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Viability of Mobile Broadband For Home Use?
mighty7sd writes "I am about to be released from my contract with Time Warner for my home internet service, and I am evaluating alternatives to my current cable modem setup. I would love to use AT&T U-Verse or Verizon Fios, but they are not available in my area. I have a good idea of the costs and limitations of Cable and DSL service, so I am considering using mobile broadband for my home internet connection. Most providers seems to cap the connection at 5 GB of data transfer per month. I am a relatively heavy internet user using streaming video and a web server, so I need decent down/upload speeds and a large data transfer cap. Has anyone in the /. community had a good experience using mobile broadband cards at their home, specifically with lots of streaming video or a home server? What has happened if you have gone over your data transfer limit? Cricket Wireless is available in my area for $40 per month with 'unlimited' service, but I am skeptical that it is truly reliable and unlimited. I also found products that act as a WiFi router for mobile broadband services, but it seems that this is against most carriers TOS. Can they really detect these, and are they comparable to a wired broadband router?"
First thing to check is to make sure you get a decent mobile signal at and inside your home. If the tower is too far away you'll get horrible throughput rates.
Why yes, I've used it, Telecom was very quick to charge me over two hundred dollars for a few google searches.
(Yes, I do live in New Zealand)
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
Tell them about what is going on in N.Carolina and tell them that it will produce friendlier and more regular income to the city than traffic signal cameras. You may get fiber at your door with high speed up and down instead of slow up and fast down.
If you already have a data plan for your mobile phone then give this application a try: http://www.wmwifirouter.com/ It will turn your cell phone into a Access point. I use this application all the time when i'm on the road or when my connection goes down at home.
I did it for a number of months using Sprint and a USB Sierra Wireless Compass dongle (not sure of the model number, but it did work in Linux).
It worked for me, but there is a 5Gb/mo cap and would probably not fit your usage. Reliable, reasonably fast for what it is, worked flawlessly in XP and Ubuntu, and really gave me nothing to complain about.
A friend of mine has a Verizon card. Latency's pretty bad (comparable to dialup), and the software is sorta crappy -- it doesn't lose signal, so much as the USB device suddenly unprobes and reconnects, always defaulting to the wrong network setup.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Has anyone in the /. community had a good experience using mobile broadband cards at their home, specifically with lots of streaming video or a home server?
I'm almost certain that running a server would be against the ToS, and yes it is fairly easy to detect. Hmmm...incoming Port 80/443 traffic...
I know a couple people who've switched to mobile broadband for their main link, but they are not heavy users. Checking e-mail, searching Google, general web browsing, yes. Frequent streaming media? Not unless it is postage stamp sized.
And Cricket's data plan isn't 3G so it would be a dog.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Well if it's for home use.. why don't you just pay for a 10MB line and get a wireless router.
The 5 GB cap will kill you cable seems to be the best that you can get for now.
...that it isn't viable but you're posting in the hope someone will aid you in continued wishful thinking.
It sounds to me like your best solution would be 2 broadband accounts. 1 wired and 1 wireless.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Terrible idea. Just steal your neighbor's wifi.
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
Viability of Mobile Broadband For Home Use?
>> Viability Mobile Broadband Home Use
>> Mobile Broadband Home Use
>> Mobile Home
I have mobile broadband for work / support issues, and it does not do well with video streaming. ( watch 3 minutes, wait 3 minutes, repeat )
Audio streaming is just able to keep up most of the time.
I can certainly confirm the latency issues are noticeable, but for ssh / remote support it is use-able. buy a host site plan from a friendly web provider, and just remote admin the info.
While it has its virtues (notably the "mobile" part), mobile "broadband" is otherwise a hell of a mess. Higher latency than wired, generally higher cost than wired, almost definitely lower caps than wired, and, under any but the best conditions, slower than wired(of similar price, I'm not talking netzero dialup).
If you are on the road most of the time, or need an ISP now, not in three weeks when the cable guy gets off his ass and install, then fine. But why would a self described heavy user even consider going with it for home use?
I use Sprint's service which was advertised at the time of my contract as "truly unlimited". I have not had any unusual problems.
The issues to consider - I have a fairly small pipe size - Hulu is pretty rough due to not being able to buffer enough - and latency - I can't really do FPS over this connection because I can't get under the 100ms ping barrier. However the GF plays WOW on it just fine.
I pay about $60 per month which is a bit steep for what I'm getting, but it sure beats dialup. We had a wireless (housetop antenna) service, but they can't keep their networks up (constant double digit % packet loss). Ma Bell won't install DSL where I'm at and cable is also unavailable. I looked into satellite, but that can have equipment costs that are high, depending on who you go with.
I did splurge and get they Lynksis router with the PCMCIA slot in it ($300 when I bought it).
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
Here is the information for ATT aircards:
Aircards: Sierra Wireless 885, 881, 881u, Option GT Ultra, Ultra Express, Quicksilver
5 GB/month
60 Dollars / Month
700kbps-1.7 mbps down, ~200 ping to google (on 3g)
75kbps-125kbps down, ~300 ping to google (on 2g)
When you go over 5 gigs, data useage is charged at half a cent per KB, but service will be turned off as soon as it is detected by the switch (which can take anywhere from an hour to a week, or forever)
Coverage map:
http://www.wireless.att.com/coverageviewer/
Phone support: 1-800-331-0500 (24 hours).
Using verizon in a metro area. I get 2.5mbps down and 512kbps up. Lowest ping time is around 80ms but usually around 100ms. If you idle a few seconds the modem will stop talking to the tower. The next packet out will wake up the modem and the initial ping will be around a second. and then back down to 100ms
I have a USB type modem hooked into debian. Have to plug the dongle into a windows box every so often to track my usage with the software they provide.
Go over and they charge me 25 cents a MB!
Sprint wants a 2 yr contract. No way around it but they only charge 10 cents a MB overage.
Verizon and ATT will allow you to buy the modem and then go month to month no contract. Its $60/m for all of them whether you go contract or not its just equipment price.
Verizon has a 10gb/m plan for $200 they don't advertise. Occasionally I have problems with getting a signal or it slows down.
The USB dongles usually get detected as multiple USB->serial adapters. However, the USB->serial driver under linux doesn't have sufficient buffer to get it over 200kbps. There is the airprime driver and 3g drivers depending on distro.
The PCMCIA and cardbus adapters usually get detected as a usb hub with multiple usb->serial adapters and the same thing happens as above.
From there its a matter of configuring PPP properly.
I'm using a verizon 760 usb modem under debian etch with the airprime driver. Had to hack the vendor id of the card into the airprime driver to recognize it. Plug in the usb dongle in, it gets detected as a usb cdrom. modprobe the airprime driver. eject /dev/sr0 and then it detects the usb->serial and attaches them via the airprime driver to /dev/ttyUSB0 thru /dev/ttyUSB14 (theres a bunch of them for measuring signal strength and txt messages but I never use them).
I have a good idea of what the costs and limitations of Cable and DSL service,
So you are...considering getting something even more expensive, even slower, and with even tighter caps than the worse cable caps?
???
Penny - plain text accounting
In Norway, there is an interesting discussion whether one can define Mobile broadband as "Broadband". The Post and Telecommunications Authority has defined what may be called "mobile broadband":
"You should have seen a download speed of at least 640 kbps for the operator to be able to call the service "mobile broadband". The upload rate should be at least 128 kbps."
(Source)
According to my tests, 640 kbps is hardly archived anywhere in Norway, and I guess it's pretty similar in the US.
I do it with a neighbor. I have 'commercial' ISP subscription, so servers are okay.
They hardly use any bandwidth and pay less than they would if they got service on their own.
We both get a good deal out of it.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
And I forgot the link:
http://www.no-ip.com/services/managed_dns/free_dynamic_dns.html
*coughs*
Don't know nothing about doing this either...
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I am a full-time work-from-home WAN geek. I have Sprint data service, with an old PCMCIA card in a D-Link DIR-450 router; it's my backup Internet connection. From time to time, I've used it in short intervals (1 week) as my primary connection. I used to have problems with the connection resetting every 6 to 18 hours or so, although the connection state has seemed much more stable in the last few months. It still won't hold an outbound VPN connection for a full day at a time; my sessions last anywhere from 4 to 20 hours before needing to be restarted (and the same connection over DSL lasts for weeks). Throughput is more than servicable, and the rate is more constant than I'd expected. Jitter can be higher than you'd want for VoIP, especially if there's any other traffic on the line. The jitter could be mitigated if I used a decent router, but I still think I'd see a performance gap between wireless and wireline delay consistency. For mid-speed service and 99% uptime, it's a perfectly viable alternative. It's especially useful in some rural areas where the cellular data network reaches farther out in the country than DSL or cable. If you need great service 99.9%+ of the time with low latency and minimal jitter, stick with wireline.
Be wary of some of the wireless providers, because they seem to impose even more restrictions on Internet usage than wired providers.
I had some good success with Verizon Wireless. Really, it depends on where you are , to how good the service will be. I've had better than 1Mb/s down while driving. Then again, I've had what felt like double digit bytes per seconds in not so great areas.
After one move I had a problem. The DSL provider said they could service the house. We gave them two weeks notice to get the new line ready. They were "provisioning" it for 3 weeks, until they finally said they couldn't do it. {sigh}
So we put in an order with the cable company. It took 2 weeks for the "install package" to come in, and 3 more days after I plugged it in for it to actually work. During that period, I had a PC with my Verizon Wireless air card up, and it acted as my NAT for the other computers. It wasn't a great area for cell service, because of the mountains. Even the wireless service was hit and miss. I swear, when it got windy, the service would go down. More likely, trees were blowing between my card and the tower, but I still blame the wind. :)
I highly recommend getting a card that has a jack for an external antenna. It makes a HUGE difference in service quality. Check out evdoinfo.com for good information on the card offerings from Verizon and Sprint.
The Verizon card gave me one thing that you can't get from a residential or business provider. I had my laptop running on a cross country drive, feeding telemetry (GPS data and video) to my web site, so friends and family could see what I saw and where I was. I got a call in the middle of the desert, asking if I was ok. I showed to be about 20 feet off the road, not moving, and facing desolate nothing. In reality, I was tired, pulled off into a rest area, parked the car facing away from the only building there, and was taking a nap. The rest area was new, so it didn't show on Google Maps yet, which is what I was using to show my location. I hadn't looked when I stopped, I just saw a place to sleep so I took it.
I opened one eye enough to look at the screen, saw where I was on the map (100 miles from nowhere, parked 20 feet off the road), confirmed that's where I was, told them it's a rest area now, and went back to sleep. :) After a couple hours, I woke back up, checked my email, did a little online recon to see what was ahead (not a damned thing), and then started driving again.
Sure there were some dead spots. My phone would drop, and the Internet connection would usually follow behind by about a minute. The card's antenna was suction cupped to the windshield, so it had a better signal than the phone. That was very intermittent though. Most of the time I had at least some sort of service. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I really didn't have anything too pleasant to report on my experience with mobile broadband. After a month I repackaged everything they sent me and mailed it back. I wouldn't recommend mobile broadband to anyone that wasnt, ... mobile, and in need of a connection just about anywhere at any time.
First, I had very little success sharing a connection (and it was a violation of the TOS).
Second, I encountered what I believe to have been a queue system on the cell towers hosting the service. (I was using QWest.)
During the peak cell phone usage hours (around rush hours) I would consistently get disconnected. I could reconnect and stay connected with a completely clear signal, but get dumped again after a short time. This could happen as much as 4-6 times per hour, starting around 4pm and continuing to about 7pm. It happened in the mornings some, and on holidays like Christmas when everyone was calling home. The more saturated the tower became, the more I got dumped, and it wasnt signal lost or signal degredation. It was signal terminated.
When you're tunneling in through VPN's or using persistant services these types of disconnects can make what you're attempting to accomplish online nearly impossible. By the time you reconnect and get tunneled back into your services and get back to work you get dumped again.
To be fair, I was near a major interstate highway, and during the rush hours there were tens of thousands of cars. But really if it is billed as a stable and reliable service very little should cause your connection to terminate except unpredictable and rare environmental variables.
I would instead recommend you investigate both radio and microwave broadband if cable or dsl are not available. I've had much greater success with both (currently radio) than with mobile.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Cricket Broadband FAQ:
You cannot use the service:
* As a router or web server
* To initiate VOIP conversations
* As a web hosting or email service
Having used this kind setup at two different locations, it is good for browsing and email, but streaming video is marginal at best, impossible at worst. If you are into S&M, you could run a server on it, but you would have to have some kind of dynamic DNS so the world could find you, and it would violate the contracts I have seen. Speed seems to be determined by signal strength, plus other network factors, like oversubscribing, but I can not say for sure. That is just a guess from watching the data rate over several weeks.
Both locations used a wireless router for multiple machines to connect to the service. This was Alltel, and their sales rep told me multiple machines on the link was allowed. They also sell an access point the USB cellular data do-dad plugs into, so she must have been right. One location used Alltel's stuff, the other used a MikroTik with a Sierra data card.
I don't remember about caps, but there were the normal usage charges. I am not paying for it, so I didn't pay much attention to the details.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
I have Alltel data service as I live in a rural area where the only alternatives are 24-36Kbps dialup or 400-700k satellite. I pay about $60 per month and Alltel is "unlimited," however with the Verizon takeover I'm not sure how this will affect things. I typically get speeds between 400-800Kbps, but have gotten up to 1Mbps on occasion. If you want more information about the various services look at www.evdoforums.com. Note that like any wireless technology, the total bandwidth at the tower is shared by all clients and as more people use the service, the speeds go down.
Personally, I can't wait to move and get cable or DSL.
No really. I'm on a boat. I live aboard at the marina. Can't even get a POTS line, let alone DSL or FIOS or cable. But I have a very strong 3G signal at the docks, and even out in the Catalina channel.
I've lived aboard my boat for the past 8 months with Verizon Wireless as my only internet access. I play Xbox360 games, EVE Online, and download songs and the occasional video from iTMS. It's got better performance than the WiFi ISP that covers the marina. They charge $40/month and rate limit to 1Mb/sec download. I usually get at least that, and often up to 2200kb/sec. Latency is OK, 100-200ms. Fast games do not seem to lag.
I use the CradlePoint CTR-350 router on the boat, and carry a PHS-300 battery-powered hotspot with me on the commute to work which I use to listen to Pandora or surf the web on my iPod touch.
I have a grandfathered unlimited data plan for $59.95 that I've been using for three years before moving onto my boat.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Fido is a cell phone service provider, here in Canada, and they called me asking whether I wanted their 3G USB dongle for my computer. It went along these lines:
Fido: Sir we would like offer you a USB stick to allow 3G connectivity from your computer
Me: Sounds interesting. How much is it?
Fido: 30$ a month for 1GB
Me: Do you think I'm crazy?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The ones I've looked at in Britain give you a 192.168.x.x IP address, so no-ip isn't going to work whatever you do.
Why not steal your neighbour's wife?
Can you get U-Verse as just internet -- no TV?
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
You said you would love to have FIOS, DOCSIS 3 should be rolling out for most systems this year, that will have the same speeds as FIOS.
Mobile Broadband should be used for mobile devices, I hate the idea of people using mobile service as a home service it just makes the mobile experience suck for the rest of us.
We are full time rv'ers that travel and work, we have 2 with Verizon, and they work great. But you do any audio, any video, and much photo, you will easily jump over the limit. And like cell phones, you do that, and your dropping a lot of money very quickly. I just did for work. I was earning money, so it's our cost of doing biz when I need it. But we travel and use wifi rv parks and business networks and coffee shops when we can, and our cards when we can't. We use macs, they work great, and except in the absolute middle of nowhere they seem to do ok, for basic stuff, like reading slashdot, coding, emailing, uploading work, vpn etc. But vid/aud super slow. And quickly expensive.
my folks in Upstate NY have an ATT aircard because they cant get cable or dsl, and the dail-up connection was so slow that banking sites were timing out there browsing. According to ATT their house is supposed to be in a HIGH coverage area, for phone, data and 3G, but after using for a couple hours, I soon realized it was not. There are spots in the house, where the aircard would say it has a signal but not be able to transmit or receive anything. It would say that its connected at 3G speeds, but I dont think that the through put was anything close to what you might get on a 128Kbps DSL connection. I think an aircard is great if you need to use your computer on the go, or if there are no other sources of internet available. But due to the cap in capacity, and there lack of speed, I WOULDNT recommend them for permanent home use.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=prolly
"Prolly" == "Probably"
Squirrel!
Mobile Broadband is not perfect and wireless can always be finicky. 1. The problem with Mobile Broadband is the connection between you and the tower/backhaul. This is ALWAYS variable in a wireless environment due to shared spectrum, carriers per sector, # of users on the tower, backhaul bandwidth (mostly NxT1s to the switch site) etc. 2. In relation to #1, Mobile Broadband is a MORE SHARED MEDIUM than wired broadband. Yes all consumer broadband is shared and aggregated at some point but mobile broadband has less available at the air interface. (This would be the currently deployed EV-DO Rev. A 3.1Mbps/1.8Mbps, or ATT's HSPA 3.6 (soon becoming 7.2 with this summers iPhone release being rumored)). Those are THEORETICAL SPEEDS for only 1 person sharing the same sector/backhaul/RF enviroment. In reality with all the traffic you're going to get less than 1/2 that. This will not change until the capacity of the air interface dramatically increases with 4G technologies being deployed (LTE, WiMax). 3. The other limitations already noted, ping times (200-400ms), and bandwidth limitations (5GB mostly). 4. There is a REASON carriers theoretically want to keep mobile broadband from being a replacement for wired cable/dsl/fios broadband due to the fact that the air spectrum is SHARED. Think about it, most cell sites/carriers have only 1 1.25MHz/5MHz sector deployed sharing 3.1Mbit down and less up. Your competing with all the mobile phones data traffic too. Finally the backhaul. Most cell sites only have NxT1s as the backhaul to the switch site. This is changing though with LTE. 5. Personally I would never replace wired broadband /w mobile unless it's an addition. I would wait until LTE as the data rates can dramatically increase matching what the current DOCSIS/DSL standards can do and even more with enough backhaul (once LTE launches the backhaul should be comparable to current cable/dsl/fios).
Do you already have a wireless phone with mobile dataplan? If so, you might be able to tether the device to a laptop if the phone uses a USB cable. I used to use it with my Motorola phone and laptop before switching to the iPhone. Since the iPhone I've had a company issued USB cell card for AT&T. Our cap is higher than 5GB a month (15GB I think), but it's really designed for business travellers who are checking Email, remoting in via VPN, and downloading power point presentations and word documents, not heavy broad band usage.
Typically I use maybe 450MB a month doing just that plus FTPing/SSHing into our servers from home. (Since I got the wireless card, I cancelled cable/DSL at home).
Granted I did all my heavy downloading at work.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
You actually got more than 5M of bandwidth out of Time Warner? There must have been an alternative carrier in your area.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Where I live Mobile Broadband and Satellite are my only options. I was a little wary about MBB because of the 5G/month cap, but I found millenicom.com that resells Verizon but doesn't have any stated caps. But I have read that people using over 40G in a month have gotten emails asking them to keep their usage down to 10gig.
The big problem with MBB is that you're connecting to the net through cell towers. So you need to have good reception before you can hope to get any decent speeds. But you're also limited by the capacity of the tower. So even if you have a great signal, you could get crappy speeds if there are a dozen other people fighting for that tower's bandwidth. Most towers will be hooked up to a single T1.
That being said, at my house I get a decent signal - 3 bars Rev A. And I think I'm the only person on my tower. So I get between 1 and 1.5m down. I can watch vids online most of the time without any problem.
Wimax is supposed to be available in a lot of places Real Soon Now, and it's definitely better than mobile broadband.
Mobile broadband, this short video says it all,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d62jQ22w360 ((hitler gets 3 broadband) Its pretty good if you've not seen the same scene done with too many variations)
Problem is if you don't think your going to be somewhere for 12 months, then you can't really sign a 12 month contract. It's going to be pot luck how well it works, badly when you really want it working, is probably going to be the answer.
However if you have no choice I'd find a pay as you go provider and maybe two sim cards depending on the overuse charge. With a Pay as you go modem you get a fixed data quantity. Get into a contract and go over, they have you by the ... In 3 months time when you decide it just isn't worth the hassle any more, you don't have 9 months worth of contract left. It might get better or worse, but you can hang on to that modem for years and only use it when have too.
Even 3 months use would be a win financially, ADSL costs about 25 for line rental and 25 for ADSL per month 3 charge 20 for 10 - 20gb (I forget which) a month and the modem is 79 so in three months your actually up 10 if it doesn't drive you crazy first.
Lan usage, you can buy a special router for the job or go cheap (using existing hardware) and use a switch or a regular router and port-forward to your ethernet port. I've done some experimenting and found an Aspire One running Ubuntu makes a great little "Cable modem" just set up iptables and a fixed address for the wan port on the router and ether-net port and setup iptables (I think windows can just use ICS for the same effect). Note, its a straight cat5 cable between the wan port and eth0 on your laptop.
But watch the video and realize what you may be letting yourself in for.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
He prolly means "probably"...
Stop! Dremel time!
A coworker of mine who lives in a rural area out of range from all the cable and DSL providers was looking into going with a mobile broadband solution. Knowing nothing about the topic he handed me a Kricket brochure and asked if it was a good deal, and it was a good thing for him that he did. His intentions were to set up a webcam in his backyard so he could watch the animals as they came out of the woods. With that in mind I scanned the brochure and happened upon their terms of use, which stated that the service could only be used for normal web activities. Sounds reasonable, until you read their definition of "normal" activities which excluded server hosting, online video gaming and streaming video of any sort, meaning his webcam was out.
The moral? Make sure you read the terms of use to find out what the service allows before committing to it, otherwise you may end up paying for something you can't use.
I'm pretty sure he means probably.
It's slang, similar to:
Cya = Bye (or) See you later
It popped up years ago in online games, before we all had enough bandwidth for voice chat. Less text to type is important!
Ex:
"prolly firebolt then e use lit"
Longform:
"You should probably cast Firebolt on that monster, then EgorTheOgre can cast lightning on it."
WiMax can support very high speed connections and very long distances, and has great hype with it. But in reality, it can support very high speeds over short distances, or moderately low speeds over long distances, and ISPs have to make some tradeoff in between based on how many customers they can get in the cell around a given antenna, and by the time they're done, it's no longer spectacularly shiny. (4G doesn't really exist yet, so of course it'll be really really cool when it gets here, while 3G was really really cool last year until it was widely deployed....) The two main 3G services have technology upgrade paths that are being deployed, so services will probably get faster (though you may need new hardware), while WiMax may be faster now than after it gets more customers, at least if you're close enough to have a strong signal.
In reality, you need to look at what's available where you live - can you get a good signal or not? - and on the service provider's terms of service, and other services you may also be buying (TV? Wired phones? Mobile phones?), and on how mobile you plan to be. 3G has the advantage that you've probably got some friends who have the service providers you want to try out, and you can invite them over to find out if you can actually get good enough speeds or not.
(You've probably already figured out whether you currently hate your cable company or your cellphone company or your wired phone company more...) - but do read the service plan details carefully, because "unlimited" usually doesn't _actually_ mean "not having limits" unless the marketing people have recently gotten spanked by regulators, so it's likely that they'll have fine print you need to care about saying what the limits are and how much excess bandwidth costs. Unfortunately, for wireless providers, heavy bandwidth use translates into cell capacity exhaustion, so dealing with it may cost them actual money, as opposed to wired providers where it only translates into statistical increases in their peering and transit usage, which is a lot cheaper, and they're still only slowly getting the clues that computer users have much higher bandwidth expectations than cellphone/text/paging users, so they may not realize where the boundaries of "greedy" vs. "cheapskate" are.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I used my phone tethered exclusively for over a year and was satisfied.
However I didn't do much with videos, just Second Life and streaming music there and the like.
Download rates from DSLReports ran about 750 down at my tower (below average), if I drove down the highway I could get 1100 down from neighboring towers. I forget what the upload rate was, maybe 250ish?
SL daily plus music streams was tons of data, but I had Sprint's unlimited plan.
The only other issue was when it would reconnect, which happened fairly frequently and was only an interruption of a sec, but disrupted SL and would need a reload if a page was in the midst of loading. There were a couple outages impacting just my local tower, once for a week. However all outages still provided dialup speeds, only the EVDO was out.
It was possible to watch streaming video if you let half the video download first.
IMO the needs specified are greater than what EVDO will provide.
Would loads of lead-based paint absorb the signal? If you look at a number of San Francisco apartments, it may be possible to find doors, walls, cabinets and other surfaces having 5 or 10 layers of paint since property owners seem to be poor or too cheap (or, conveniently environmentally supersensitive) to remove the layers and apply modern coats. The building i used to live in a couple years ago was like that. Cabinet doors not closing, who knows what under the carpets, and slanted floors.... window frames from 1945 or something. But, the building was one of the few that passed flying colors after the 1989 quake....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
is compatible with Linux. I use it with my laptop. It doesn't require any special software. Just use kppp, and adjust the settings per the Sprint documentation or the on-phone tech. It was a PAIN in the ass trying to get the -597 to work, and both Best Buy AND Sprint earlier claimed the 597 was compatible, but, IIRC, Sierra did not make that claim.
http://www.myrateplan.com/cool_phones/2283/sprint/sierra_598_usb_modem/
http://www.sierrawireless.com/product/USB598.aspx
i use this because, tho i *could* piggyback on Feeva in the Union Square area, i think i'd rather have reasonably reliable AND mobile access. Besides, there *might* be more personal privacy/security going via mobile wireless through a cell carrier than a lesser-protected wi-fi signal. Now, of course, if anyone near me is scanning RF or my laptop emissions specifically, then, yeh, i know almost all bets are off...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The US cable modem companies started the meme that running servers at home was bad, back during the early trials when they had equipment problems, crappy town-by-town tv infrastructure, and lots of pressure from the telco's "web hog" DSL commercials, and they've infected lots of other carriers with it, even though the reasons for it haven't been valid for a decade. (And the fear that they'll get bad publicity if their service is slow because somebody's running a porn website at home and burning their neighborhood's upstream bandwidth, which was a big motivation, has been replaced by the reality that many of their users are zombie-infested spammers, which also encourages them to ban useful services at home.)
The Australian ISPs started the "monthly download cap" meme, back when wholesale bandwidth to Australia was expensive and content was directionally unbalanced, and they've infected lots of other carriers with it recently, especially the cable modem companies, even though that also hasn't reflected reality for a long time even in Australia. (At least in the US, it makes a lot of sense for the cable companies to peer with hosting companies and content providers like Youtube to reduce costs for both sides, and GB/month doesn't reflect the underlying costs of transit anyway.)
And unfortunately, wireless companies have tended to be infected by both of these memes, with the extra incentive that they actually do have capacity issues on the spectrum in their cells. But still, they tend to be over-aggressive about things like running a Wifi router off your wireless card so you can support all the computers in your house on one firewalled connection, so do read each carrier's ToS carefully to make sure it doesn't ban anything critical to you. One reason I'm using a small ISP that's reselling telco DSL is that their acceptable use policy is "we sold you a real internet connection, not a walled-garden account, so do anything you want except spamming."
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Half the time if I'm in a random city and need a wifi connection, I can find a Linksys or similar open port and not have to go find a coffee shop.
I can usually see 3-4 unencrypted wifi connections from home, depending on where I've got my laptop, so on the rare occasions my DSL has gone down, I've got backup connectivity. In practice it's probably more trouble than it's worth, because one neighbor's firewall kills my VPN connection, and another neighbor's ISP doesn't let me upload email, and every could of days the beams cross and my laptop gloms onto a neighbor's wireless connection overnight and gets confused (especially if the DHCP doesn't renew the lease and it's the neighbor who uses 198.168.2.x instead of 198.168.1.x...)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It means you're over 40.
I do have a clue what I'm talking about here. I am well aware that 192.168.x.x aren't publically routable addresses, which means you are stuck behind your cellphone co's NAT server.
The setup is a USB modem plugged directly into my MacBook.
On my home ADSL connection, using the same ISP as for my mobile broadband, I get a publically routable static IP address which I can use to phone home from outside.
Earthlink has access to Time Warner's lines due to some legal magic, but from what I understand they do not have any caps nor do they plan to implement them. Same speeds or close to it, but without the bullshit.
As far as I know, ATT will charge you a per kilobyte rate after you pass the 5 GB transfer limit.
Curious about Storage and Virtualization? Check out
Don't go with wireless since you have DSL and Cable in your area. I would really love to get Verizon FiOS or AT&T U-verse with their really fast speeds but they are not available in my area too. I use DSL from AT&T the Elite plan which is the fastest available with 6 Mgps and I am paying about 17 bucks for it coze they gave me a promotional price when I called to disconnect my landline. They insisted I keep it offering me lower price than the price of the internet service only without a phone line (which they offer too) so I pay in total around 50 bucks with unlimited national calls for my landline phone where you would be paying the same amount (or more) if you get wireless but with 1/6 of the speed I get and with no phone service (you could use it trust me, don't waste your cell phone minutes). Another thing you should consider, with any wireless form of communication to connect to the internet you will get a high ping rate which sucks if you are an online gamer. I like AT&T DSL too coze it gives me a dynamic IP which would change each time you unplug the modem and that allows me to take advantage of some services online that limit your usage based on your IP address. If you have limits on downloads with the wireless that is not a good thing. I could use 5GB in 3 days just downloading torrent files. I hope that would help you to make an informative decision. Turki,
I have unlimited mobile data via AT&T Mobility (mobile, yes - reliable, no). My cellphone is 3G and HSDPA capable. From home, I use their wireless service for fun and as a backup. Both 3G and HSDPA are unreliable where I live in Milwaukee. One may be available and the other isn't so I am constantly having to switch between the two to whichever protocol I am able to receive at the moment. So at home, I turn off the cell wireless and connect up through my 802.11G wireless router and out that way.
At the salt mines, we had to have a building repeater installed to get to the nearest cellsite. Even with the repeater, the quality of the data service is no better than at home, even with all of the famous "bars" that AT&T advertises for their signal quality.
Honestly, don't waste your money on going with a data plan on a cellphone. Stick with wireline. I expect bandwidth caps to be put on all connections soon, regardless of carrier, to milk the golden goose under the auspices of "network management" but in reality it comes under the auspices of "money management" - managing to get more money out of our pockets.
isn't. I use it for most of my home browsing, until I can upgrade to a "land-line" connection. While it does work most of the time for general browsing, the battery for the modem has a nasty habit of dying in the middle of large up/downloads. Forget about streaming radio or watching many online videos, you'll get about 45 minutes before it will cut out on you for an hour. If you're a heavy data user, you WILL burn up the modem and have to jump through the customer service hoops to get a new one. So far I've gone through two modems and a battery. So, it's fast, when it works. But it cuts out, gives many difficulties connecting to the network and the modem itself will die on you whenever the stars aren't properly aligned for its functioning. Why they didn't design it to function completely on laptop power I'll never understand, but it's the 2nd to last thing over dial-up that I would recommend to somebody who needed reliable internet. Oh yes, and the software itself will also randomly crash and force a hard shutdown and reboot of my system on windows xp media center. Forget it if you want to run linux, I tried ubuntu and had no luck, even with much wine hacking. Wait, I think dial-up might be more reliable... (Just of note, I'm using the USBConnect by Sierra Wireless 881.)
I've yet to approach anything near Alltel's claims of 3 megabits down in places, but it does exist (I have friends who use it).
They have no usage caps yet. Hopefully the Verizon merger won't change that.
At least in the Portland, OR area, Cricket stores are franchise.. so different stores (even in the same area) have different deals, rates, fees and penalties... something to keep in mind.
I have unlimited mobile "broadband" in addition to cable. The mobile is fine for E-mail and web browsing and the occasional YouTube. Most of the time, it's actually very fast. But it just isn't quite as predictable as cable, and it is still a fraction of the speed at a much higher price.
Any kind of braodband wire is better than any kind of wireless, 99% of the time. Wireless is RADIO and beyond being affected by network traffic, it is affected by atmospheric conditions, interference, reflections, refractions, etc. Having used a terrestrial wireless (WiFi) ISP myself, and having experience with family members who also use such a service (because it is the only thing available) the wire wins every time.
I work for verizon wireless, and I can say without a doubt that if you do alot of streaming video you will hate your bill. I've seen bills upwards of $30,000. The connection is just not designed for it. If you go over the 5gb cap you pay .25 per mb and that adds up quick also once your over 5gb they throttle your speeds to 25% of what they were. I had one lady with $1200 in overage and all she did was go to myspace and youtube. Imo stick with a landline mobile broadband is for occasional light use and serving. If not maybe itll be me that tells you your stuck with the bill. ;)
when they wrote:
Sounds like "I'm about to be released from the Big House...".
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Get the best bang for your buck. Set up a proxy (IPCop + Squid + SquidGuard). You'll block 95% of the ads and save on bandwidth from that and the proxying, plus you can track your bandwidth usage for yourself.
Just make sure you can return the modem and cancel service with a full refund if the service is cruddy. MetroPCS' data service for the BlackBerry Curve 8330 was the worst. Horrible beyond compare, but they didn't have EVDO service, but even the service they had was horrible and spotty and would work one minute at a location and not the next. I was able to return the BlackBerry to BestBuy for a full refund (they'd seen a ton of them returned) and MetroPCS gave the first month "free" so I was out nothing, other than my wasted time and bad bandwidth service. $50/month for unlimited horrible voice+data service with Metro isn't worth it (I only wanted it for data anyway).
I believe Cricket does have EVDO service. I have no idea how fast or good their data service is. I do know their voice service is great, as my Wife and I have had them for the last 3 years, no land line, for $35/month unlimited voice, message, voicemail, long distance.
I ended up getting a BlackBerry Storm 9530 with Verizon for 66% less than the Curve. I love that the CPU on this phone is so much faster, I can actually use the data service to sync contacts, email, calendaring reliably, and the perks are I get Youtube and streaming music as well. It was $20/month more for unlimited data ($70 total) than Metro - but it just works, 100% solid service and very fast.
If I wanted data service for my PC, I'd just pay $30/more a month for a tethered modem to my "phone" as I'm so pleased with Verizon's coverage. I had the service before with an 8830 World Edition with my last employer, and it was more than worth while when I was stranded at a place that didn't have internet (typically because I was turning up their internet and/or mpls/private network).
You might look into what Verizon's service offerings are for pure data.
I'm afraid it's you who doesn't have the clue. Obviously ISPs *shouldn't* use private addresses for their customers but nonetheless quite a few wireless ones do. I've yet to come across a wireless broadband offering in the UK which gives you a real unadulterated 'net connection.
We had just under a dozen Sprint EVDO cards where I work and where and when they work, they're decent - The Rev A cards were rated for 400-800k down and 200-400 up and we'd see that on occasion but if you're a streamer, you'll blow through that 5GB cap that Verizon or Sprint has in no time. We just switched to Verizon and we bounced into a cap in under a week's worth of use. VZ sells a 10GB plan for ... 199.00 per month but you'd be foolish to sign up for that.
They're good for small use, but it doesn't seem like that fits your profile.
But I probably violated Verizon's ToS by not paying for NationalAccess or whatever the heck it's called + the extra 70$ a month for the card by reflashing my HTC phone... Reasonable speeds, up to 200kB download with good signal. No limit because I was using the phone's "Unlimited Access" and I would download probably 10 gigs a week in streaming videos and the like.
And if you do end up getting one of the major carrier's 3G cards - GET the carrier's PCMCIA card - Linksys makes a WRT54G router that runs off your hardline connection (if you end up getting DSL or Cable) and will run off the card as well - The routers are about 150.00 from CDW and there's a version for Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.
T-Mobile.
At first you can have problems like not being able to download stuff, or not having access to some sites, but then you discover that they have set you up going through a proxy. Google for login details and use those instead of the standard T-Mobile connection setup and suddenly you have free and clear access. I run my phone using them and have no issues, even when tethered. All I use is the username, password, and access point details.
I've got a 7.2Mb/384kbit wireless card as my main internet connection in Japan for about $50/month. I am a very heavy user (a few GB/day down is not unusual (all legal, no bit torrent etc.) and haven't noticed any problems except for the some latency issues when using facebook or what not. Note that it is still plenty fast to stream youtube/dailyshow etc.. without any major problems. It really depends on what unlimited means and the coverage in your area. Here unlimited seems to really mean unlimited. Thus at least for me, I think switching to a 3G connection as your main/only connection to the internet is completely viable.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
I work for an agency under DoD and have teleworkers who are out in the boonies. The sticking point for me is it's agin' the law to allow privately-owned hardware to connect to a gummint PC so what we do is recommend a Cradlepoint MBR-1000 aircard router.
It's a great solution - and since we're inflicting bandwidth limits on our VPN solution an aircard talks as fast as a cable modem.
Check the router out - we really like them.
http://www.cradlepoint.com/products/mbr1000-failsafe-broadband-n-router
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
Probly..
which is totally what she said
I've used mobile broadband (Verizon) for about 4 years as my "home internet provider". Your connection will likely be dropped a few times a day, and if you have it connected to a wireless router, that might have to be powercycled a few times a week. I would never consider running a web server off of this! As for streaming video, it depends on where and what time you are viewing. In NYC around 9:30am, your connection speed slows to almost that of dial-up. I can watch streaming TV at night, though, and seldom have to wait long for it to buffer. In the end, it's great for home use, but not for a "major internet user" like yourself.
I checked the Cricket wireless web site in my area and while it does say $40 for Unlimited connection, it also has "Throughput speed may be limited if usage adversely impacts our network, service levels or exceeds 5 GB per month. " further down the page. I'd read it as you can stay connected all you want, just don't transmit/receive more then 5 GB.
I happen to live in a part of the country (South Eastern Idaho) that has a WiMax provider (Digital Bridge Communications). They use an Alerion Modem which is extremely painless to set up and as long as it's near a window it gets great reception. The downside is that the throughput is MUCH less than the 2mb's they actually advertise. I got more like 200k on downloads which made Youtube and the like unusable. For surfing/email/chat it works great, but don't try and download anything large and forget using it for your video game console or streaming movie box.
I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
That and outgoing speeds. I've used a cellular data connection for my personal internet access at work for years. More as an experiment than because I'm worried about being snooped on. (And I'd just as soon not have to worry about clicking on a NSFW link and having that http request in the log.) For 2 years, I used EDGE and it was a bit better than surfing on a 56k modem. The incoming speed was ISDNish but the latency made the overall experience similar to a 56k modem. I've been using 3G for about a year and it's much more usable in terms of latency. Speed is all over the place. I've had days of 300k and days where I sustain over a megabit but reduced latency is what makes it more usable.
As far as streaming video/audio, VOIP, and other high bandwidth stuff, don't bother. I can usually keep up with a youtube stream but there will be times when it pauses for a bit. And you don't want to do streaming audio. That eats up bandwidth like crazy, even if it doesn't get choppy. The volume of data is what will get you.
3G is good for surfing, email, occasional downloads, limited remote access, and other bursty, downstream-heavy activity. Not good for highly interactive stuff.
As far as data volume and connection times go, I leave it connected from 9am to 6pm 5 days a week. My data usage is anywhere from 700 megs to 2 gigs per billing cycle. I've never heard a peep out of either company about the amount of time I stay connected or the volume of data transferred. Of course, I don't try to do anything stupid like run a P2P client or ftp server on the cellular connection.
Thank you.
I was asking an honest question. I was puzzled by the word. I have seen it several times. I did look it up in the dictionary before I asked. In asking a question, I learn more.
Now, somehow without trying, I have insulted some people. Instead of contributing usefully to the conversation, they respond with profanity and mod me down. (I wonder how these same people stand regarding censorship?)
I thought that Slashdot was news for nerds, a forum for intelligent conversation.
Sigh.