The power of the dongle

[by'eck]

Trouble with phone internet is you can't receive a phone call whilst surfing, or can you?

 

Don't see why not

[DaveP]

Yes - phone calls are just another data stream coming over the air from your provider; same with sms.

 

Dave

[Minos]

I have noticed in recent times that signal strength seems to have little to do with data speeds. I have had very good speed with only 6% signal strength and poor speeds with 40%. I think the performance is mostly affected by how many other people are using the system in your neighbourhood. And performance seems to be worst between, say 7pm and 9pm.

Data speed and signal strength are not necessarily connected - for example, you can have a stronger signal but no antenna diversity from your service provider, necessarily limiting your data speed when compared with a weaker signal maintained through multiple antennae.

 

When you have antenna diversity on a mobile signal, the interference on each antenna you are connected to is different so you end up with a connection which is more robust by several orders of magnitude - even though it may be weaker. This means that faster data speeds can be enabled.

 

The other factor, as you say, is the capacity and current use of the exchange you are tapping into. Some mobile networks deliver high speed connections at the front end, only to then feed into a bottleneck. Sam Knows is a good resource for checking - although for mobile internet checking you would need to know where your signal feeds into an exchange.

[Smelly]

As Minos says; albeit with different language, it's about contention ratio these days... how many people are trying to use the same bandwidth? Bearing in mind that a lot of the time most users are not moving data, the providers will fill those gaps with other people's data. Thus the amount of data that can be moved down a particular channel is limited by how many other people are using it.

 

I see this when a page hangs, and I ask the machine to reload it; it will look for the next available channel (band) and the page loads in no time.

 

I suspect that 3 deal will have a lot of users streaming down a relatively small pipe soon, if not already.

 

Memories that live with me are how crap Freeserve became; they didn't have enough bandwidth to cope with the number of people that signed up & the Ubuntu Cloud; another good example, although slightly different in that a lot of people; me included, signed up to the Beta release.

[smileypete]

Couple of websites that might come in handy for dongle addicts users:

 

http://www.sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk/search

 

http://ukmobilecoverage.co.uk/

 

cheers,

Pete.

[Alan Saunders]

Couple of websites that might come in handy for dongle addicts users:

 

http://www.sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk/search

 

http://ukmobilecoverage.co.uk/

 

cheers, Pete.

 

They may be interesting to broadband users but when you are suffering a poor mobile connection and looking for a nearby mast they are useless.

 

Sitefinder will display a map with no mast locations even though the table below the map indicates there should be some. When you zoom out it says "cannot display locations - zoom in". If they provided a database of locations with provider and capacity I could do a better job.

 

The coverage maps are only slightly better - my current GPRS connection gives me a ten second burst of data at ~40kbs followed by a fifteen second pause, then an infinite pause or a disconnect. I can connect to a Vodafone EDGE transmitter from here but that is worse than useless - even a simple web page fails to load. It seems the network is swamped by thousands of customers all failing to get any useful data.

 

Alan

[smileypete]

They may be interesting to broadband users but when you are suffering a poor mobile connection and looking for a nearby mast they are useless.

 

Sitefinder will display a map with no mast locations even though the table below the map indicates there should be some. When you zoom out it says "cannot display locations - zoom in". If they provided a database of locations with provider and capacity I could do a better job.

It is not magick! Best to use it when you're near a town and plan ahead to find where on your route you can get a connection.

 

If I look for 'Braunston' it asks me to zoom in, not out, to see the individual towers. (Searching and looking at 3 towers used 600kb of downloaded data.)

 

From the FAQ:

 

Can I have a copy of the Sitefinder Database?

 

The data within Sitefinder is owned by the mobile network operators, who supplied it on a voluntary basis. It is presented in an agreed format as the underlying data is regarded as commercially and security sensitive. Ofcom does not have the Industry's consent to release either the data or any other derivations from it.

 

Because of an ongoing legal process arising from a Freedom of Information request, there is uncertainty whether Ofcom may have to disclose the underlying dataset at some point. Meanwhile we are not, therefore, able to supply the underlying dataset to any enquirers.

 

cheers,

Pete.

[BigGirlsBlouse]

I do have an android phone and do tether it to the laptop regularly as it gives us an additional 2gb on top of my 5gb per month from 3, but it's no good here because there's no T Mobile signal.

 

Still connected via the 3 dongle by the way - the family are going to decide on which new router to buy tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi Blackrose

I'd love an alternative to the dongle because I agree it can be very unreliable, but we're cc'ers so have no wireless hubs to connect to so I don't think your option offers us an alternative.

[BigGirlsBlouse]

I know it might me a bit late now... But for wired broadband go for net gear and choose one which has mimo (multiple in multiple out) technology which gives secure stable connection without dropout. Also, go for one which supports the wireless standard 802.11n which is faster. But if you rally want to protect yourself against the future choose one which is dual band with the additional band at 5ghz which the latest high end laptops use.

 

For mobile broadband three have come out with a new high performance 3G dongle which they call premium. It uses HSDPA technology and mimo for multiple channel use and hence higher speed. I have seen this démo'd on canal drifters NB and it is significantly better than my iPad 3G. He had 4 bars at the Derwent barrage, and I had nothing! It can even be orientated physically to pick up a better signal like any antennae.

[nb Innisfree]

For mobile broadband three have come out with a new high performance 3G dongle which they call premium. It uses HSDPA technology and mimo for multiple channel use and hence higher speed. I have seen this démo'd on canal drifters NB and it is significantly better than my iPad 3G. He had 4 bars at the Derwent barrage, and I had nothing! It can even be orientated physically to pick up a better signal like any antennae.

 

Does it have a socket for an external aerial?

[Scooby]

Does it have a socket for an external aerial?

YEEEEESSSSS it has a aeriel socket, i have been to the three shop and bought one, £34.99 just for the dongle and using my original simcard, hauwei E367 hspa +, first time of trying it and it actually was slightly lower signal than my E122, so disappointing start but did work verygood but just lacked a little more for my online gaming, although 5 bars and perfect for everything else, will be doing more tests later and will post results, i have had a problem istalling the software but cos i using a router i can get around that, rather annoying when i have windows 7 and it struggling to install.

 

It could be cos i have 64 bit home premium version.