I have decided to keep Clear; the final decision to cancel my DSL is now in question (do I really need two 6Mbps+ lines to my house?).
I am disappointed that Clear does not offer a reasonably priced Static IP option ($10/month is not acceptable). However, it does appear that my external IP as remained unchanged since I started using the service about a week ago. The DHCP lease time is 24 hours- so perhaps as long as I do not go offline for more than a day I will continue to renew with the same IP (which makes sense if it is typical DHCP). The Dynamic DNS options offered are very inadequate (DynDNS, Dyns.cx and ZoneEdit) as well.
That said, I ran into my second issues with Clear: They do not have a SMTP server. The two email addresses provided with each account by Clear are actually Google Mail accounts- so if I need to send a message out from an application on my server (Such as GeoVision alerts), I need to authenticate and send it out to the Google SMTP server: the problem I have is that Google only accepts SSL SMTP (on TCP port 465) messages and my application cannot use this. As a work-around, I am using a legacy Yahoo account (which had POP/SMTP before Yahoo started charging) to route my out-bound email alerts.
Configuring the modem to co-exist with my current router (D-Link DGL-4500) was fairly easy: log in to the router (default at http:\\192.168.15.1, password is ‘motorola’), disable the firewall:
and setup a DMZ IP address for for the one your router picks up from the modem:
The above two steps will take any traffic from the external IP address and forward it to the WAN interface of your internal router.
This configuration allows me to control external port access/forwarding for my GeoVision camera system, access my internal webcams, monitor/control my home alarm system and RDP to my desktop from remote locations (most of them from my G1 Android phone).
An alternative would be to configure the port forwarding in the router to the system you need in-bound access to from the internet:
I need a wireless router for my wireless devices- and I want to keep them on the same subnet with my PCs and servers- so I chose to use the router behind the WiMax modem (double-NAT is not THAT bad).
I am still trying to find the 5 bar Nirvana to see what speeds I can obtain. I have found that an unsteady 5 bar (i.e. toggling between 4 bars and 5 bars of connectivity) is much worse than a solid four bar. The router appears to need to re-negotiate each time the signal strength changes- causing large dips and spikes in download bandwidth.
Unlike the XOHM Zyzel WiMax Modem, the Clear Motorola WiMax modem does not have any connectors (SMA, TNC or N). I purchased the WiMax modem, so I decided to take it apart to see if there are any antenna interfaces. The modem has no external screws; the bottom held on exclusively by plastic snaps:
Careful use with a plastic putty knife was all that was needed to open the bottom an reveal the router board:
A careful inspection found what appears to be two SSMT Mini Coax connectors in the top of the board:
I am not sure if this was designed for an additional antenna, but I am toying with the idea of finding two SSMT Mini Coax to SMA (or N) male connectors and making some holes in the modem casing to mount these through. Once I have accessible antenna connectors, I could then order an external antenna to see if I get a better signal. :)
Brooskie's Log Book 
Broo,The problem is everywhere! I'm currently in Chicago and I haven't hit 4 at all. After twisting some arms, I finally got the "real answer." And I quote, "we are converting to microwave." "There is no definate timeline, but it should take about 1-2 weeks." "After the conversion is complete, customers will have higher consistent speeds." The people I talked to are claiming 6-10mbps consistent with spikes up to 15mbps. My question to them was, "if we are switching to microwave now, what the hell were we using before?" I will keep everyone informed, as I receive updates. Please try to be patient guys and gals, it's being fixed right now.
ok, so should i order for a cpei 725, before tearing my 150 apart? cause imma gonna !
The Towers Need to be Public or Customer InformationI'm tired of this. I'm tied into a one year contract but I'm sitting between two towers so i get the lower part of two bars on my modem regardless of what window they're in.We even had techs come out only to tell us that there would be another one turned on a lot closer to us soon. They said it's already their so it just needs to be turned on. Whatever that means.I asked them when will that be and they could only tell me soon. I asked if I could see a map of the towers in my area so I can actively monitor it and when it comes on I will make the appropriate adjustments. I was told no, that's for techs only and I would have to call periodically and check the status.Now I call once a week to see if the tower the techs that came out and told me would come on soon was on yet and if so where so I can face my modem at it. Each phone call I have to reexplain that I'm only getting 0.8 meg download and not even close to a meg upload. Of course they want to go through all kinds of talking before I get the same information. "Yea, I think your current location is the best location."I hate having to call anytime I want to see which tower is the closest. Also, when a tower is down or something I have to call again. Why isn't this information available to us on the web so we can do the work ourselves with out any hassle?If there is and I just can't find it and the people on the phone refuse to give it to me I'm sorry and please feel free to disregard this message provided you give me the link.Here's three speed tests from three servers:http://www.speedtest.net/result/686888746.pnghttp://www.speedtest.net/result/686890590.pngAlso, I want something i can hook a damn yagi to. This thing is pressed up against a window and has nice pretty lights for any would be thief to salivate over. With an external antenna I would be able to aim it, have better signal and have a few more security options (removing the lights from the window)./End Rant
@AMP, you should be able to find the location of the antennas here:http://antennasearch.com/
This web site did not show my 2 closest Clearwire antennas/towers. I have verified that they are Clearwire antennas by walking up to the equipment boxes and finding the ones marked "Clearwire."
AMP,What city are you in? I can try to get you the map. I have Vegas and Chicago.
Everyone,updates are currently in progress. Unfortunately, we will all be stuck with terrible speeds until the conversion is complete. I wish I had better news, but…..I don't. :( I promise the speeds will be fixed and I will keep everyone updated.
I'm in chicago. you can email me at rob [-at-] ampprod [-dot-] comanyway to get a better modem or something i can attach a yagi to in chicago?
AMP,I emailed you the map. Sorry, I've never used a Yagi antenna. I'd be happy to help and try to figure out a way to make it work. :)
Everyone-I'm happy to say that do to my team's quality of service and respect for customers, we will officially be a midwest master agent for Clear starting Feb 1st! I hope this opportunity will allow me to feed more info and deeper access to answer questions about our service. I've tried my best to keep everyone updated with Clear, and I hope you agree. If there is anything else we can do to help, feel free to contact me. If you feel like I've been a positive resource, I would really appreciate any referrals to help expand our operation. Thanks again for having me, and I will continue to help as much as possible. P.S. I am recruiting sub dealers asap in the Chicago market!
Does anyone have any information as to where these "NEW" modems are going to be available? I talked to a Clear rep and was told that they had no knowledge to anything new. I just bought my equipment in December and would really like to make sure I have the best there is.Currently, I am working on building a reflector for my USB modem, something that I can setup when I have a marginal signal. Still working on the specs, but it will be similar to the Military Grade Collapsible Parabolic. I plan on using the USB modem as the feedpoint so that I have the option of using with or without the parabolic.Has anyone figured out a way to "turn on" the external antenna ports on the board? If I can do that it would be really awesome. I had to mount my modem in an external Square D type housing (plastic, fiberglass). The apartment manager hates it, but I told her it was my Satellite Dish. HihiKD7CAO
KD7CAO-Depending on which market you are located in, new equipment may already be available. I'm in Chicago and will be receiving new gear tomorrow or Thursday (hopefully.) I will post specs and pics as soon as I get them. Most of the mature markets already have their new gear. Specs are available at 4G info. Hope this helps, let me know if I can be of further assistance.
Atlanta and Portland-Are you guys getting your speed back yet? The conversion should already be in effect in your markets.
@KD7CAO:The new modems are currently available in Portland and Vegas. The Motorola unit in Portland and the unit in Vegas.I have no info on when they might be made available elsewhere, but since a clear modem should work in any clear territory, if you could convince Clear that you're now in Portland (or Vegas, or maybe you already are), you could get a new modem sent to an address there and proceed to use it anywhere. FYI the rep I spoke to when I purchased my new Motorola CPEi 725 had no idea they existed either. He had to put me on hold and do some research to figure out what to do.
Tad-Have you experienced a major improvement with the new modem?
Depends what you mean by 'major'. I've only been running the new modem for almost a week, but here's what I've noted so far:Better throughput – up to about 4.8MB, but usually more like 2-3ish. During peak times as low as .6-.8, but I attribute that to congestion.More and more consistent lights and CINR: on the old modem the lights and CINR tended to fluctuate quite a bit(usually 2 lights but sometimes 1, sometimes 3), but the new one seems pretty solid on 3 lights and about 13 CINR. Overall, better.
Password is simple, don't know why it had to be changed.My modem is mounted up on a 100' tower, so remote admin is especially important.OLD Password may work in some instances: motorolaNEW Password if you have auto update enabled and your coverage area has been updated is: CLEAR123
Tad-Thanks for the feedback!
CR – no problem.KD7CAO – 100 foot tower at an apartment?? wow. You must be working well outside of the normal performance parameters? :)Re: the password – when I got my new modem, the printed documentation said the password would be CLEAR123. Of course it wasn't, it was motorola.I updated the PW to something else, but then a day or two later the update came down that changed it to CLEAR123! So I changed it again… and a couple days later, once again it was CLEAR123.We'll see if my PW sticks this time, or if it will continue to revert back to CLEAR123.
Well I have my modem mounted at my apartment, I am also administering another modem for a friend. His is mounted on a 100' tower since he is outside the Clear coverage area.
I am getting a consistently solid 5 bars yet i am only seeing speeds up to 3 and occasionally 4Mb down. This is great compared to many out there but I am able to see the tower several hundred feet from me on top of a 20 story building. Could I be too close??The towers apparently push signal in to 3 triangular equispaced regions. That is to say of the 360 degrees of coverage, only half of this is focused on. so every 60 degrees is a "Hotter" area. You can be close to the towers but not in that "zone". I have reviewed the tower maps carefully with a Clear rep in person and I am in this "Hot" zone. Yet…..I am very close (direct line of maybe 1000 ft. yet I am not seeing bursts of 10+Mb which I would expect. Any ideas why this is so? is it current tower improvements which have the network running slower than expected. I am in Dallas,TX and haven't heard any news of tower upgrades here?Sal-
@SalThere is a potential that you are actually over driving the front end of your modems receiver. This can be caused by pumping far to much power into the device.I would recommend that you experiment with placement of your modem. Directly at the site is not always the best solution, as a Ham Radio Operator, I know that sometimes the best signal may be the reflection off another object such as a wall, barn, water tower, stadium, the moon, etc… All of course depending on frequencies and antennas being used.The antenna in the modem is just a pc board type antenna, it is generic and made cheaply for mass production. Whereas the antenna at the site will be a commercial grade panel type antenna with between 12 and 27 db of gain (most likely). If db of gain is confusing, take the power of the transmitter we'll say the site has a power of 1 watt just for simplistic math and let's say the site has a 12 db gain antenna. Now then, remove the loss from feedline and connectors (most likely the highest quality is used and the shortest lengths). Every 3 db is double the power, so (((1 x 2) x 2) x 2) = 8 Watts of ERP Effective Radiated Power. I've probably digressed but, essentially your modem at only 1000' from the tower is probably over driven, try moving it to areas that are less than ideal and see if you have an increase in speed.PS. Where were you able to get a hold of the maps??? I've been asking for a while and they won't share.
Sal – Our ham friend may have a point, but I'd suspect that you're just seeing the effects of shared bandwidth. In other words, you're sharing the available 'speed' with all of the other Clear users talking to that particular tower. Have you tried your speedtest during an off-peak time, such as middle of the night or middle of the work day? I'm at home today (9:15 AM here). I just ran a test and hit my all-time record speed of 5.5 MB. Yesterday at around 7PM I wasn't even breaking 1MB – more like .4-.6, I assume due to congestion.It seems to me that the Clear network is more susceptible to congestion than wired networks, because each tower covers a relatively larger (and more difficult to regulate) area than DSL or cable.If you look at your modem's homepage (192.168.15.1 in your browser, default password is probably CLEAR123 or motorola) you can see something like this: WiMAX RSSI: -77 dBmWiMAX CINR: 14 dBThose numbers together give you a better picture than the 5 lights as to how your reception is looking. I believe smaller is better for RSSI and bigger is better for CINR. The above is what mine looks like with 3 bars, and as we just demonstrated I can pull 5.5MB over that link if the back-end network can handle it.
Hmmm and rereading your post, I noticed what you said about being very close to a 'tower' that is also atop a tall building. This is a good recipe for multipath conditions, where the signal is bouncing around alot before it gets to you, which can result in reception problems. So as KD7CAO recommended, changing the placement and orientation of the modem could help – although I've read that the Wimax protocol is highly resistant to multipath issues.
Sal-I agree with Tad and KD7CAO. However, I also think that most of the speed issues have to do with tower conversions. As I said earlier, we should see improvement in the next couple weeks. @KD7CAO-Which market are you in? I can try to get you the map. You might be able to answer this question. If Clear is converting to microwave now, what were they using before?
@Clear RepI am in the DFW market, more specifically Denton County.Some of Clear Wireless was on 800 MHz and 900 MHz in the early days. The company is trying to standardize and also make room for the rebanding projects happening due to the big boys of Sprint (owns Clear). Clear operates in the frequencies of 2500 MHz to about 2570 MHz (2.5 GHz to 2.57 GHz). At least that is what I can find in the FCC Database.The other issue is that it is a marketing scheme, the confusion of people thinking that 2.5 will interfere with 2.4 is not something they want, so by calling it microwave they can move away from the public confusion.Microwave actually covers between 300 MHz and 300 GHz. So UHF, WiFI, etc are all in the Microwave bands. Microwave has always been synonymous in households as being faster, less energy needed, etc…
Now I'm confused… I know that 2.4GHz is 'microwave' (after all, our microwave ovens use that freq), but I thought we were talking about microwave being used in the backhaul from the towers? Interestingly, when I look at antennasearch.com (which I think queries the FCC DB), it shows the Clear sites as licensed for 10 GHz! I assumed this was the freq of the microwave backhauls.
KD7CAO-Thanks for the info! I made some phone calls and tried twisting some arms, but have been unsuccessful with getting you the Texas map. I will continue to work on it and will post as soon as I have it for you. Sorry….
I am interested in Dallas area coverage maps as well. Sick of 2-3 bars as my best signal strength.
when are the new chicago modems in? i'm dieing over here. i might have to switch back to the dreaded comcast. :(
Does anyone know how to change the ip address on Clear? It says I have a dynamic ip and using dsl & cable or even 3g I could easily change it. I need to get a new ip at will anyone have any luck?
why do you need a new IP if you don't mind me asking? did your IP get banned for somewhere for doing something shady? just wondering.
No! It has nothing to do with anything shady. I just like to have a "fresh ip" for when I am online. Similar to using dial-up & 3g mobile internet. Everytime you connect & disconnect I would get a fresh ip… It's just what I like. So if anyone knows how please let me know thanks.
DHCP reservations are managed by clear. It looks like they are giving a 24 hour DHCP lease when you connect. You would need to leave your modem off for more than 24 hours. If someone else gets the IP you were given initially, you will get a new one (the device will try to request the old IP address it had).The only other option would be to contact Clear and request they make changes to allow you a different IP address.
I just got some info for you modders.I will try it first and tell you how it went. I am going to buy a 2.5 gighz directional antenna and aim it at my towers clearwire antenna. i will have to connect the antenna to the modem ,I will be soldering a rg174 cable directly to the board where the antenna begins. (the short one is the antenna ,the long one is a reflector) I will terminate the rg174 into a chasis mount sma female jack. I will let you know how it went.
oh this is going to be cool… looking forward to reading your results.
So I was just surfing around on Clear.com and noticed a new product I've never seen before.Details are sketchy and just to view the product you have to login to your account, so the link I had isn't going to work. But, I found another page with just as much vagueness… http://www.4ginfo.com/index.php/clear-performance-dock-for-mobile-usb-wimax-modem-pxu1900.htmlSo, the question I have is this adapter just basically a panel antenna for the USB modem? Must be either passive (reflector) or Inductive Coupled. I would really like some detailed specifications, because this could be the product that solves my issues and prevents me from needing to build a portable parabolic antenna that my USB modem clips into. :)
KD7CAO,I just passed the Clear kiosk in Lenox Mall and saw that device. I wasn't sure what it was and I didn't have a chance to ask.Looks like it works with the 'new' USB modems (PXU1900) that are now on Clear's site ($60 without a contract). I may stop by the Kiosk and see if they have one of the newer USB modems- and check the price of the matching dock.I wonder if this configuration would still work with the ClearSpot? :)
I just got the parts in ,the 2.5 gig directional antenna was 100.00 bucks ! I dont know what frequency your local towers use ,but I would find out before ordering an antenna. If it works i will go back through the steps and take photo's.
I bought the connector off of ebay ,from rfconnections i think out of china. it took a few weeks.
I guess this would be to Clear rep: I get 2 bars and asked if I would be allowed to get the new equiptment and was told no. Only can go for new customers.I'm starting to feel like the Vegas customers aren't being handled well and sorta remind me of another company in town…"metropcs"; which prey on the poor and lack services and support for their clients.Thank you all for the info and advice. Hope you all will fare better than I have.
@Freedrinx – what's this about "allowed"? Do you own or lease your modem? If own, you'd probably have to pony up full price for a new one, and if lease I hear there's some fee involved, but I don't see why you wouldn't be allowed to change out equipment. Worst case, your modem could get "broken". ;)However the info I've read online indicates that the new Motorola model is only (for now) available in Portland. The same article said that there's a different new modem made by Gemtek available only in Vegas. See: http://text.broadbandreports.com/forum/r23639472-Equipment-Clear-Offers-NEW-Modems-high-gain-omnidirectionalNo offense to any Clear reps reading the blog, but you probably shouldn't take the first rep's word as gospel. When I called in to get my new Motorola unit, the guy didn't know it existed until I told him.
@TAD – thanx man..I lease it and said I would probably need a replacement since it may have over heated after I hang up….LOL. I'm still going to try…
Hey everyone!Sorry I just got back from visiting a future market….freedrinx-Who did you set up service with? It will be very difficult to swap your modem if you ordered online or through Clear's 800#. If you purchased at a store, go back to the store and threaten to cancel your service if they refuse to swap out the modem. It is very important that you speak with the rep that sold you your service, because they will not want the charge back to their commission. I know that Vegas has the new modems, and all it takes, is a quick call to customer service to do the swap. Especially since you're on the lease option. (No cost difference)Let me know if that doesn't work and I'll give you directions to the corp office. XD
Tad-Unfortunately, I agree with you completely. A lot of Clear reps are either non educated or scum bag sales people. I wish Clear's brand police would shut down these distributors! On a daily basis, I'm fixing a customer's issue, that I didn't even get credit for! Anyway, calling CS is pretty much useless, unless you tell them what to do. Asking them questions is pointless……
i got the new modem after 50+ phone calls. it makes no different. this thing sucks.i can't even stream youtube half the time.i'm trying to download a 2 gig virtual machine for a project i'm working on and it says it'll be complete in 46 hours. 46 HOURS!!! wtf!it was nice to dream but i feel i just fell victim to fancy advertising commercials.
nelsmobile… Any luck? I have a friend in vegas that is having issues and I am trying to help…
Surprised there is so little modifocation when there are such widespread problems…
Ok ,sorry for the delay. I finished the project ,and it did not speed up ,but it did increase the range. sorry i got your hopes up.
Broo, I cannot seem to get access to my geovision camera's from the outside. I have added the ip of the pc in the dmz and am trying to access the camera using the ip provided by ipchicken. Any help would be appreciated