Verizon JetPack with Great Signal but Painfully Slow Internet

EaglesNest · January 8, 2016

Hi Everyone,

We've been full-time on the road since Labor Day and have been using a Verizon JetPack, sometimes coupled with a Wilson antenna booster. We often have a great signal on the JetPack, 70%+ but still get painfully slow, and often no internet connection at times. The only thing that seems to work when we're having the problems is rebooting the JetPack and then we'll get great internet for maybe 15-30 minutes and then the same thing happens again and no internet. We started with one JetPack model and then switched to a different model, but we're still experiencing the exact same problem. We'll often have periods with no problem at all, and then, at the same campsite, we'll have a very difficult period, constantly rebooting.

Anybody else have these types of problems and any ideas on how to solve it?

Thanks - Tim

chuckbear · January 8, 2016

Tim, We had the same issues with our JetPack. That's why we got rid of it and the extra charge and just use our smartphone as a hotspot. But we have also noticed lately that our internet connection from Verizon gets as slow as dial-up quite often. They have no explanation for this. Chuck

richfaa · January 8, 2016

We are using the Verizon jet pack as we type we have been using it for a few years. We are in the Orlando, Fl area. We have a good 4G signal. Speed testing on several different sites and cities we are averaging & 20 mbps Down and 12 MBPS up. Not blazing but not slow. We use it all over the country with good results.

I just looked it up it is a 890L and we have been using it since 2012.We are high end users with the Verizon 40 Gig plan .The 890L has never given us any trouble no matter where we have been .It is very reliable.

LFDR3116 · January 8, 2016

We have had out jetpack for 6 months and have not had that problem. We have not been anywhere extremely remote though. Could it be the towers in your area do not have much capacity and is at times overwhelmed with too many people using phones/internet/downloading movies etc. Have you paid attention to the time of day? This, we were told can be a problem if you are in a low populated area where there are not as many towers.

EaglesNest · January 8, 2016

We've seen the same problem in highly populated and rural remote areas, and when we've had a poor signal we've successfully boosted it with the antenna, but we still have the problem on and off again. The interesting thing is that we can switch over to our phone's hotspot at these times and it works great, but we lease our Jetpack for unlimited data, so we don't want to also be paying high bills for data from our phones. It does seem to happen more often at night, but not exclusively.

jerryneal · January 9, 2016

I've been using a Jetpack 6640L in Summerdale all week. Using a Wilson booster and one of those suction cup window antennas. Service and throughput has been reasonable. Only problem I have is it resets sometimes after being on for 3 or 4 hours.

D&J · January 9, 2016

We started having the same problem with our Jetpack after 3.5 years of 24/7 365, replaced it with a Verizon tablet and now use that as a hotspot.

Denny

Jack Mayer · January 9, 2016

The way to tell if it is a specific issue with the Jetpack or if it is a general tower issue is to compare your phone hotspot with the Jetpack speeds. Your phone may be a little faster, in general, but they should be in the same ballpark.

dsimpson · January 9, 2016

I had a similar problem when I first bought my JetPack in Virginia Beach, VA last June.

http://www.rvnetwork.com/index.php?showtopic=118882

We were sitting in the Ocean Pines campground at the Oceana Naval Air Station. I was very disappointed with the slow speeds. But the one time I took it to another location in Virginia Beach, I got 20 Mbps. And, as soon as we left the area and stopped in Richmond, I got 44 Mbps. We then traveled across the country and are now in our winter quarters in Phoenix, AZ and speeds have been pretty good. In fact, the speeds had been so good, that I am now complaining about using too much data.

http://www.rvnetwork.com/index.php?showtopic=120871

AquaDawg · January 10, 2016

Here is what may possibly be the answer. The cell carriers are basically using three methods to backhaul 4g traffic from the cell tower to their Mobile Switching Offices (MSO).

- Copper circuits, Either DS1's or DS3's. This is the slowest method, and is bandwidth limited. It also has latency problems and other errors.

- Microwave backhaul to a central cell tower or POP. This method is extremely bandwidth limited. I've seen as many as 16 cell towers using microwave to backhaul to one cell tower that was using copper DS1's to get to the MSO. All those towers were sharing the same DS1 backhaul route. You compound that with many users at the same time and you can see what happens. The carriers are using this method because it's cheaper than having the phone company plow miles of copper or fiber to the cell tower.

- Fiber to the cell (FTTC). This is the most efficient method for speed and bandwidth, but is extremely expensive for the carriers. The FTTC backhauls their traffic all the way to their MSO. There is a caveat though. The carriers decide how much bandwidth they need, and they order that from their FTTC backhaul provider. Some towers may have 50M. others 100M, and others may have 1G capacity. In turn, the carrier may still be using microwave backhaul from multiple cell towers to get to the one tower that has fiber backhaul. So that 1G fiber capacity cell tower is usually sharing it with multiple towers.

In other words, even though the cell tower has been upgraded to 4g service, they may still have bandwidth limitations due to their backhaul process. And keep in mind that your cell tower may be one state, but the MSO processing your traffic may be in another. For example, Eastern Oregon has no MSO's. All cell traffic routes to MSO's in either Washington State, Idaho, or Western Oregon.

I hope that all makes sense...

budeneighe · January 10, 2016

Unfortunately, it does. Here, on the Olympic peninsula of Washington, I am told that it is all fed through one source from the mainland. I have done parallel testing across Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile and found them equally impaired based on the level of tourists in the geographical area. Likewise, when the service on one gets really bad, it is also bad on the other.

I just switched my DW to Fi project service. It uses SPrint, T-Mobile and available Wifi to automatically maintain the best connection. It does not drop calls or data when it switches carriers. So far, the performance has been fine but we are in a strong Sprint / Verizon area right now. We will see when we get back over to Chimacum.