Improve Hotspot Signal

Improve Hotspot Signal

Improve Hotspot Signal

Three factors determine the quality of your internet connection when using a mobile hotspot:

1. Carrier Signal: Placement of your mobile hotspot with respect to the carrier tower.
2. Wi-Fi Signal: Placement of your device with respect to the mobile hotspot.
3. Carrier Tower: The carrier’s network for the tower might be congested or misconfigured.

Carrier Signal

Find out your signal strength: In order to improve your signal strength, it is very useful to first be able to measure it! For devices with a built-in screen, you can find the current signal strength typically under an “About” section. If there is no panel, you can log in to the device’s admin web page, typically at http://192.168.0.1 or http://192.168.1.1 depending on your device. The default admin password is typically listed under the battery or in the control panel’s settings menu.

Move the hotspot: Sometimes the signal strength can drastically improve just by moving the hotspot device a few feet or even inches. If you are setting up home internet, try moving the hotspot to different locations in your house, let it settle for a few minutes, and then check the signal strength.

Boost your 4G/5G signal: Depending on your area, a mobile signal booster can be incredibly beneficial, often taking you from no internet to fairly good internet. On the down side, these can be expensive and/or difficult to install. For more information, see Mobile Cellular Boosters on RV Mobile Internet site.

Wi-Fi Signal

Move your hotspot or device: The Wi-Fi that comes with all mobile hotspots is very weak in comparison to a typically Wi-Fi access point. They are not designed to give coverage to an entire house. If you need internet access for just one device, you can move the device and the hotspot to be close together.

Boost your Wi-Fi signal: Another possibility is to improve your local Wi-Fi signal by connecting your hotspot to a separate access point. This can be done by connecting a USB cable from the access point to the hotspot (for some models of access point and hot spot, but not all).

Alternatively, you can purchase a “Wi-Fi Extender” or a “Wi-Fi Booster” or a “Wi-Fi Repeater”. These all do the same thing: you configure the upstream to be the mobile hotspot Wi-Fi and enjoy the stronger signal of the dedicated device. This will aways work, because it does not depend on the USB capabilities of your access point or hotspot. Many Wi-Fi access points have this feature built in.

Carrier Tower

There is nothing you can do if the tower you are connecting to is congested. This does not often happen much these days, as T-Mobile has built out a lot of excess capacity, but with the ongoing process of merging with Sprint we do see misconfigurations and towers that are incorrectly throttling certain protocols.

If you call T-Mobile technical support, it may at least alert them to a problem with a particular tower so they can fix it.

We suggest you try the networking analysis app Wehe to identify if the carrier is actually blocking or throttling certain applications incorrectly. See https://dd.meddle.mobi/ to download for Android or iOS.