New cell phone and 4G

I upgraded cell phones over the weekend and moved into the 4G world. I can not beleive how fast it is. I'm seeing 15 to 20 Mbps. How do I get that at home, without the 2GB data limit? Granted I don't really need that fast for general surfing, but think how nice it would be for downloading ISOs or streaming video.

T-1?

It would be nice.

bozo wrote:

T-1?
It would be nice.

Actually T-1 is only 1.44mbs (12 4khz voice channels + overhead) My service provider gives me a theoretical 15mbs, but in practice I get at best 12mbs. There is also a 25mbs option as long as the distance from the service center is less than a mile, but I am too cheap to go for it.

bdquick wrote:

I upgraded cell phones over the weekend and moved into the 4G world. I can not beleive how fast it is.

In theory 4G can go up to 100mbs, but it's not obtainable in practice. On the down side you 'll find battery life will be greatly reduced due to the nature of the beast.

I have an up to 8Mbps connection at home, which runs around 5. Might be a little faster later this summer because my ISP/phone/cable provider is bringing fiber to the house. All of the new construction here has been getting it for years, but now the are bringing it into the old construction. I will still have a speed limit though unfortunately.

Only 1.44mbs? Only 12 mbs? Only 5mbs? On a good day I'm getting 25 Kbs! Sure beats dial-up, though. There are faster options, but, like Laz, I'm too cheap to go for them.

bdquick wrote:

my ISP/phone/cable provider is bringing fiber to the house.

Wow you are in luck. Potential T3 or 44.73mbs. You'll find your ISP will soon offer you much improved bandwidth (At a cost of course) as well as IPTV. They'll have a lot of investment to recover. Don't forget though that your overall results will be tempered by the slowest / busiest server on your path. I am getting 12mbs on bandwidth tests, but on a large download the math indicates a far slower rate.

bozo wrote:

Only 1.44mbs? Only 12 mbs? Only 5mbs? On a good day I'm getting 25 Kbs! Sure beats dial-up, though. There are faster options, but, like Laz, I'm too cheap to go for them.

That's an iteresting bit rate. What kind of service provides that?
Being retired makes me far more miserly than when I was a carefree youth!

I've got fixed wireless "broadband". I'm far enough out that the only options are dial-up, satellite, or this wireless. Satellite is too expensive, and, last time I checked them out, had too restrictive plans. When the wireless finally got out here, it's just a little more expensive than my dial-up was, but quite a bit faster. I think my service is theoretically 384 Kbs, but I've never gotten anywhere near that. I did mis-type my rate earlier, it should have been 28 KB/s (Bytes, not bits). I think the fastest I've ever seen was 44KB/s, very briefly during a longer download, but most of the time it just hovers around 24-25 KB/s, occaisionly bouncing to 33 or so, sometimes dropping to 18. My biggest gripe is the lag I get. When clicking on a link, sometimes things just sit there, doing nothing for up to 2 min, more often 15 to 30 seconds. The ISP says every thing is working at their end, and, since I'm using Linux, they have nothing to offer to help, except to try removing my router. I did, and it maybe helped a little, but not significantly. When I use my laptop booted into windows, it's the same thing, so I don't think it's a problem at the computer. I think I'm just so far out that *any* problems effect me service, whether it too many people logged in at once (which the ISP says doesn't matter) or cumulative effects of weather or atmospheric conditions (which the ISP says also doesn't matter) or whatever it is just effects me worse because I'm at the end of the line. The same was true with my dial-up I had, where with a 56K modem I got maybe 8-13K service.

Yep, being retired and on a fixed income does make a difference. I should probably be looking for a job flipping burgers or something to pay for my leisurely pursuits. But I'm far too busy now!

Yes, according to the ISP's the trouble is always leaving them just fine. There are a number of problems inherent with any radio related service, which are mainly line of sight transmission. Hard faults are rare these days, but atmospherics play havoc with the signals, specially in areas where large temperature variations are experienced. Radio noise, ducting at certain times of the day, multipath reflections, etc. Lot's of packet re-transmissions due to errors will slow down data transfer significantly. Sometimes reducing MTU size can help with this but not always.

There are a number of spots where you can test your connections, one of the better one's is here: http://www.broadband.gov/qualitytest/
There is another one at the Argonne National Labs, but it requires a java plugin.
http://ndt.anl.gov:7123/

"While many smartphone users are still on 3G and are waiting for 4G to be available, Samsung is now testing 5G networks, capable of getting speeds up to 1gbps. Obviously, we're years away from seeing these in the wild (the company is shooting for 2020) but it's still an amazing improvement over what many people are experiencing now." --summary from /.

/. article

It's all exciting stuff, but with a troublesome aspect. There was a time when the west, and the U.S. in particular lead the world in innovation, while Asia produced crude copies. Somewhere along the line it all changed. I could be wrong, but have a feeling that it came about via exporting technology for the sake of cheap production, higher profits. I wonder if it can ever be reversed.

Well some of that production is starting to come back. Apple is supposed to be bringing the production of its high end PCs back on shore, and I've heard of other companies doing similar.

As for you slower than expected connection, I would also expect line quality issues. Possibly bad pings or even unresponsive DNS servers.