Update on ToGo
 

Here is an Update on ToGo performance
Location: TCPC Airstream Campground, Tennessee

Perfect place to test ToGo, WeBoost, MiFi, Yagi, MIMO, OTR Omni
Both AT&T and Verizon have relatively bad cell coverage signal strength.

ToGo was able to get 4 Meg down and 1 meg Up
on a reasonably consistent basis on the Tripod 12 feet in the air.

Dropped tripod down to 5 feet at night time and tripod was between tongue of trailer and truck.......ToGo lost LTE connection at this height.

ToGo reported LTE signal strength of 28 to 32% at the 12 feet. So probably fairly bad cell coverage.

Verizon MiFi reported RSRP -114 dBm outside, and when inside on WeBoost would allow extremely slow Web pages, Not usable.....too slow....too slow for even a speedtest to complete.

ToGo up 25 feet in the air on a flag pole made no difference in the download speed. and increased the upload by about 1/2 meg.

Rotating the ToGo 90 degrees up on the flagpole showed the dependence on direction......Upload dropped in half when turned 90 degrees. So for all the screwed down mounted ToGo's, direction might make a difference in tough coverage areas.

Putting ToGo inside right next to the indoor WeBoost antenna had good improvment to the uplink and bad for the downlink......The uplink doubled to 2 meg compared to the 12 foot pole. Downlink was cut in half down from 4 meg to 2 meg.

Pictures
 

Here are a few pictures

Interesting and encouraging results!

I had a really hard time getting my AT&T data account. The banks for four different credit cards determined it must be fraud. Not sure why, maybe because my physical and bill-to addresses are different. In the end I had to stay on the phone to my credit card company’s Tier 3 support while they turned off all fraud detection and watched the $360 charge come through and then turn fraud detection back on.

Also note that you’ll need the number off the SIM card in the Togo to register it so get that before you climb on the roof!

Finally you must connect to the Togo using their app while that Togo it connected to the internet through WiFi in order to register it. I set up a iPhone hotspot to do this.

By far the most time consuming registration process I’ve seen. Follow the instructions to the T. Once setup it seems great.

By the way, here’s a photo of that’s inside that dome.

Similar Credit Card Fraud Blockage
 

Thanks Daleyocum

I had similar Credit Card Fraud blockage......It took me a few minumtes to figure out to answer the Creditcard email everything was OK in time to get the AT&T to respond.

Thanks for the Picture of the Cover Off.

This makes me question my results of the "Rotate 90 degess" and the drop in the uplink. Maybe I should try a rotate 45 degrees in succession and re-measure. With the two antenna at 90 degrees, I am not sure why rotating 90 had much effect in my case. I can see where rotating 45 might make a bigger difference.

As far as getting the ICCID and the IMEI for registering with AT&T, the phone app showed those under "About" which kept me from have to go back to look at the SIM card.


The picture also makes it clear that this unit will not last long due to corrozion.
Does not appear to be hermetically sealed. I have concerns about 70 mile per hour rain making its way up into the enclosure from those bottom holes.
The thin clear plastic bottom cover does not seem to provie much in the way of sealing.

I am guessing at how long these units last.
Based on other historical electronics in this telcom sector: To expect much more than 5 years of useful life is probably a reasonable upper limit.
Due to the lack of sealing, and corrosion suspicions, I am hoping for more than one year, so somewhere between 1 and 5.
If it is 1 year, then the $399 plus the $360 starts to not look quite as attractive as the Newer generation ATT Wireless Internet Device $199+ $60/month for 50 meg, (Requiring 2 year contract.) $199 + $720 for first year. ($860 versus $920, and the 920 gets a much newer modem.)
We can also compare the NightHawk, $249 + $50 per month prepay at 10G, but 10G is not like "Un-limited"

One Vertical, One Horizontal
 

One interesting point:
From Dale's photo:
One LTE antenna is vertical and one is Horizontal.
So rotating 90 degrees or 45 degrees probably really makes no difference.


Interenting that cell tower would be Plus and Minus 45 degrees, and the ToGO is vertical and horizontal, for whatever that is worth relative to matching polarization, and if it actually makes any real world diference.

I had this same issue of it asking me for an admin password that’s not in the manual. Called tech support. The answer I got is they want you to use the QR code on the manual. Only one device can be the admin device at a time oddly. I started out with my tablet and then wanted to log in to the admin interface with my phone. Turns out I had to go to my tablet and tell it, through the Winegard app, to forget my Togo and then go to the phone and scan the QR code and register that device. You can’t be connected to the Togo when you do this. Crazy! I’d suggest taking a picture of your manual’s QR code and other relevant data should you ever loose the manual.

Turk123
So Dalyocum posted a photo of the inside of the ToGo. What brand and model modem would you add internally and where would you place the modem? If above the circuit board would that interfere with the antennas or would the circuit board interfere with the signal traveling down to inside the RV?

And what is there to gain other than speed from the 5Ghz wireless? Can the wireless aspect of the ToGo be turned off?

The idea of a Togo is it's a one piece solution. It includes the 4G radio, a router, and a 2.4Ghz WiFi radio all integrated. You wouldn't typically add anything more to it. It is bound to AT&T and the special, truly unlimited but subject to network management, plan that goes with it.

I'm using it instead of my WiFi Ranger router and hotspot.

The 2.4Ghz part may seem surprising but they selected that so that the signal would have no difficulty going through the skin of the trailer and would also go a goodly distance around the campsite. So far it seems to work fine. You wouldn't gain speed in most cases by going to 5Ghz as the limiting factor is the 4G speed.

It's not the most high tech of 4G receivers as it doesn't include the most recent bands. Not sure how much difference that will make in practice.

It does include an ethernet port under the dome (unsupported officially) which you might be able to connect to equipment inside your rig if that was important to you, a 5Ghz router for example. Again this isn't supported so I don't know if it actually works.

Dalyocum
Turk123 suggested in an earlier post (page 1) that a router could be added inside the Togo.

I've read elsewhere that the 5Ghz would provide a faster internet speed as the 2.4 limits it. It was specifically mentioned with the original system with peplink where adding a 5Ghz modem increased internet speed. So I thought a 5Ghz would help here too. Surely 5Ghz could penetrate and be available inside along with close by outside.

My second question was about turning Wifi off on the ToGo. This would prevent broadcasting it's existence and only allow setup (linking to campground, etc. wifi) through the wired secondary router. Not sure if that is necessary or important.

I am dubious that 5Ghz would increase speed in most situations unless there was extreme congestion on the 2.4Ghz band. The Togo uses 2.4Ghz 802.11n so that speed is rated at 74mbs with no congestion. I'm not sure if the Togo is MIMO on 802.11n where it is using multiple channels to go even faster. Most of the time I'm seeing 4G speeds in the 2Mbs-20Mbs range so the WiFi isn't the limiting factor.

5Ghz would be faster for device to device communication within the RV but that would only come into play if you had a server or were doing significant computer to computer data transfers.

Not sure if you can turn off the WiFi, I haven't tried. If nothing is connected to it, though, and if you were using 5Ghz anyway it wouldn't matter.

5 GHz had more to do with Peplink than 2.4 versus 5 GHZ
 

I thought the advantage of adding the second WiFi router to the Airstream Connect had more to do with limitations of the Peplink router than with 5 GHz versus 2.4 GHz.

I thought the early findings by Turk123 had to do with the CPU on the Peplink is limited, and it is polling both the WiFi-as-WAN and polling WiFi-as-LAN, and with the limited CPU of the Peplink, this was limiting the throughput.

Maybe Turk123 can correct me if I am wrong.

It did not have as much to do with 5 GHz WiFi allows faster speeds than 2.4 GHZ.
It had to do with the Peplink was limiting throughput by polling both WiFi-as-WAN and WiFi-as LAN.

And adding the second modem allows to use WiFi-as-WAN in campgrounds that have good WiFi, and use the second WiFi router for the internal re-broadcast. Thus eliminating the Peplink from trying to process two different WiFi at the same time.

And when using LTE as the source in Airstream connect, the Peplink was still polling the WiFi-as-WAN side of the Peplink router unless WiFi-as-WAN was disabled.
So adding the second router doubled the speed by removing the Peplink trying to process two different WiFi (WAN and LAN)


Is Peplink also a category 4 LTE modem? ToGo is apparently. So with Category 4, it does not allow carrier aggregation. So the speeds through a LTE network are going to be limited to single carrier. So the advantages of 5 GHz WiFi being faster than 2.4 GHz WiFi becomes less an issue.
When using WiFi-as-WAN in a campground, it will often need to be 2.4 GHz to get the distance to the campground access point. So adding 5GHz inside the trailer does not add much to the throughput if still limited by either 2.4 GHz WAN or LTE WAN.

The “doubling of Speeds” that Turk123 was referencing was based on avoiding the limitations of the Peplink trying to process both WAN and LAN, and not so much to do with 5GHz versus 2.4 GHz WiFi.

I look forward to being corrected.

Hi guys! I have relatively no experience with the ToGo as I own the Airstream connect system and have done extensive testing of it. The Peplink modem had a maximum "speed" of 24MB down with its 2.4 GHz radio. Seeing numbers like 20 Mb down with the ToGo leads me to believe that it is a similar radio.

We more than doubled the bandwidth by using a second 5 Ghz router connected to the Peplink. I've had 65 MB down and 34 up at some locations, so the second 5 Ghz router worked very well with this system.

I understand you can access the router software with the ToGo. That is something Airstream locked up in our system. If Togo has WiFi as WAN turned on to also access campground WiFi, I would definitely try turning it off. All modems (even the more expensive ones) suffer from this feature turned on when in a rich environment with many hotspots available for it to check as in a campground. It checks them all and in the case of the Peplink, it does it every 2 seconds bringing the modem to its knees. There is only one frequency in the ToGo (like the Peplink) so the signal is shared slowing the cellular connection.

I'm not an expert at putting radio antennas together and not sure there would be a problem adding the second router right to the ToGo "box". I do not believe it would interfere and it would be simple to test. I do know that there will be no problem getting a signal from the 5 GHz radio inside the trailer. My second router IN the trailer travels for 75 feet all around the outside of the trailer with very little signal loss. Besides, you want to use the signal outside the trailer also.

Of course, you could run a cable down into the trailer and mount the second router there. To me, it just doesn't make sense. To reset the routers, I would add a switch to the 12v power running to the ToGo so you can take all power away from both to reset or restart.

The circuit board has an ethernet port right on it that is undocumented in the manual. It does work fine. You could start by connecting an Ethernet cable to the port and to your computer. Once connected, see what speed you get. That is what you will achieve by adding the 5 GHz second wireless router. That is how the second router idea was born on the Airstream Connect system, a direct connect.

Of course this is ToGo Thread
 

Of course this is a ToGo thread and not a Peplink thread, but the above comments about 5 GHz versus 2.4 GHz probably apply to ToGo as well.



And if anyone is able to use the internal ethernet port inside the ToGo, please let us all know how you are using it.


And I am curious about if adding a second WiFi router to ToGo doubles the speed similar to the problems found with Airstream Connect.

So if anyone does get that ethernet port working, we are very interested.


I have been reluctant to open the case for fear of voiding warranty.

And having already to of shipped back the first ToGo, I am not looking to try to void warranty. (Of course that first return was more to do with the vendor on Amazon shipping a used unit as new that could not be registered, but it did have some small part rattling around inside that had the familiar sound of a surface mount component having come loose)

On the airstream connect the extra modem increased the speed up and down. Does that help with a weak cellular connection? Let say 1 bar signal gets 2mbps using the internal radio, would you get more mbps using the 5 Ghz? I assume the 2mbps would be a combination of low signal and the reduced flow thru with the wifi polling.

And for the new modem, any idea what brand and model would be 12v and fit inside the Togo?

When testing the Peplink modem we found that any bandwidth seems to double in speed using the second modem. I tested this with the WiFi as WAN turned off, so no polling. Testing this with a direct connection to the board and your computer will be the best test to get started.

When you look for a modem, just check the small transformer that comes with it. It should say 12v. Just cut off the transformer and wire direct (with 5a fuse!) I do know that the Apple wireless modem used 5v at one time or even now. If you have one of these, you can buy a stepdown device to drop 12v to 5v.

What is the $17 modem that you use?

And for those that have the Togo, is there a way to post screenshots of the software pages? Can the WiF as WAN be turned off?

I believe this is the one I used. Got it on sale at fry's for $17.

https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-AC120...nk%2Caps%2C176

That looks too large to install inside the Togo. Wondering if a travel router would work. However, no real antenna. Something like this:

TP Link AC750

Now I understand. It makes sense that turning off the campground WiFi polling would make things faster. I’ll be in my trailer with the Togo in two weeks so I’ll let you know if that function of the WiFi can be turned off. The app won’t let me do anything when I’m not connected through the ToGo so I can’t tell away from the trailer. Maybe someone will beat me to it.

By the way, there’s no warranty seal broken by taking off the dome of the ToGo. Unscrew four torx screws and you’re in. If you made modifications that can be undone I don’t think anyone would know if you needed to send it in under warranty.

The TPlink is only 7 x 4 inches. Pretty small.

The WiFi as Wan will kill your speed. On the Peplink it caused a 10X speed loss in a 60 camper campground. Cradle Point industrial modems use a different cycle to try to avoid the slowdown. They set the interval at 30 seconds instead of 2 seconds. You hardly notice the pause at that interval. It still takes a hit, but not as often.

We used "Speedtest" as our benchmark testing software. You can do the same so everyone has the same baseline when posting speeds here.

I still believe the ToGo is a good way to go. One of the videos I watched had a sysop at a campground testing the ToGo. He was picking up a campground WiFi at 400 feet while testing the Togo inside his trailer. It looks like the software will let you shut off the WiFi feature so it doesn't interfere with the cellular. Let me post the video here:

https://youtu.be/F1Uzlqg3qxI

This may give you more info on how the interface works.