I live approx 5 miles outside of Columbia MO. The VZ website show my address as qualifying for HF (not sure if I'm in extended though) so I order it in Oct 2012. Installer came out and spent 4 hours running wire and looking for the strongest signal. He found a spot on the NW corner and attached the Cantenna (aka HBA or Home Broadband Antenna) to the house with lag screws about 4 ft off the ground. On my Cantenna, there are two indicator lights on the bottom: One for "Power" and one for "SWiM". The power light will only turn red or green. The SWiM light is a signal strength indicator and can turn Red, Blue, and Green. Best case is both lights green at all times. On mine when it's working the power light is solid green and the swim light bounces between red, blue, and green. My download speeds can vary between 1MB and 15MB but generally speaking when a network connection does exist, the speed is acceptable. When it's not working both lights are red and my frustration level is not acceptable.
The internet worked ok for 2 days after that, then bang..nothing. The HBA showed red on both lights. I logged into the Wireless router admin console(aka HBR) via http://192.168.1.254 and the signal strength indicator bars on the left side of the page were all empty and the Connection Status was "Unreachable". I selected "Advanced" and then HBA Advanced Settings and the page displayed "The HBA is currently unavailable."
I went to HF support site and learned that unplugging the power inserter (the small black box that has 2 coax connections on one end and plugs into a 110v socket) and waiting 30 seconds to plug it back in will "reboot" the HBA. After a few attempts of this the HBA appeared to reconnect to the 4G network, obtain an internet routable IP address (which could be observed from the HBR admin console "System Monitoring" page), and function as expected.
Practically every day throughout the following week this was my experience. I call this the "routine".
1. Get home from work and try and get on net with my laptop. No luck.
2. Walk to HBA and find 2 red lights.
3. Go to basement and unplug power inserter. Wait 30 seconds. Plug back in.
4. Go back outside and watch lights on HBA.
5. After 2 mins if lights still red, repeat steps 3 and 4.
Sometimes after spending an hour or so unsuccessfully I would have to give up and try it in the morning before I left for work just to see if it was any different at that time. Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.
After a week or so of this I called Verizon support and explained the situation. The scheduled a new installer visit. A different installer arrived the following week and he and I spent several hours one evening walking the HBA to different locations on the back of my house looking for a better mounting location simply by watching the SWiM light for blue/green vs. red/blue or solid red colors.
We believed we found a location on the roof just a few feet up from the gutter that was "better" than the previous spot. A few more lag screws and some silicone around the bracket and I was good to go.
The following morning I checked the HBA and found 2 red lights. Sigh. The admin console showed the HBA was unreachable and I was again dead in the water. After work, I again started the routine and after several attempts, I could get it working. This same daily experience played out for the majority of October. Rare was a day I could come home from work to find a glorious green power light waiting for me which meant I wouldn't have to burn an hour to just get things functional.
After power cycling the HBA probably more than 100 times in Oct/Nov 2012, I've learned a couple things about how it boots up
This is what happens after I plug it in and it connects:
1. HBA gets power and after 2 secs power light turns red.
2. 1 sec after that the swim light turns red
3. Approx 30 secs the swim light will blink off and back on once.
4. Approx 5 after that, the power light will turn from red to green
5. Immediately after that the swim light will start bouncing from red, to blue, to green.
This is what happens after I plug it in and it DOES NOT connect:
1. HBA gets power and after 2 secs power light turns red.
2. 1 sec after that the swim light turns red
3. Both lights continue to show solid red until power-cycled.
What this appears to mean is that while in the boot cycle, if the connection is not made to the 4G network (i.e. a connection as indicated by step 3 and 4 above) there will be no further attempts to connect until the device is manually power-cycled. I see this as a major design flaw in the software. The HBA, should boot cycle itself every 10 minutes or so when no connection exists so that it could self-heal in the event of a 4G network outage or signal degradation.
That being said what appears to the be the issue for me is that when the HBA is booting it cannot connect to the 4G network either because: A. there is not sufficient enough signal strength to allow the negotiation or B. there is no signal being transmitted due to an area outage.
One other thing I've learned is that I can improve signal strength by rotating the HBA. I generally know where the towers are and I've found that if the HBA is in a good spot I can point the side with the lights AWAY from the towers and get green/blue swim light where if the lights are pointing towards the tower I will get solid red swim light(indicating a low signal not necessarily a lost signal). I have also found that a difference of a few feet laterally can dramatically affect signal. Although vertically it doesn't seem to matter so much. I live on a pretty steep hill so my experience could differ from any flatlanders out there.
So it's November now and a new billing cycle and after 4 days of uninterrupted internet (the new record), on Thursday I came home to find those red lights staring back at me like the devil reincarnate. I thought perhaps the VZ gods had ironed things out but alas it is not the case. No matter how many times I've power-cycled since (I estimate 30 from Friday to Sunday) I cannot connect. I called VZ on Friday and they walked me through a power cycle and after no success entered a "trouble ticket". I've heard nothing since. I'm getting ready to call them again after one more "routine" of course. Wish me luck.
It's a real shame this service is as flaky as it is because like everyone says, when it works it works great.
