Why aren't my speeds faster? (and how to fix it)

The short answer

Cellular speed comes down to signal and how busy the tower is — both of which change with where you're parked. Run a speed test from your dashboard, then work this short checklist. Most slow days are a signal or carrier issue, not your equipment.

Run a real speed test first

Open http://192.168.8.1 and tap Speed test. Testing from the dashboard measures the connection itself, not your phone's Wi-Fi distance from the router — so you get a true number to work with.

The checklist

1. Get the antenna up and outside. Signal is the single biggest thing you control. The antenna is built to live outside — the higher and clearer its view, the better your speed. A few feet up or a move away from metal and trees can double your numbers.
2. Check your cable connections. Make sure the cable between the antenna and the router is snug at both ends. A loose or partial connection quietly kills throughput.
3. Try the other carrier. On the Multi-Network plan, switch providers — a congested T-Mobile tower can be night and day versus Verizon in the same spot (and vice-versa).
4. Use only the Insty cables. Our USB/data cables are custom-built for this system. A generic USB cable or adapter can bottleneck or destabilize the connection — swap ours back in.
5. Are you throttled? If you brought your own SIM and it was fast and suddenly isn't, the carrier may be throttling that line after a data threshold. That's a plan limit, not the hardware.
6. Third-party providers behave differently. Visible and some resellers are deprioritized on the network by design, so speeds swing with tower load. Worth knowing before you blame the gear.

When it's worth going deeper

If you've got good signal on a quiet tower and still crawl, there's more you can do — locking to a better band with the Band Scan & Lock tool, or checking the modem's signal readings. Those are the next step, not the first (and we've got a dedicated article on band locking coming).

Still stuck?

Run that dashboard speed test, note the signal % and network name, and send it our way — those two numbers tell us most of what we need to help.