Mobile phone tethering vs dongle

[waywardtags]

Internet Dongle for Narrowboat users

Getting slightly bored of only being able to use the internet in one room, I’ve invested in this THREE dongle.

It basically allows me to connect anywhere, at least anywhere where there is THREE network.

Currently, it allows me to connect at 3G speeds, which are fairly good, THREE have the best 3G network in the UK. I did some research on the subject, and it seems that they invested heavily in it. Whilst EE rushed out the 4G.

 

EE 4g Claims

Although EE claim to offer 4G here, I purchased a SIM to try out these claims.

Turns out their service was patchy at best, nothing like what their website claimed, (full coverage at 4G speeds), as pictured.

This is what it says for DE13 8DZ….

Even if David Bacon uses EE, after the credit ran out, I threw it in the canal! Useless…

 

Mobile phone tethering vs Dongle

Mobile phones are fine for the odd bit of surfing, but if the weather changes, or for no particular reason at all, they can disconnect, which is inconvenient and not what I’m looking for from my internet connection.

Tethered mobile phone

As you can see, I have to harness my phone to the narrowboat window in order for it to function properly.

Mobile technology is particular susceptible to sunspots and solar activity.

Three dongle

I want something stable, with good speeds and 99% uptime.

 

Charges

These are the mobile phone tethering charges. You have to top your phone up by the respective amounts before these options become available.

 

Pay per month 1GB.

(lasts up to 30 days)

1GB £10 Pay per month 3GB.

(lasts up to 30 days)

3GB £15 Pay per month 7GB.

(last up to 30 days)

7GB £25 Pay per month 500MB.

(lasts up to 48 hours)

500MB £2.99

 

 

The cost of the dongle is 12GB for £59.90 which can be topped up by credit card. The dongle itself lasts 12 months from activation.

 

Speeds

Dongle connection speeds

This is the speeds I’m currently getting on my THREE ZTE MF730M Dongle, roughly what you can expect from a BT package on copper cables.

Tethered phone connection speeds

This is the speed on a THREE network, 3G enabled tethered mobile phone.

You can see the difference – 1MB per second.

 

Uptime

This is more difficult to measure, but from experience, I’d say tethering has pretty low uptime, maybe 70%.

Dongle should have 100% uptime, as long as the network is available.

It’s not an either/or scenario. I can still use my phone for internet connection, the same as I can still use the marina free wifi.

For anyone thinking of doing this, I’d recommend getting the pay-as-you go sim, like this one and avoid getting involved in any sort of obligation to continue or commit yourself.

They can be found on amazon.

 

(Taken from http://www.michaeltyler.co.uk)

[bottle]

4g, 50 Gb a month, download speed 50Mbs, use a 'mi-fi' with twin aerials

 

 

bit slow tonight

[Paul C]

Firstly its worth a double-check on the terminology. Tethering is obviously when a mobile phone is used as a hotspot; and dongle is when a device is connected by USB to one computer. The third popular way to connect to the mobile network is via a Mi-Fi unit. I've used all three, and Mi-fi units seem to enjoy the best reception and highest speeds - especially if they're a better unit rather than the standard one you might get with a package. My knowhow is a bit out of date now because I never got into this 4G stuff though.

 

I hung the mi-fi in a window off the curtain rail and it always got reasonable reception. I had both - a basic one and a better one with an aerial socket (and tried an aerial) - there's a minority of cases where the signal is marginal and the aerial helps, but most of the time the mi-fi itself did okay. Positioning is important though.

[john6767]

4g, 50 Gb a month, download speed 50Mbs, use a 'mi-fi' with twin aerials

 

 

bit slow tonight

That is a very good ping time for mobile.

[rustydiver]

That is a very good ping time for mobile.

This a bit slow when I tried out mytplink 3/4G router/ modem with a Solwise antenna and a 3 mobile sim I was hitting 75mbps.

Mind you I was at home at the time.

On the boat I can Bly seem to get 3G so quite a bit slower.

 

Edit. My fat fingers didn't press multi quote.

Edited June 20, 2016 by rustydiver

[nicknorman]

This a bit slow when I tried out mytplink 3/4G router/ modem with a Solwise antenna and a 3 mobile sim I was hitting 75mbps.

Mind you I was at home at the time.

On the boat I can Bly seem to get 3G so quite a bit slower.

Edit. My fat fingers didn't press multi quote.

Ping time vs download speed - different things.

[john6767]

Ping time vs download speed - different things.

Indeed they are, I was commenting on the low ping time, you would typically see 50ms at best on mobile, with home broadband perhaps 6ms. The actual download and upload speeds whilst good, are less relevant for general use once you get to a reasonable speed, which personally it would put at a much lower figure than you are getting anyway. Others no doubt will claim they need 100Mb/s download for it to be usable.

[rustydiver]

I was referring to the download speeds but what is the ping thing mean then.

Is see it when I do speed tests but never really took much notice off it.

I'm just happy if I plug it in and it works.

[meerlaan]

Can I ask what mifi unit everyone is using ? I recently purchased a 50gb contract with ee which comes with a osprey 2 (I think) but don't get anywhere near those speeds...! (I am in London) thanks

[john6767]

I was referring to the download speeds but what is the ping thing mean then.

Is see it when I do speed tests but never really took much notice off it.

I'm just happy if I plug it in and it works.

Think of it like an "echo", it measures the round trip time and is an indication of the networks latency. Once you have got over a critical bandwidth to do what you want, eg enough to keep up with video streaming (say 2Mb/s) then additional bandwidth does not buy you anything as you don't need it, but the latency will then hold you back. Remember that the data that is sent is broken up into packets, and each packet has to be acknowledged, so if the latency makes the acknowledgement not be snappy you will not get good response. The striving for more bandwidth is a bit like people buying the latest fasted PC when all you do is word processing and email.

 

BTW, ping is the name of the command line utility that is there in Unix, it lets you "ping" a given IP address and shows you the response. It is also available in the Windows command line, and built into tools and apps for mobile devices.

 

Here is an example, on home broadband. The time will of course be dependent on where the server is located, a transatlantic round trip will inevitably increase the time

 

 

D:\>ping google.com

Pinging google.com [216.58.210.46] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 216.58.210.46: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=57

Reply from 216.58.210.46: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=57

Reply from 216.58.210.46: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=57

Reply from 216.58.210.46: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 216.58.210.46:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 11ms, Maximum = 11ms, Average = 11ms

TTL (Time To Live) is a counter that is decremented each time a packet goes through a router, and when it gets to 0 the packet is thrown away, that stoop a rouge packet bouncing round the network for ever!

 

There is another utility that lets you see how a packet gets to its detonation, "tracert". If you use the with a hostname it will show you the hops through routers to get to the destination. Note that not all routers on the internet will reveal their IP address, so you will see some as ****.

 

For 40'ish year old technology it is simple and rather elegant.

 

Note, that above is a simplified explanation, but I think it gives the general idea. For more precise definition Google is your friend.

Edited June 21, 2016 by john6767

[rustydiver]

Wow thanks great explanation. I sort off understand it now.

Google gives me too much info and the pings going to my brain cell are getting a bit slow and fuzzy now.

[Top cat]

Can I ask what mifi unit everyone is using ? I recently purchased a 50gb contract with ee which comes with a osprey 2 (I think) but don't get anywhere near those speeds...! (I am in London) thanks

Ive just bought a Hauwie 5776s mainly because it has a Ts9 aerial port. On its own it gets a stronger signal than my Moto G. After being in a dead spot for a 3 signal up the ashby I bought an aerial to go on the roof, this boosted the signal from a marginal H+ to 4 bar 3G.

 

 

Top Cat

[Richard10002]

Online gaming seems to need a good ping time. Presumably if I hit a tennis ball in England, my opponent in Australia needs to see out very quickly or we will get out of sync.

[john6767]

Online gaming seems to need a good ping time. Presumably if I hit a tennis ball in England, my opponent in Australia needs to see out very quickly or we will get out of sync.

Yep that is exactly it. I always say that for gaming poor ping times will kill you, literally if you are playing COD.

[Guest]

I suppose it depends what you need from the net, but my elderly Iphone tethered to my elderly Linux based laptop, via Three network is great on the cut. Not as good when using the Windows 10 machine, but still OK. We use the same setup in the house; no landline these days for us.

I know there are better, faster ways of achieving the net on board.

[Lily Rose]

Ive just bought a Hauwie 5776s mainly because it has a Ts9 aerial port. On its own it gets a stronger signal than my Moto G. After being in a dead spot for a 3 signal up the ashby I bought an aerial to go on the roof, this boosted the signal from a marginal H+ to 4 bar 3G.

Top Cat

I bought a Huawei E5573 a couple of months ago and used it for a return trip from Calcutt to Snarestone at the top of the Ashby. Device was velcroed in the window and I did NOT connect an aerial.

 

In the 12 day period, and about 20 mooring locations, we got a decent signal every time and only one of those times was 3G, all the rest were 4G according to the Huawei app.

 

http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Devices/Huawei/E5573_4G_Mobile_Wi-Fi?memory=0&colour=White

 

On a 1 month contract, which I cancelled promptly in order to buy a 12GB/12 month SIM for £30 (so I'm not shelling out monthly subscriptions when I'm not using the boat), the upfront cost was £39 c/w c£60 on Amazon.

[tonyt40]

Can I ask what mifi unit everyone is using ? I recently purchased a 50gb contract with ee which comes with a osprey 2 (I think) but don't get anywhere near those speeds...! (I am in London) thanks

I use a ZTE MF93D like this:-

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ZTE-MF93D-100MBPS-4G-LTE-HOTSPOT-MOBILE-BROADBAND-ROUTER-WIFI-WI-FI-EE-UNLOCKED-/172159803109?hash=item2815861ee5:g:syMAAOSwGYVXBiOl

 

Paid £27.00 for it. I use it with a 12GB data sim from Three network (lasts 12months) for £30 from Three shop. Ours is weekend / occasional use. I have not checked speed that often but it is generally 20-30mbps with the unit inside the boat and no external aerials. I'm pleased with it.