50Mbps Possible on mobile boradband

Anyone got any answers to my query?

I think the limited spectrum avaliable means there's only going to be so many 40MB channels to go around. If people start using this for proper downloading and not web browsing low quality webpages, then its going to go **** up.

hmm i feel i should be able to work out the max avaliable bandwidth. How many channels are avaliable? I'm guessing this is very complicated due to freqency hopping as well.
 
teaboy5 said:
For home use you could simply get a router that allows you to use a 3g modem in the back. The only ones i know that allow this are the draytek ones.
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I use a Billion router on O2 (ADSL2+ 15M/1M) with a 3G dongle connected as a backup (also bought to cover the time I was between DSL ISPs). The connection is shared between my 2 flatmates - so needs to be reliable. This setup works quite nicely - now!! But I had to figure out a lot of stuff (like the 3G modem need to be plugged into a powered USB hub - connected to the Billion router - to get the best 3G reception).

I had to be shown how to force the modem to use HSDPA. We were intially stuck on GPRS for a few days - what a joke that was. When the GSM network was busy - we weren't!! Even my previous use of a mobile as a 10Kbit GSM modem was more reliable!! Using HSPDA I was impressed with the speed of the (O2) connection. OK it was only a "real" 1Mbit (7.2Mbit) link but is still very snappy for accessing webpages. So the real problem (as I perceive it) is network coverage for HSDPA.

Bob
 
Skidilliplop said:
Well it *can* be simple given testbed conditions. I bought an 02 PAYG dongle pretty much for the hell of it last week. I installed it on my laptop i use for work and the installer wouldn't run because my home directory and some other things point to network locations on the company domain. To install properly it needed a local account.
Also the software it did install is a piece of crap in all fairness. It steals control of wifi adapters and by default halts any other wifi apps. It also messed with the windows routing table. i couldn't have the dongle in at work and connect to other subnets on the LAN. This is because as default windows installs a default route out of the LAN card. The 02 adaptor installs it's own default route with metric 1 and bumps the others up to metric 20 thus only the WIFI adapter becomes a feasible gateway. So the only way round it was to add static routes to all the LAN subnets to avoid using default routes. When used to manage the wifi the feature set is minimial in every sense. I run WPA-PSK personal AES at home, hardly obscure and it couldn't connect to it.
Coverage isn't great either. The Adapter supports 3G/HSDPA my phone shows full 3G signal and the aapter reports very good signal strength yet speed tests show 0.3mbit up and down. which is poooooor when the adapter is capable of up to 3.6mbit. Why this is i don't know because it reports approximately 0 info about the connection stats. Not even if it's boggo 3G or HSDPA it's connected to.

This is one product but i've seen similar issues with other providers.

In summary, there's great potential in mobile broadband and i'm sure the technology is looking snazzy but the implementation both in terms of coverage consitency and products is WAY WAY behind the technology. Still very much an infant technology in the consumer sense.
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Actually the O2 3G dongle is quite good. You need to go into the advanced settings for the dongle and force HSDPA network access (otherwise it is more likely to use GPRS - which is sh**). You need to disable the software it installs (on Windows) - e.g. by using msconfig to stop it starting up - and just use the connection dial-up connection it creates for 3G access - then you can manually reset your adapter metrics. On HSDPA I have been able to hook up a Vista laptop to my home network (connected via ADSL2+) using VPN and get a "reasonable" VNC remote desktop connection to my server.

The O2 techie support is great - I was on the phone to a support tech (in England!!) for about 15 minutes (0800) while he helped me get out of GPRS hell!!

You can tell if you connected to GPRS. With good signal strength for the dongle you get loads of packet loss and web page timeouts (especially when the GSM networks are busy in the evenings).

Bob
 
Bob Wya Jnr said:
Actually the O2 3G dongle is quite good. You need to go into the advanced settings for the dongle and force HSDPA network access (otherwise it is more likely to use GPRS - which is sh**). You need to disable the software it installs (on Windows) - e.g. by using msconfig to stop it starting up - and just use the connection dial-up connection it creates for 3G access - then you can manually reset your adapter metrics. On HSDPA I have been able to hook up a Vista laptop to my home network (connected via ADSL2+) using VPN and get a "reasonable" VNC remote desktop connection to my server.

The O2 techie support is great - I was on the phone to a support tech (in England!!) for about 15 minutes (0800) while he helped me get out of GPRS hell!!

You can tell if you connected to GPRS. With good signal strength for the dongle you get loads of packet loss and web page timeouts (especially when the GSM networks are busy in the evenings).

Bob
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I didn't say you couldn't hack your way around the problems, the point was you shouldn't have to. For something to be considered a good home user product then you should be able to plug in, follow the quick start guide, and then it works as described (without having to ring support). Which most mobile brodband i've seen doesn't. It connects but usually with issues. Kinda the way home broadband is going with these auto setup CDs that set up 64bit WEP on your wifi -_-

BTW first thing i tried doing was disabling it in msconfig but it doesn't seem to show up there as anything identifiable.
 
Skidilliplop said:
I didn't say you couldn't hack your way around the problems, the point was you shouldn't have to. For something to be considered a good home user product then you should be able to plug in, follow the quick start guide, and then it works as described (without having to ring support). Which most mobile brodband i've seen doesn't. It connects but usually with issues. Kinda the way home broadband is going with these auto setup CDs that set up 64bit WEP on your wifi -_-

BTW first thing i tried doing was disabling it in msconfig but it doesn't seem to show up there as anything identifiable.
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Sorry my bad - I see what you mean and totally agree - user friendly this modem is not... I also thought it was a really dumb idea to have the driver(s) in flash storage build into the device.

There was no support for Windows 2003 Server/Windows XP x64 I noted and no way to download drivers (that I could find).

The modem was a real pain in the ass to setup in Linux. I only got as far as unmounting the useless modem driver virtual CD drive - necessary to see the actual device (stupid, stupid design). Couldn't figure out the correct modem commands to get it working under Ubuntu...

FYI the modem does work well when hooked into a router with a 3G port (it does need to have the dual USB plug lead plugged into 2 ports of a powered USB hub - connected to the router - to get good reception). Not a cheap option of course...

Bob
 
Obviously in a few years time people will be able to provide mobile connections, but I guess its difficult now as it seems that should I have 3gb its 3gb of information processed as opposed to 3gb of actual downloads? I wont be changing completely over to mobile till this is not the case
 
roid said:
Doubt I would go for it, unless the pings for games was good. Think I've read somewhere that for that kind of thing, at least with the 8mb dongle variety, it's not great.
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I have Sprint & have the phone hooked to my system, using it like a modem. I play Darkfall online, it seems alright 250-300 ping & I am in NA playing on a EU server. Hope to get back to DSL soon though.
 
bigredshark said:
So, if you could genuinely get 20mbps+ from mobile broadband at a decent price would you scrap home broadband?
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Probably, but that's because where I live I can only get 2mbit via home broadband. If I lived in an area with a good reliable cable/dsl/ethernet connection (say a consistent >10mbit <20ms) then I wouldn't touch mobile with a bargepole.

As it stands mobile connectivity is absolutely atrocious here anyway, no signal in some rooms and on a very good day I managed to get around 1mbit speed (often much lower around 192kbit speed).
 
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