Balance 20x Initial setup question

Product Discussion Peplink Balance
1

Just purchased a Balance 20x. Went to Verizon, registered the device and got a 15GB/month sim. Starlink is my primary ISP, I’d like to use the Sim as failover for the 2-30 minute outages I get in any given week. That said, I’m also going to have to put a Waveform 2x MIMO antenna up at my house as I’m 5-6 miles from the Verizon tower. With all that said, my questions are:

  1. Because I’m both setting the device up and aiming an antenna, should I just take the Balance 20x in my vehicle with an inverter close enough to the tower to allow the stock mounted devices antenna to get a good signal to set it up, then move it back to the house to try to capture what I can with the Waveform 2x MIMO?

  2. Is there a reason not to do this? If not, what’s the best solution?

Thanks in advance for your input.

Rob, MI

2

Do you not have any Verizon coverage at all at your house? Nothing on your phone at all?

If nothing at all then yes drive closer to the tower get the B20X connected and showing signal then when you go home you know that everything will work once you have your antenna pointed in the right direction.

But if it was me, I just try it at home first and see what happens - I would expect it to work , then only go through the hassle of an invertor and trip in the car if you really need to confirm its working.

1 Like
3

Thank you for the reply.
While I do have a faint signal outside my home (weak 3G speed) I was wondering if there were any risk to setting up the unit offsite and bringing it back to focus my efforts on pointing the antenna instead of juggling both. Would that complicate things? Just looking from an ease of set-up point of view.

Basically, I’m in the “Black Hole” for Verizon LTE coverage all around me. Don’t know why, but about 1/2 mile radius or so to get a solid bar, maybe 2 and SINR that’s tolerable. What I’m doing is an experiment. I’m out of area for them to consider offering Home Internet. So, we’ll see what happens, fingers crossed… :wink:

4

To close out this discussion, I began with a 2X MIMO Panorama Antenna, that did not work out for me, so I ended up with a Log Periodic Antenna that was successful. I am able to receive an average of 17-20Mb Download and 1.5-2.5Mb Upload. This should work well for a backup source to Starlink…

Thanks for the advice.