In-Home Wireless Vs. Mobile Broadband 199
mklickman writes "I've been hearing more and more about mobile broadband offered by the big wireless phone providers, and for the first time came to ask myself how it compares to using a wireless router. Since my wife and I both have laptops, and we're out a lot, would it be wise and/or worth it to do away with the standard cable-modem-plus-router setup and switch over to mobile broadband with (for example) AT&T or Sprint? I'm not really concerned about the cost of the PC cards themselves; they're not much more expensive than a decent router. Also, the cost of the wireless service per month is only (roughly) ten dollars more than my current ISP is charging me. Is it a good idea?"
Convenience vs Performance (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Convenience vs Performance (Score:5, Informative)
2. The question of DSL vs 3G has a very simple answer. The answer is a question in itself - do you have a home server and where does your traffic come from?
If your mail, media, etc is stored on a machine at home, 3G is shooting yourself in the foot. Your traffic ends up going all the way down to the GGSN at the mobile operator and than all the way back up to your kit at home (often through the narrow side of a cable or DSL). If all of your stuff is sitting in a colo somewhere or is on your laptop and you have good 3G coverage, than 3G can compete with DSL for the time being.
This is a definitely "for the time being" case because as more and more devices in the home become networked a device whose traffic has to travel across half of the country to connect to the rest of the kit becomes a white elephant.
Re:Convenience vs Performance (Score:5, Informative)
Just wanted to clear that up for anyone following this for bandwidth curiosities.
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I get the purple light (Score:3, Informative)
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I've not seen a non-HSPDA signal in a built up area in the UK for some time (on vodaphone as well), and have even had 3G on a remote hill in Wales. Dropping to GPRS is next to unheard of.
Re:Convenience vs Performance (Score:4, Informative)
While Pilkington-K and similar treated doubleglazed windows (not just any doubleglazed) drop the signal a bit, it is not the windows that are a problem. It is the tech in itself and the coverage. You need a non-congested Node-B to get anywhere near HSDPA speeds. As the number of clients on the Node-B grows the speed drops in x2 steps because even idle clients use parts of the code tree.
So as the tech is becoming more and more popular the network becomes worse and worse. As a result you can probably still get HSDPA speeds out there in residential suburbia. Getting HSDPA speeds in downtown lodnon, at railway stations or any other place where there are loads of clients (even non-active ones) is practically impossible.
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Indeed. I work in a metal framed two story building with reinforced concrete walls and floor to ceiling windows with
low-e [wikipedia.org] coatings. Signal quality was zero bars before they installed wireless repeaters.
The answer to the original question is simple - if you aren't home often, go with the 3G card. But beware that your speeds will be fastest now and drop as more and more people sign up for data services.
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The problem is not double glazing per se, but Low-E (low-emissivity) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-emissivity [wikipedia.org] coatings on the glass, intended to reflect infrared radiation. These coatings are usually metallic oxides, which attenuate radio signals. My house has all Low-E windows and the exterior walls are coated with stucco - on a metal (chicken-wire) mes
Re:Convenience vs Performance S.O.T... (Score:2)
But, since you mention the chicken wire mesh/metallic stucco, I'm wondering if cable companies (say, comcast) liked that back around 1999 when I was buying a new home that had poor on-air reception. It might have served as a useful way to persuade people to get cable. I just attached my twin antenna to the cable wire and used the comcast coax cable as an antenna/signal enhancer. I still got to watch Voyager and maybe 5 or 8 stations over the air.
Second, since many new homes seem to be nea
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I also have the NExtel data plan and it also sucks. If you use it in one spot unmoving it seems to work, as soon as you get up to move it falls apart and they throttle your butt fast if their systems sense you are downloading a lot or even attempting to use bittorrents.
Re:Convenience vs Performance (Score:4, Informative)
That said, a friend of mine used UMTS for his home connection for about a year. He used the broadband at work for big transfers and the UMTS cap was high enough to let him browse the web (including videos of kittens on YouTube) and check his mail from home.
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1) Home is DSL that has a consistent 4 - 4.4Mbit, and
2) Sprint EDO card for mobile that gets from 700kbit to 2 Mbit (average is 1.2Mbit).
Using the EDO cards in lieu of hotel high cost Internet saves lots of money. In fact I get better speed with the EDO card than the hotel's notoriously slow Internet...that is no doubt. At home I would rather have 4 - 5Mbit speed....it really makes a difference and speed is an addiction.
I also have to comment that it is c
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What is an option for computers without the pcmcia slots as far as mobile broadband. I have an iBook....it has no slot.
Are there other ways to get on, for instance, Sprint's mobile broadband?
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Maybe you'll pay more attention the next time people tell you to get a proper laptop
To answer your question though, you should be able get a 3G/HSDPA connection with most modern smartphones/communicators (which are not iphones, that is), and then connect that to your laptop through USB or Bluetooth. Your laptop has those, right?
Re:Convenience vs Performance [yes, use USB] (Score:2)
I believe Sprint offers a Novatel Wireless U720 EVDO Rev. A modem which connects via USB. Visit the Sprint website for more details.
I use a Sprint S720 PCMCIA card in Portland, Oregon. In close-in NE Portland, my speeds whilst sitting in an apartment are around 800 kbit/sec down, 120 up. The best I've seen is 2 mbit/down while sitting in downtown.
Even though it's not as fast as Comcast,
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I've got the AT&T Tilt (HTC 8950, I think?), an HSDPA (and also 3G, edge, etc) phone, and use it to get online from my laptop when I'm on the go. Depending on where I am, I get drastically different performance, though. It seems that some locations don't support the HSDPA, so I get extremely high-latency connections (several seconds to make the connection; pinging google.com gives me ~800ms)
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I also get a fully public IP when I connect, and my latency is usually around 100-200 ms. I can play a lot of games online just fine. My average download speed on Sprint is about 2 Mbit, which considering the
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Where are you located? Sprint service in this area (NYC) sucks. Everyone I know who has sprint has all kinds of issues with dropped calls and poor call quality. No one I know on s
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although my $40/mo is the unlimited phonedata plan, which is what I use for when I'm online with my computer.
if I got their Express card, it would probably be 80$/mo because of the extra line and everything, but I don't use it enough to warrant that.
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If you use it as much as I do you'd definitely want a dedicated plan for it. I went for the integrated card in my laptop, no USB dongle/Expresscard to deal with.
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How much do you download? (Score:5, Informative)
May lower class people use it to get broadband at the place they rent. They dont have to involve the landlord to get an cables installed and can take it with them when they move elsewhere.
The big killer is that here is Oz mobile broadband typically comes with transfer limits in the order of 1 - 4 GBs per month. After that it gets very pricey.
So assuming its the same in the US... I would only go mobile broadband if you dont plan on downloading movies/tv shows etc over the connection.
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Please insert the missing T's Y's and N's into the above comment.
Re:How much do you download? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How much do you download? (Score:5, Insightful)
Additionally, there are pretty terrible contracts for mobile broadband (telstra is asking for 24 months last time i checked), so early adopters are once again subsidising later (smarter) takers. Rental properties can easily get ADSL connected without the landlord needing to know about it, because no modifications need to be done on the property.
Mobile broadband, in my opinion, is something that only makes sense if you need it for your business. When it comes to personal/recreational use, such as on holiday or something to check emails and whatever, it might be easier to plug (or bluetooth) your laptop into your 3G mobile and surf the net that way, or just check into a hotel or cafe with wifi. That's what I have done up until now and, basically, it doesn't cost me $500+ extra per year to do it, in contrast to the mobile broadband.
I suspect the demand for mobile broadband in Australia has not been as big as was hoped. Actually I am still at a bit of a loss why they are rolling it out when the alternatives are so cheap and so adequate at this point. It doesn't make financial and practical sense to me unless it's a tax deductible thing and you are making money from it in excess of the cost of ownership.
Re:How much do you download? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How much do you download? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not just gaming either - web surfing is much faster over ADSL than 3G. While you can get pretty good download speeds out of 3G, the latency means it takes a while to build up to the full transfer rate (TCP slow start). Most web pages don't have content large enough that you'll get to full speed, so the browsing experience feels more like "good dialup" than it does "mobile broadband".
You could also consider getting a phone with internet access that allows "tethering" (at least, I think that's what the kids are calling it these days) so you can access the internet using your laptop via the phone's 3G data service. At home (in .au) I have ADSL2+ in my apartment and 500 mB/month via 3's "X Series" package. It costs me an extra $20/mo but means I do have internet access on the go without the expense of a separate mobile broadband plan. Using your phone for it also means you can have basic internet access even if you don't have your notebook with you, which can be handy.
Re:How much do you download? (Score:5, Funny)
Lower class? I didn't realize I was in the presence of nobility, m'lord.
Why not just say proletariat? Then I can call you bourgeoisie. But I'm not by any stretch left of center so I'll leave it be.
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That said, AU is definitely ahead with mobile billing. In the US,
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Broadband is a transmission technology that employs multiple frequencies simultaneously, not a "speed." That is unless "mobile broadband" is actually blasting your reply on multiple transmitters all at once across a spectrum in order to increase the data rate to your phone.
Just because some marketroids stole the term from the technical people doesn't mean we should let them get away with it.
</pedant>
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It is. It's called spread spectrum, and most wireless technologies use it (Cordless phones, Cell phones, Wireless N) The idea is that the frequency is constantly changing, giving security, and reliability. Security comes from it being difficult to hop frequencies with the signal, and reliability because if there is an interferring s
Wirless and/or Mobile BB (Score:5, Insightful)
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I have also problems with signal in certain locations. In the city it's usually besides high buildings. In other areas it's near rivers or forests (because of the altitude difference and the trees/wetness) or besides high mountains. The black spot locations aren't fixed as they change every few months. So, whenever I chat with a person over the Internet, I always tell them I'm on cellular access so that they know why I get offline and online so often. Most times a chat conversation is like:
it's a bit trickier to share... (Score:2)
For "typical" use only (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all the announced throughput is a best case figure. You'll never see it in actual use. Inside steel and concrete buildings you're certainly not going to see those figures. It all depends on the radio reception. The speed also depends (at lest with GPRS over UMTS and EDGE/GSM) on the number of active users on a particular cell.
Second, even if the throughput is ok the latency really sucks. It takes a while from you request a web page and until it actually starts flowing in. I've worked on this tech for a number of years and it's not nearly as good as marketing wants you to believe.
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To be fair, this also applies to ADSL connections. Most residential ADSL users (in the UK at least) are subject to a 50:1 contention ratio.
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For DOCSIS the number of users in the local area will effect your connection speed - the more people in your area using it at a time, the less bandwidth you get.
For ADSL lines the contention refers to the number of people connecting to the line on ISP's end, so if you're on a 50:1 contention, there's you, plus up to 49 other peo
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This might be true, I don't know.
But a lot of the controversy has surrounded the sale of 'Up to 8mb' connections, where ISPs will essentially provide a connection as fast as the user's line and telephone exchange will allow. The pos
Re:Don't (Score:4, Informative)
While it is true the DSL is a switched technology and not shared like cable, that only applies to the wire from your house to the DSLAM. At that point it aggregates and the ATM uplink is most certainly oversubscribed.
DSL oversubscription is just one hop up the line, as opposed to cable, where it is oversubscribed from end to end. Not much difference, really.
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Actually there is one very important difference: with cable, each customer is connected _directly_ to the shared medium, so it is possible for a single user to saturate it (this is GOOD as long as the protocols allows the link to be shared fairly). With DSL this is not possible because the uplink from the DSLAM (100+Mbps) is much faster than an individual line to a
Re:Don't (Score:5, Interesting)
Another thing to consider is that I have found that my supplier (T-Mobile in UK, using GPRS) has an intercepting proxy server; they strip out 'unnecessary' parts of HTML pages, and re-compress any JPEG images at the highest most lossy (eg 50k->10k) setting in order to make it seem faster which also loses EXIF data.
I don't know if this is only for GPRS or if it affects their 'broadband' services also but it seems to be limited to port 80 so its not too difficult to get around with a proxy but it can be annoying..
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I tried O2, but they charge like a raging bull. I am thinking of moving to 3.
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I noticed they also specified a cap of, if I recall correctly, 40 MB/day; I went over this supposed cap on more than one occasion (likely every day for the two months I was using it, in fact) and nobody seemed to notice or care.
Depends. (Score:3, Informative)
1. How much data transfer do you do? A buddy of mine ran into trouble with Sprint for downloading craploads of ISOs on his connection. Your mileage may vary.
2. How good is the coverage where you live? Do you personally know someone using the service you're interested in, and if so, how reliable is their connection?
3. What operating system are you using? If you're running Windows you're probably okay for compatibility, but I had a fair amount of trouble using a couple of different broadband cards under Linux. I got them working, but only after significant hackery.
Just some things to consider.
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I have a similar situation -- I travel a lot, and my company's draconian networking policy gave me an incentive to grab a mobile broadband card of my own from Sprint.
Performance is fine for most of my regular day-to-day needs (surfing, mail, and ssh). Performance is marginal for gaming, and I wouldn't want to do big downloads via EVDO...but
My experience... (Score:3, Interesting)
It depends on what you will use it for. I have standard 2Mb ADSL, that's the best I can get in the rural Irish area I live. I also have a Vodafone HSDPA USB modem for my laptop for when I'm not at home. The Vodafone modem is rated at 3.6Mb but that's bullshit. When on holidays during the summer, the house I stay at is in a valley, and the Vodafone mast is at the top of one of the hills overlooking the house. I can still only get approx 1Mb connection at best, and that's the fastest connection I've found in my travels around the country. Not only that, but the latency for the Vodafone connection is huge. It's definitely not for gaming, p2p, streaming video or audio. Email and web is basically all it's good for. Also, they tend to have a relatively small monthly cap.
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Also, meant to say about the software trouble. I don't know what modem your provider would supply, but here in Ireland (and the UK as far as I know) all the providers use the Huawei modem. The Windows software/drivers is incredibly buggy. After a few weeks it needs to be uninstalled, reinstalled, during the reinstallation it crashes or can't find the drivers on the integrated flash memory and needs to be tried many times before success. I've tried this on a clean XP reinstall also.
I've heard that with a l
Signal may be poor indoors (Score:3, Informative)
Buying two costs double (Score:2)
The biggest problem, other than performance -- I've seen up to 800Kbps sustained downloads, but the latency kills when surfing -- is that two cards cost twice as much as one card, which is twice as much as Comca$t would charge for broadband [6 Mbps down / 350 Kbps up] if it were available.
Traffic (Score:2, Informative)
I have ATT but... (Score:3, Informative)
If you go with ATT you probably have to buy an antennae to boost your signal. You are better off having the cheapest plan for your Cable/DSL service in addition to you mobile broadband card.
Data Limit, Reliability. (Score:4, Insightful)
- Is there a data limit on the connection you're looking at (X GB/week, month, anything?).
- Is there an issue with encrypted traffic (some ISPs/Telcos will throttle or cut encrypted traffic to fight P2P, which will also impede your VPN)
- Will you have the coverage that you need, and will the coverage also extend to all the rooms in your house?
- How important is connectivity to you? (For me personally, I need to have at least one place where I can be 100% certain to be able to login through my VPN to my job) Does the roaming wireless fail often, or not? (This also relates to point 3)
- Assuming you're looking into this for work also, are you allowed to use relatively open wireless networks (I know that I'm not, since I work in the financial world)
I personally would keep the static line, despite the extra cost, just to have a 'base' to go to when things don't work elsewhere. This also gives me the possibility to log onto my home server and retrieve/store important data through my own VPN.
Lots of things to think about
On a totally unrelated note: Why do I have 10 (and not 5) moderator points??
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I personally would keep the static line, despite the extra cost, just to have a 'base' to go to when things don't work elsewhere. This also gives me the possibility to log onto my home server and retrieve/store important data through my own VPN.
:)
Lots of things to think about
Here in Canada I would agree, keep the fixed system for at home.
My cable internet costs about $60/month flat rate. Although they (like most it seems) have mysterious limits to their "unlimited" service, I've never hit it.
The only HSDPA service here is Rogers/Fido (although for some reason they call it HSPA). The least expensive package I can find from them (using a PCMCIA modem) is $65/month max 1Gig/month (2gig $75, 3gig $85, 5Gig $100, $.03/Mb above that).
I have tried it out, and it feels speedy enou
WAN vs LAN (Score:2)
Next I suspect that your wireless has less bandwidth? If so you could be giving up large file downloads.
Finally, wireless is always the better technology for portability and convenience, but physical cables are much more reliabl
Bandwidth caps... (Score:2, Interesting)
Depends... (Score:5, Informative)
The relative price you mentioned of mobile broadband vs cable confuses me. You are either getting colossally ripped off for cable broadband or you are not pricing unlimited plans for your mobile broadband cards. Normally, unlimited plans are around $50/mo. Get it. Trust me. I've got a friend at Sprint who's got stories of peoples' laptops getting trojaned and winding up with a $2000 bill in the mail for bandwidth overage. And I'm assuming that you and your wife are each getting a separate plan.
Or let's say you've got an excellent signal and ridiculous speeds at your house, are not a warez monkey, and you want to share a single card between you and your wife. Well, you can get a broadband router which takes PCMCIA mobile broadband cards. I picked this Airlink 101 [airlink101.com] at Fry's for $80. It's got an Ethernet switch and is an 802.11b/g access point. Only problem is if one of you goes on a trip and takes the card the other will have to steal the neighbors' WiFi.
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Other than that you're correct. It's not a good idea for a home based connection unless one has no other choice.
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All in all I can't see why anyone would switch from broadband to mobile wireless.
Nope. (Score:3, Informative)
I have been using a swiss provider's HSPA network for several months now and am not quite satisfied. The latency is bad (500~2000 ms ping rtt compared to 10-30 ms via ADSL1), availability isn't that great (often I can only get mediocre GPRS/EDGE speeds around 80-150 kbps) and the price's definately higher than a landline.
On the other hand, when HSPA works, it's great. An RTT of somewhere around 300 ms is possible and a sustained transfer rate of around 1 mbps is realistic (most of the network's 1.8 mbps HSDPA, being upgraded to 3.6; so I expect 2 mbps real bandwidth in the near future). Also, I've got this nice subscription where you pay a monthly flat fee (some 20% of an average 3 mbps landline or 2 GB WWan plan) plus a small fee per day of usage (some 7% of said landline or 2 GB WWan plan). Whenever possible I'll use public WLans and my private VPN server, limiting my WWan use to some 5-10 days per month.
Verizon's EVDO (Score:3, Informative)
Wireless cards Vs wired (Score:3, Informative)
The most important thing you need to ask yourself is what is the intended use for these cards.
If you are surfing the net, skyping, watching UTube etc, then the wireless datacards (current generation) offer enough bandwidth to give a very comfortable feeling (comparable with cable).
If you are a very heavy net user, looking to have max speeds, then maybe you should be thinking about a more dedicated solution.
As to the actual speeds you will get, this all depends on the carrier and your location. ie 7,2MBps is the current "rated" download speed for the current generation of technology, but that is reduced if you are uploading at the same time. (ie it is approx 7,2Mbps shared for upload/download - NOT really, but it is close enough to make this comparision). Also, the datarate will depend on if the carrier has deployed a network in your area. If not, you will be dialed down to highest rated speed in the area (typically EDGE). Edge is ok for surfing normal pages, but you will get some lag if you are doing large downloads, etc.
The really nice thing about 2G/3G datacards is the flexibility. No matter where you go, where you are in the world you, once you can get a standard mobile phone connection, you have access to your internet/emails etc. Personally, this is fantastic for people "on the go".
Other thing to be cautious of - check to see if your service is "per Mbit" or flat fee per month. If you are paying "per Mbit", then you can be big bills if you are not carefull. The "flat fee per month" version is excellent if you can get it.
Overall, I love these cards, but be carefull of what you sign up for.
Decent article on performance (Score:2, Interesting)
Keep the landline (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a landline ADSL with 1 ISP plus HSDPA cellular broadband with all (3) cellular ISPs that operate here. Cellular broadband is not supposed to replace landline broadband, it is simply for when you are out or whenever the landline isn't working. The latency of cellular access is too high compared to landline, the signal indoors is often poor (but you can use signal boosters), and many times even if one day you have signal after a few days you may find that the signal is gone because tower locations change often and not only that but the connection quality is also dependent on how many people connect near your tower. Not only that, but some cellular ISPs do not give you a real IP, or force you to use their proxy server (easily bypassed though) or even force you to use only their own software (also easily bypassed if you flash the firmware of your router or if you use a free OS such as Debian).
Thus the perfect solution is to have both. If you can't pay for both, then the answer depends on how many hours of the day you are out. If you stay indoors only when you sleep, then certainly cellular boradband is the answer. But if you do stay indoors more than 3-4 hours of your awake life, then you shouldn't easily cancel the landline.
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related question (Score:2)
like say on evdo
if i open an ftp clear text password, it is natively encrypted by the protocol? or did i just hand everyone my ftp password?
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If you use ftp or telnet, you should assume that everyone has your password, period (unless you do it over a VPN tunnel). Don't trust others to magically do your security for you.
I use Sprint EVD0, and I assume that it is just as open as the WiFi at Starbucks. But then, I also assume the same about my Cable Modem.
no, apparently evdo is very secure (Score:2)
EVD0 (Score:2)
Would I give up my
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Anyhow, one interesting thing that I've seen is a wired/wireless LAN router that has a card slot for EVD0 PCMCIA broadband cards. It apparently works pretty well, but it's pricey ($~260).
http://www.kyocera-wireless.com/kr1-router/ [kyocera-wireless.com]
Mark
Poor (Score:2)
Ping Times (Score:2)
Printers? File storage? (Score:2)
Alltel has a 1.8MB satellite wireless broadband (Score:2)
My experience with broadband versus DSL (Score:2)
That said, I had EvDO via Verizon on my 6700 which I tethered to my laptops. Now performance varied considerably depending on location and quality of service. But at my home was near a highway we had excellent signal quality.
EvDO Broadband Wireless actually outperformed my DSL connections at times. However, it was not as consistent. I found the
My Input... do you have change for 2c? (Score:2)
I'm confused here, please help (Score:2)
Broadband + Hotspot and Free WiFi (Score:2)
I prefer a broadband connection at home and a combination of T-Mobile's hotspot service and free wifi for when I'm out. If you're a T-Mo customer and don't need everywhere connectivity, it's a nice solution. T-Mobile's Hotspot service is available at Starbucks, Borders Books, Kinkos and a lot of Airports for an extra $20/month in the US. They also have roaming agreements in Europe with companies like Vodafone Orange.
There are also a number of places, like Panera and many public libraries, that have free
The Home Networking component isn't there yet.... (Score:2)
Family members recently started getting the SprintPCS broadband cards with the external antenna. Their question was "Can we buy just one and have the rest of the computers networked through it?".
What a headache! The speeds are good, but networking them is a mess. At first, I tried standard procedure. I purchased a Kyocera wirless router that has a EVDO USB / port on it specifically for this purpose. It worked fine - except that
What about the toaster? (Score:3, Insightful)
Beware Terms of Service. (Score:2)
Beware the terms of service. I have an 'unlimited' account. By Unlimited, they mean Unlimited Web Browsing and Email. Anything else is theoretically Not Allowed. Streaming music, fancy downloads, things like that: no. How do they detect not-web-browsing activity? Well, they figure that if you use more than 5GB of da
Sorta Offtopic Question (Score:2)
I suspect that it could be some sort of locked feature. I would purchase a new phone if it meant this would w
cost analysis flawed (Score:2)
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I've no idea what the earlier poster was on about unless he only asked a couple of years ago - three used to restrict data to a walled garden of filtered http, but got resoundly
laughed at by everyone when they tried to sell it.
One thing to watch with them is that their pay as you go modems are *not* HSPDA which limits them to 384k. Always check the small print on these things...
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Share the connection! (Score:5, Insightful)
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It generally works, it's a helluva lot better than dial-up. It's not perfect by any means, there are slowdowns and dropouts.
I'm a gamer, the pings aren't teriffic, about 150ms constant is the best I've gotten.
I pay $50 per month (you have to get in on a "
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It looks as if you have several phone numbers and they all point to your same phone...now that would be worth setting up. How did you buy phone numbers elsewhere?
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