Wilson sleek

jcpainter wrote:
For those of you using the Sleek . . . we've been told for years to use the -db numbers as a measure of signal strength. With the new bands that the carriers are using, the -db does not tell the whole story. In fact, often it is deceiving.

The only way to know for sure if any booster is helping (or hurting) is to run speedtest.net (or a similar program) multiple consecutive times both with and without the booster.

It can be an eyeopener. And, the results will most likely differ as you change locations, sometimes drastically.

Unfortunately the db number is the only accurate way to determine signal quality. If your phone/device will tell you Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) that is a much better number to use. The Speedtest trick does work but I would not trust it as entirely accurate as it also does not tell the whole picture. First their numbers are notoriously inaccurate and carriers and internet providers purposely prioritize traffic to Speedtest to make your speed look better than it actually is. Also there really are 2 reasons why you cell/data service is poor. First is signal quality between you and the tower. This can only be measured in db or SNR. However the bigger problem is that due to growth in LTE cell service the towers are congested. Most cellular backbone networks are fiber optic and many are still connected to the carriers network at 1GB. With 2G this was not a problem, you could have many hundreds of people at 2G (dialup) speeds on one tower without congesting the tower. Now that LTE speeds are reaching over 100mbps 10 cell phones under heavy use could congest this link. Unfortunately the investment in the transmitters is outpacing the investment in the backbone (because the user cannot see it and do not understand it and nothing you do will fix that issue).

Speedtest can tell you a story... sort of... but make sure you do Speedtests in the evening when everyone is surfing and watching Netflix and again in the dead of night when everyone is sleeping and make sure you do it multiple times. The middle of the night will tell you how much your Amp is actually helping and if you need a more powerful amp or antenna. The evening numbers will tell you how many other people are using the tower and what kind of real world speeds to expect at that location.
But db is still probably a better way to determine if the Amp is doing its job. Also remember db is not linear it is logarithmic so an increase in 1db is not a 1% increase, it can actually be a big improvement.