-60$ a month... there will be little difference for you on price. If your a heavy FPS gamer, keep what you got, or suffer at a minimum a 20% expansion of latency (ping times), it's the nature of the wireless beast, in my case it was about 30% and I have an above average signal.
Some of the details:
However you have options, you could go just wireless, just home, or get the combo deal. Let's just assume you get the combo deal for roughly the same price. Now you can either 'rent' the equipment or buy it, that's your call, but keep in mind at the moment your only options are their own equipment and the feature set is not great, but if your not a power user it may not matter to you, though if your here that's probably not true.
Let's just assume you buy the equipment
a - USB stick for the mobile service
b - Home router motorola cpe150 with clearwire approved firmware.
a - you would use on your laptop around town, or in theory at home, however unless you are real lucky getting a great signal outside of near your windows will be tough. The usb stick acts like a nic\router, and actually is a bit more configurable then the home device - or so I read here.
b- you place this bad boy near a windows or where ever you get good signal strength 4 bars or more out of 5, service will work well down to 3, and technically function around 2 - though I actually got service (barely though) with 1. It is a combo device that functions as the 'modem' and nating router\basic firewall, it has some real limitations around that, but if your not doing anything special behind your existing router you should be ok.
Currently there is no way to hook up an external antenna to the devices. Some people in weak signal area mount the device outside in some casing, very situation specific. Also if there a boat load of high tree's surrounding your property and your not close to the tower - do not expect great signal strength.
If you interested, have your local clear rep come out to your house (you don't have to just suggested) and do a basic survey, they'll measure signal reception outside, inside, etc, tell you roughly where your towers are,etc. Beat trial and error, though I insisted on doing it the hard way. 
Support - they try, like with BS or just about anyone these days your milage may vary, I've had 4-5 relatively useless but pleasant calls, though oddly enough last night via there website chat feature I actually got great support, and real anwsers that actually turn out to be the truth. (tower was down, they knew about it, knew why, gave me an eta that was valid, note the chat session was at 2am eastern)
My overall experience:
- first 45 days, simply AWESOME
I got on the service about 2 weeks before they officially were live in ATL was bursting down to 10\11mbp.
- next 45 days, bearable
Clearly alot of people signed up in my area, doesn't surprise me given BS's chitty service in our area (30044). Certain time of the day I get full service 6mb down .5 up (your package may include 1 up), peek evening times 6-11pm lucky to get a consistent 1-2.5mb, some nights are worse then others.
- Last 24 hours: Improved (but like when nobody was on yet), clearly they did some work overnight as support had informed me, still issues during peak, but I was able to pull a consistent 2-3mb during peak times, I can live that so long as it does not degrade, looking at my router also looks like another distant tower went active last night - probably taking some load of my closest one. We'll see.
I would recommend the service to those that have limited other options, or really need the 4g wireless around town(s) access, and who is not an avid FPS gamer.
/end book.
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sami
@bellsouth.net | reply to xrayman
Re: Clear WiMax Service Now Available in Atlanta
Greatly appreciated the detailed experience and suggestions. Thank you! | |
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