M1 antenna setup

"I suggest to use two antennas, since MIMO works best with two equal antennas."

MIMO is for environments where signal is bouncing around.  Like downtown city with lots of buildings.

MIMO does not help for more rural areas with little or no signal bouncing around.

Nobody knows whether Nighthawk LTE hotspot external attennas support MIMO or CA.  I have yet to see any speedtest results or web console screenshots showing signal improvements when a second external attenna is added.  Like I said before, I think the number of nighthawk owners using two antennas is very, very low.  Since it depends on physical location, carrier, cell tower configuration, we're not going to be able to make any general recommendations anytime soon.

For Nighthawk owners wondering about one external antenna, yes, one external antenna can make a massive difference.  You can jump from no service to 50Mbit download.  As for adding a second antenna, that is uncertain.  It's been six months or so since the AT&T Nighthawk came out in the United States.  I have yet to see any data that says a second antenna makes any difference at all on AT&T.

Here's the thread I was talking about where someone removed the nighthawk from the case. I see it was just commented on and bumped it to the top of the forum.

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Mobile-Routers-Hotspots-Modems/LTE-4x4-MIMO-outdoor-antenna/td-p/1502588

"It's been seven months or so since the AT&T Nighthawk came out in the United States.  I have yet to see any data that says a second antenna makes any difference at all on AT&T."

Still looking for any AT&T speedtest results with one vs two external Nighthawk LTE hotspot antennas.

I finally got my own nighthawk last week. Currently have two antennas setup in an ">" formation. I plan to test different orientations and one vs two antennas in the coming week or two(i hope). For now it's acceptable until i can find time to play around with it.

jpr78 "I plan to test different orientations and one vs two antennas"

look in your nighthawk lte hotspot web gui to see which cell tower or towers you are connecting to (aka "Cell ID").  at my house, my nighthawk constantly ping pongs between two different cell towers in two different directions.  that said you might have to point your two antennas in two different directions for the best performance.

CellID's are different but very close in number. Each ID is 8 digits and the difference by substraction is only 7. Not doubting that claim but almost seems hard to believe. I will certainly try to point the antennas at different towers, although I'm only aware of one tower that's less than 10 miles from me.

jpr78 "but almost seems hard to believe"

you can lookup the cellid's on the internet....web sites will map the cellid's for you on google maps so you can see where the cell towers are physically located.  you can not control the movement between bands and between cell towers.  AT&T controls all aspects of that movement.  when you have a cell phone there is not anything you can do.  when you have a nighthawk lte hotspot with external antennas now you have to manually point to each tower.  in my case, i have one yagi.  my signal per nighthawk web gui goes from tower 1, band 12 "excellent" five bars to tower 2, band 4 "poor" one bar ping pong'ing in an endless loop.  as several have commented before the "bars" do not corellate to performance.  one bar signal can provide significantly faster downloads than five bars.  for example different frequencies, different bandwidth, etc.  speedtest is king!  as long as the performance is good, i do not care about "bars", band x vs band y, etc.

I've tried to find my towers but I cannot. The cellid lookup websites don't seem to have them. I just read some info that the RSRQ is a factor in the band it hooks to. It seems true for me, as the RSRQ of B4 is better than B12, even though B12 gives me more bars. The closer to 0 the RSRQ the better. My B4 is around -8 and B12 is -10. What are your RSRQ values? I'm curious if this is true for you also. For the last two nights, I've seen my router switch from B4 BACK TO B12 which is even more confusing. MOST of the time, it wants to be on B4. I actually caught a whiff of B30 last night when I rebooted the router. Again, I hope to play around with antenna setup soon.

"I've tried to find my towers but I cannot. The cellid lookup websites don't seem to have them."

new towers perhaps?  out-of-date data on cellid lookup sites?  all i can tell you for sure is the cellids you see in nighthawk hotspot gui are real.  cell towers are licensed, permitted, etc.

"I've seen my router switch from B4 BACK TO B12 which is even more confusing"

i ping pong between b4 on tower 1 and b12 on tower 2 all day every day.  at&t controls this movement.  for performance reasons, load balancing reasons, service/maintenance windows, etc.

regarding the signal measurements in the nighthawk gui.......on my nighthawk band 12 "excellent" five bar, and band 4 "poor" one bar, ping pongs back and forth all day.  my performance fluctuates between 20Mbit and 50Mbit downloads.  with radio it is not just "bars" that affect performance...it's weather outside, whether the trees have leaves (winter vs summer), congestion on the tower, etc.

i have a 700mhz only yagi.  my band 12 (700mhz) is "excellent" five bars.  my best guess is if i connect a second band 4 capable yagi and point it toward the second tower my band 4 signal will improve from "poor" one bar.  if i can get my nighthawk gui to say "excellent" signal for band 12 and band 4 that is probably the best i can do from an antenna/aiming perspective.

the question for me is will it make a noticeable performance difference to my family?  my two cell towers are not CA enabled yet.  20-50Mbit seems to be more than enough for us at the moment.  When LTE-A, CA, etc arrives in my area, i think my interest in a second external antenna will increase.

Let me ask you this, without the antenna, do you still pickup both bands, just weaker on both or do you pickup just one band?

I know for certain where one of the ATT towers is and I have both yagi's pointed towards it. It has been online for years. It was an Alltel tower then became ATT. However, to my knowledge, this is the only ATT tower within 10 miles of my house. The rest are over 12 miles. There is a US Cellular tower about 7 miles away but I don't know if ATT/USC ever share tower space and I have not tried pointing the antennas that way yet. I've taken the cellID's, all other info required and tried entering it on http://cellidfinder.com/ but it doesn't find anything :(

I think I'm wrong! Some info I just found leads me to believe it's not a USC tower but in fact ATT. I'm going to try pointing my antennas that way as soon as I can get time.

jpr78 "Let me ask you this, without the antenna, do you still pickup both bands, just weaker on both or do you pickup just one band?"

with no antenna attached to my nighthawk lte hotspot i only get band 12 that is very weak, unstable, and not usable as a normal internet connection.

i only have one 700MHz antenna.  when i connect this antenna to my nighthawk lte hotspot, band 12 jumps to excellent which exceeded my expectations.  however, the nighthawk ping pongs between band 12 and band 4 even though this antenna is band 12 only (700Mhz only).

The yagi is a big piece of metal.  My best guess is this big piece of metal is big enough to catch just a trace of "poor" signal quality band 4.  It does not matter which direction i point the yagi....north, south, east, west, or straight at the ground by my feet.....it still picks up band 4.

as discussed in this forum, don't worry too much about "poor" vs "excellent" or 1 bar vs 3 bars, versus 5 bars.  you can have a "poor" signal that easily outperforms an "excellent" signal.  it all depends on band, frequency range, etc.  the bottom line for me is speedtest.  as long as my speedtest is good, i'm happy.

regarding adding a second antenna, for me personally, it would have to:

1) stabilize my speeds, where i get 50Mbit all day, every day, consistently (versus what i have now which is 20-50Mbit which is good, but not a stable 50Mbit.)

2) CA speeds, LTE-A speeds, a sizeable increase in speedtest.....going from 50 to 90 for example.

unless that second antenna gives me great stability or a big increase in speedtest, it's hard to justify investing the time/money/effort to running a second antenna to the roof.

Also, try  each of the two ports on the back of the device. 

I read on a google search that the left port, looking from the back, is the primary.

I'm be curious to know what would happen if you got a wide band antenna. It may be possible that would get much better signal on the B4 then the switching between the two might not matter.

jpr78 "I'm be curious to know what would happen if you got a wide band antenna. It may be possible that would get much better signal on the B4 then the switching between the two might not matter"

1) towers are in two different directions.  i would likely need two yagis....omni directional antennas do not have enough gain in my rural location.

2) in my rural location, we are lucky to receive 700MHz.  in general, higher frequencies are going to be sketchy out here.  i might not be able to improve band 4 signal with an antenna.

3) the limitation with wide band antennas is gain.  low gain solutions might work in the city/burbs.....but rural is a whole different thing.

that all said, if AT&T is going to ping pong me between towers and bands, i have no option but to try wide band if i need faster speeds and see what happens.  right now family has no complaints about 20-50Mbit speeds with one external yagi antenna.

I can't imagine why a wide band wouldn't help. If you are already picking up the weak band without it, I feel sure it'll improve the signal. Again, as I've mentioned with my setup. The signal is there but unusable for me without an antenna. The antennas makes both B12 and B4 usable. I'd get the wideband and point your one antenna directly at the B4 tower first to see what happens.

nhantenna

I had a little bit of time to play around with my antennas and see if I could improve signal. Here's what I noticed(of course in my case). I tried the two antennas in a "V" shape for the first time. I didn't see any real difference between "V", ">", "<" though. Then I tried a single yagi, completely vertical just like you have. Holy band hopper! I saw B2, B4, B12 and B30. The nighthawk jumped around to all these bands. However, none of the signals were usable(good to know what bands are out there in my area though). It really makes me wonder what kind of signal I might get if I was on the roof and not in the attic. I would need longer LMR for that though and I can't help but wonder if the gains would be negated by the length of cable. I'm current using 25' cables. Finally, I left that one antenna vertical and mounted the second antenna horizontal. In this configuration, I'm surprisingly seeing slightly better signal than the "V",">","<" formations . My RSRP stays closer to -110 and the RSRQ stays closer to -8. My downloads and uploads have been better last night and this morning in this vertical/horizontal configuration as well. Most notably the uploads have gone from 2Mbps to 4Mbps on average. I need to see how things go for teh remainder of the week with the antennas in this orientation. When I can find more time to test more I certainly will but that's all I got for now!

How do you "see" the bands?

RBar See instructions in this thread. https://community.netgear.com/t5/Mobile-Routers-Hotspots-Modems/MR1100-Nighthawk-battery-and-signal-strength-question/m-p/1555991#M5786