4G & Distance from Site

galait

Hi

Just testing Meteor using and E3131 with a TP Link M3220 , I am 4.2 Miles as the crow flies from the Nearest Meteor Mast and getting full 5 Bars of 3G with the gear in the Attic ,
The speeds are great and anywhere from 3 to 5 Mb ( I currently use 1Mb Congestged DSL) Skype , Downloads etc are nice and fast ,Although things slowed down a lot last night around 8 pm but were fine again about 15 mins later , I have one a piece of equipment that requires low latency and is the only drawback.
I live in one of the Trial areas from Meteor 4G so expecting service as soon as they launch, Big question is what will the latency be like with 4G if I can get it.

Also my Local Meteor Store are doing 20Gb a month for 12months for 10E/month which is excellent value

Any Thoughts out there ??

ED E

Not up on cellular tech myself but radio is radio. The fact is the OTA signals are slower so I suspect it wont change a huge amount.

KK Dub

4G LTE uses so called "Flat Architecture" which should reduce latency compared to 3G. What will happen in practice once these networks are built and have load (customers) on them remains to be seen.

long_b

galait wrote: »

I live in one of the Trial areas from Meteor 4G ?

How do you know that ?

lmimmfn

ive seen LTE with pings of just under 25ms, it surprised me, but it should be pretty good for you.

galait

long_b wrote: »

How do you know that ?

Vodafone and Meteor take lead in race for 4G launch

http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/vodafone-and-meteor-take-lead-in-race-for-4g-launch-29521593.html

BeerWolf

I'm eager to know more of 4G's capabilities - living in the countryside, I'm fed up to high heavens with my current wireless broadband [RippleCom]. (Being a gamer, it's constantly PLAGUED with lag spiking issues that make online gaming near on impossible at times!)

Shyboy

galait wrote: »

Hi

Just testing Meteor using and E3131 with a TP Link M3220 , I am 4.2 Miles as the crow flies from the Nearest Meteor Mast and getting full 5 Bars of 3G with the gear in the Attic ,
The speeds are great and anywhere from 3 to 5 Mb ( I currently use 1Mb Congestged DSL) Skype , Downloads etc are nice and fast ,Although things slowed down a lot last night around 8 pm but were fine again about 15 mins later , I have one a piece of equipment that requires low latency and is the only drawback.
I live in one of the Trial areas from Meteor 4G so expecting service as soon as they launch, Big question is what will the latency be like with 4G if I can get it.

Also my Local Meteor Store are doing 20Gb a month for 12months for 10E/month which is excellent value

Any Thoughts out there ??

Did you use an external 3G antenna wired to your E3131? Just wanting to improve my 3G reception and really interested in how you did it?

Cheers!!

The Real B-man

Its the Backhaul from the Masts that is the Problem, This needs to be upgraded for LTE to reach its full potential

galait

Shyboy wrote: »

Did you use an external 3G antenna wired to your E3131? Just wanting to improve my 3G reception and really interested in how you did it?

Cheers!!

No External Antenna , Just put into a sealed Box and taped to outside of Velux Window in Attic , All well so far

galait

Test Just Taken now , Leaves my 1mb DSL for dead

siblers

That's not very spectacular for 4g, plenty of folks get those kinda speeds during off peak times with 3g.

ED E

I get 10 easy on 3G ^^

galait

siblers wrote: »

That's not very spectacular for 4g, plenty of folks get those kinda speeds during off peak times with 3g.

Never said it was 4G , It's 3G 4.3 miles from Nearest Mast :rolleyes:

iwantbroadband

Shyboy wrote: »

Did you use an external 3G antenna wired to your E3131? Just wanting to improve my 3G reception and really interested in how you did it?

Cheers!!

I use an external antenna and it works great. I've detailed my setup here previously: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=81441236&postcount=4

galait

ED E wrote: »

I get 10 easy on 3G ^^

I am in a Rural Location and my DSL is a poor congested 1 meg , Very happy that a simple setup is giving me almost 5 times the speed for less 25% of what I am paying Vodafone for DSL/Call Bundle

bealtine

BeerWolf wrote: »

I'm eager to know more of 4G's capabilities - living in the countryside, I'm fed up to high heavens with my current wireless broadband [RippleCom]. (Being a gamer, it's constantly PLAGUED with lag spiking issues that make online gaming near on impossible at times!)

Well as long as you remember that our glorious regulator divided up the spectrum to maximize the profit for Comreg (and do very little for consumers) and thus made allocations of 2x5Mhz and some 2x10Mhz and one 2x20Mhz.

2 x 5Mhz is exactly the same as current 3g allocations so there will not be much improvement there, 2x10Mhz will give a slight improvement over current 3g but not an awful lot...

So from a technical stand point nothing much will change with 4g, the only thing that will actually change in reality is the CDMA cell breathing which is really really annoying...if you want fast 4g speeds you'll have to emigrate.

So if you are waiting for super fast speeds it won't be happening in Ireland

galait

bealtine wrote: »

So if you are waiting for super fast speeds it won't be happening in Ireland

So Since you are so clued in why would they spend €850 on Licenses if there is to be little or no improvement over 3G


http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/32545-will-the-numbers-add-up-for

BeerWolf

bealtine wrote: »

Well as long as you remember that our glorious regulator divided up the spectrum to maximize the profit for Comreg (and do very little for consumers) and thus made allocations of 2x5Mhz and some 2x10Mhz and one 2x20Mhz.

2 x 5Mhz is exactly the same as current 3g allocations so there will not be much improvement there, 2x10Mhz will give a slight improvement over current 3g but not an awful lot...

So from a technical stand point nothing much will change with 4g, the only thing that will actually change in reality is the CDMA cell breathing which is really really annoying...if you want fast 4g speeds you'll have to emigrate.

So if you are waiting for super fast speeds it won't be happening in Ireland

Thanks for making my hopes wither and die

bealtine

BeerWolf wrote: »

Thanks for making my hopes wither and die

It's important that the facts be made clear and not just the marketing mis-information...one telco (marketing) guy claims that 4g can do 180Mb/s...
Obviously his grasp of basic mathematics is somewhat err lacking. His most recent claim is 4g can do 60Mb/s

4G in other countries can go fast(er) but that requires lots and lots of spectrum (bandwidth) but here we have mostly 2x5Mhz and some 2x10Mhz channels (and one 2x20Mhz) so no spectrum for you so no real speed increase either...

3g/4G are shared mediums so the more people that use the sector/mast the less speed will be delivered to the handset. I liken it to a hose pipe watering the garden...everything is fine while there is only one hose from the tap. Now you divide the hose in two less water gets delivered through each hose and so on with 4 hoses you get one fourth of what the tap can deliver.

I'd expect to see maybe 3/6Mb/s (maybe slightly more) on lightly loaded sectors but once the load comes on I expect to see significant speed drops just like 3g today.

Vodafone had a page on their website which outlined the probable speeds to expect from 4g but that was pulled (probably by marketing)and some "sooper fast" nonsense replaced it.

The title of this thread is "distance from mast" that particular issue is governed by the inverse square law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law

Bottom line is that 4g as structured here will not deliver anything like the marketing bs promises, it's a physical impossibility unless the marketing departments have recently discovered some new laws of physics

galait

bealtine wrote: »

It's important that the facts be made clear and not just the marketing mis-information...one telco (marketing) guy claims that 4g can do 180Mb/s...
Obviously his grasp of basic mathematics is somewhat err lacking. His most recent claim is 4g can do 60Mb/s

4G in other countries can go fast(er) but that requires lots and lots of spectrum (bandwidth) but here we have mostly 2x5Mhz and some 2x10Mhz channels (and one 2x20Mhz) so no spectrum for you so no real speed increase either...

3g/4G are shared mediums so the more people that use the sector/mast the less speed will be delivered to the handset. I liken it to a hose pipe watering the garden...everything is fine while there is only one hose from the tap. Now you divide the hose in two less water gets delivered through each hose and so on with 4 hoses you get one fourth of what the tap can deliver.

I'd expect to see maybe 3/6Mb/s (maybe slightly more) on lightly loaded sectors but once the load comes on I expect to see significant speed drops just like 3g today.

Vodafone had a page on their website which outlined the probable speeds to expect from 4g but that was pulled (probably by marketing)and some "sooper fast" nonsense replaced it.

The title of this thread is "distance from mast" that particular issue is governed by the inverse square law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law

Bottom line is that 4g as structured here will not deliver anything like the marketing bs promises, it's a physical impossibility unless the marketing departments have recently discovered some new laws of physics

So why spend €850 Million ?

bealtine

galait wrote: »

So why spend €850 Million ?

ask the telcos..I'm just outlining the facts and the engineering laws

ED E

galait wrote: »

So why spend €850 Million ?

Because if Three have 4G then o2 have to have it too or slow consumers will be like "OMG they dont have 4g, they suck!". As above, its all marketing.


Bealtine: What size blocks did they assign in the UK and US do you know?

bealtine

ED E wrote: »

Because if Three have 4G then o2 have to have it too or slow consumers will be like "OMG they dont have 4g, they suck!". As above, its all marketing.


Bealtine: What size blocks did they assign in the UK and US do you know?

No idea about the US and Canada....
In the UK it's 2 x 10 MHz of 800 MHz spectrum, 1 x 20 MHz of 2.6 GHz spectrum and 1 x 25 MHz of 2.6 GHz spectrum.
Most operators got allocations like this...

Note the 10Mhz blocks
found this : http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/4g-and-lte-everything-you-need-to-know-926835

So slightly better than ours but not by much...


Here's ours : https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/98201054/p121115.png

Remember all speed tests done by journalists to date have been on empty networks so no loading on the sectors at all, the speed tests for Irish journalists were all carefully stage managed, the journalists were all right beside the mast and only one or two phones were used in the "tests" so they are utterly unrealistic "tests"

galait

ED E wrote: »

Because if Three have 4G then o2 have to have it too or slow consumers will be like "OMG they dont have 4g, they suck!". As above, its all marketing.

That is too simplistic to be accurate , Why would they spend €850 million only to say that we have 4G aswell , It's just too much cash to waste

bealtine

galait wrote: »

That is too simplistic to be accurate , Why would they spend €850 million only to say that we have 4G aswell , It's just too much cash to waste

Seems logical to me...4g is supposedly the next "big thing".

Anyway I'm not following your logic are you saying that because they spent lots of cash by definition it must somehow be better? Even if the laws of physics will somehow magically be broken just by spending more money?

galait

bealtine wrote: »

Seems logical to me...4g is supposedly the next "big thing".

Anyway I'm not following your logic are you saying that because they spent lots of cash by definition it must somehow be better? Even if the laws of physics will somehow magically be broken just by spending more money?

It's a simple question why spend a billion when its total crap ,

bealtine

galait wrote: »

It's a simple question why spend a billion when its total crap ,

so ask the telco marketing departments...

galait

bealtine wrote: »

so ask the telco marketing departments...

So the combined Telco can afford to burn a billion just to be seen to be progressive

bealtine

galait wrote: »

So the combined Telco can afford to burn a billion just to be seen to be progressive

That would be my opinion...as I cannot see how 4G will deliver these amazing marketing promises, perhaps after they've taken the blue pills and then write the marketing copy.
The cash was spent on bandwidth in different frequency bands other than the standard 3g bands. This was known as the digital dividend. <- note this meant cash for the regulator and by extension the government, throw TV off its bands and sell those frequencies to the telcos.

I had the misfortune of watching saorview down the country recently and it was simply awful far far worse than the analogue service they had previously. A lot of money was spent on that too and the service, as I experienced it, was awful. So spending money does not equate to better service.

"Ya cannae beat psychics Capn" and facts are facts...

The only benefits to 4g are the simpler infrastructure (which doesn't benefit consumers much) so simpler diagnostics and maintenance for telcos.
No CDMA cell breathing and slightly faster speeds on lightly loaded cells.

Anyway I'm done with this circular logic, spending lots of cash does not by definition mean anything

Scruff

Are ping and jitter supposed to be any better than 3g?

bealtine

Scruff wrote: »

Are ping and jitter supposed to be any better than 3g?

Yes, certainly in theory and in practice it depends on the quality of the network and backhaul etc

ED E

galait wrote: »

It's a simple question why spend a billion when its total crap ,

Ever hear the phrase "HD ready"? Bullshít sells.

galait

4G Meteor Modem in Attic 4.2 miles from nearest Meteor Mast , According to Meteor Site my location is 200 or 300 metres outside coverage

Impetus

galait wrote: »

Hi

Just testing Meteor using and E3131 with a TP Link M3220 , I am 4.2 Miles as the crow flies from the Nearest Meteor Mast and getting full 5 Bars of 3G with the gear in the Attic ,
The speeds are great and anywhere from 3 to 5 Mb ( I currently use 1Mb Congestged DSL) Skype , Downloads etc are nice and fast ,Although things slowed down a lot last night around 8 pm but were fine again about 15 mins later , I have one a piece of equipment that requires low latency and is the only drawback.
I live in one of the Trial areas from Meteor 4G so expecting service as soon as they launch, Big question is what will the latency be like with 4G if I can get it.

Also my Local Meteor Store are doing 20Gb a month for 12months for 10E/month which is excellent value

Any Thoughts out there ??

If you live 7km from the cellsite, whether you get LTE services or not will largely depend on the frequency allocation that site uses for LTE. It they use 800 MHz, it has a longer reach (than 1,800 MHz).

After that you have to take into account topology (buildings, hills etc) between you and the cellsite.

After that, if you have acceptable LTE service you might do a ping test.

The frequency allocations are in comreg publication 12/123 - but this document leaves it up to the network operators which frequency is allocated to each area.

galait

Impetus wrote: »

If you live 7km from the cellsite, whether you get LTE services or not will largely depend on the frequency allocation that site uses for LTE. It they use 800 MHz, it has a longer reach (than 1,800 MHz).

After that you have to take into account topology (buildings, hills etc) between you and the cellsite.

After that, if you have acceptable LTE service you might do a ping test.

The frequency allocations are in comreg publication 12/123 - but this document leaves it up to the network operators which frequency is allocated to each area.

I am getting 4G with 30 to 40 ms pings to google dns server

Impetus

galait wrote: »

I am getting 4G with 30 to 40 ms pings to google dns server

I typically get a 7ms ping in same country servers via a fibre connection (in mainland Europe, using a company with a fairly well engineered infrastructure). Any wireless based connections will be somewhat slower.

[With Ireland's massive installed base of Google, Microsoft Cloud, Amazon, Amazon Cloud (AWS), and similar servers, ping times should be miniscule when using these sites. Even Google is selling cloud services of late].

galait

bealtine wrote: »

Yes, certainly in theory and in practice it depends on the quality of the network and backhaul etc

The reality is that 4G is way ahead of 3G despite what the "Experts" on the Thread claim , Again I am 4.2 miles from Mast as crow flies and get 2 bars of coverage , VOIP with Blueface is perfect and other Latency dependent services such as a dre**box.
Speeds are around 5mb each way , I intend mount 2 x Outdoor aerials as soon all providers have launched,

Impetus

galait wrote: »

The reality is that 4G is way ahead of 3G despite what the "Experts" on the Thread claim , Again I am 4.2 miles from Mast as crow flies and get 2 bars of coverage , VOIP with Blueface is perfect and other Latency dependent services such as a dre**box.
Speeds are around 5mb each way , I intend mount 2 x Outdoor aerials as soon all providers have launched,

You may be lucky to have 4G in an area with low population / usage density, and the carrier(s) in your area using low frequency spectrum to maximise range, the price rationing of wireless spectrum means that you won’t be able to view Netflix or other VoD applications economically. And if you are inclined to pay for large quantities of 4G wireless bandwidth for video, so too may some of your neighbours, and the spectrum heavy use will cause download performance to slow to a crawl, as a result. Netflix uses about 1 GB per hour if one is watching HD over a fibre connection - assuming your connection doesn’t come from one of the cable mafia, when it will be traffic shaped, forcing a poorer picture quality to reduce the bitrate.

This payload might be slightly less if you are using a lower speed connection, the picture will be of poor quality. 4k/UHD pictures need about 40 Mbits/sec at a minimum, which means compressing it from 144 GBits/sec out of the camera - ie 1:3600 compression ratio.

4G/LTE is fine for occasional mobile use - data on the go, it has its limitations when it comes to bi-directional fixed location applications - especially where you have multi-media use and/or large populations to serve.

4G is great for mobile data in urban areas, especially where there is 100% broadband coverage. Monaco Telecom has 98% 4G/LTE coverage - but it is not abused, because there are also lots of public wifi cellsites and the country has the highest broadband penetration in the world. 4G coverage tends to be more patchy in bigger countries with more dispersed populations.

While Blueface might be "perfect" on calls to the eircom network, the call quality on outbound Blueface to numbers in the rest of Europe or further afield is extremely poor - even if you have an un-contented gigabit internet feed - because Blueface uses backstreet carriers to terminate traffic outside Ireland.

galait

Impetus wrote: »

You may be lucky to have 4G in an area with low population / usage density, and the carrier(s) in your area using low frequency spectrum to maximise range, the price rationing of wireless spectrum means that you won’t be able to view Netflix or other VoD applications economically. And if you are inclined to pay for large quantities of 4G wireless bandwidth for video, so too may some of your neighbours, and the spectrum heavy use will cause download performance to slow to a crawl, as a result. Netflix uses about 1 GB per hour if one is watching HD over a fibre connection - assuming your connection doesn’t come from one of the cable mafia, when it will be traffic shaped, forcing a poorer picture quality to reduce the bitrate.

This payload might be slightly less if you are using a lower speed connection, the picture will be of poor quality. 4k/UHD pictures need about 40 Mbits/sec at a minimum, which means compressing it from 144 GBits/sec out of the camera - ie 1:3600 compression ratio.

4G/LTE is fine for occasional mobile use - data on the go, it has its limitations when it comes to bi-directional fixed location applications - especially where you have multi-media use and/or large populations to serve.

4G is great for mobile data in urban areas, especially where there is 100% broadband coverage. Monaco Telecom has 98% 4G/LTE coverage - but it is not abused, because there are also lots of public wifi cellsites and the country has the highest broadband penetration in the world. 4G coverage tends to be more patchy in bigger countries with more dispersed populations.

While Blueface might be "perfect" on calls to the eircom network, the call quality on outbound Blueface to numbers in the rest of Europe or further afield is extremely poor - even if you have an un-contented gigabit internet feed - because Blueface uses backstreet carriers to terminate traffic outside Ireland.

A Few Facts about my use of 4G

1. Netflix Perfect , Using Nexus 7 or Roku LT -Both at the same time.

2. Blueface VOIP - Perfect - Only use for Ireland/UK Landlines , SKYPE is used and perfect for people further afield.

3. For the Last 5 months I have been using Meteor 3G/4G , It is way ahead of my 1mb DSL from Eircom that would not even stream a Youtube Video -


You can trot out all the numbers you like... but in the Real World 4G is helping people like me who despite being 10 min's from a large urban area where 200mb UPC is available are forced to cobble together the best solution available to them..

bealtine

galait wrote: »

A Few Facts about my use of 4G

They are not really "facts" in the proper sense of the word they are what the situation is for you right now, when your neighbours find out the situation will change and you may get no service.

Long may your current situation last...

galait

bealtine wrote: »

They are not really "facts" in the proper sense of the word they are what the situation is for you right now, when your neighbours find out the situation will change and you may get no service.

Long may your current situation last...

Thats the thing all my Neighbours tried 3G Mifi and gave up , Numerous are now using Meteor 4G and still its a fast reliable service.

bealtine

galait wrote: »

Thats the thing all my Neighbours tried 3G Mifi and gave up , Numerous are now using Meteor 4G and still its a fast reliable service.

4G is a bit better than 3G that is true but it is still a shared service, meaning the "available bandwidth" is divided between all users, so the more that connect the less service that is available to you

Impetus

galait wrote: »

A Few Facts about my use of 4G

1. Netflix Perfect , Using Nexus 7 or Roku LT -Both at the same time.

The issue with Netflix is the traffic it consumes. Spend an hour on Netflix every day and that is 7 GB approx per week. Mobile internet was not designed to support this. It might work now, for you, being one of a few users in your area. But it won't work under mass adoption.

White Heart Loon

3G and 4G should be used to compliment real broadband, not be used as a fixed broadband substitute. It would great if people weren't using it for the likes of Netflix, which is also a reason LTE works so well in the States.

bealtine

There's also "bill shock" with 3g/4g something like this : http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/8144/9w8c.jpg

galait

bealtine wrote: »

4G is a bit better than 3G that is true but it is still a shared service, meaning the "available bandwidth" is divided between all users, so the more that connect the less service that is available to you

4g is MUCH better than 3g

bealtine

galait wrote: »

4g is MUCH better than 3g

Sure and long may it be so until lots of other ppl are using it...that is a fact

Impetus

bealtine wrote: »

There's also "bill shock" with 3g/4g something like this : http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/8144/9w8c.jpg

That is about a week of netflix - 1h per day. €1700 per day

bealtine

Impetus wrote: »

That is about a week of netflix - 1h per day. €1700 per day

indeed it's not a lot of data and a user wouldn't bat an eyelid at that kind of normal data usage, however on 4G you can see the resulting monetary damage for yourself:)

While this kind of "bill shock" can arrive in the post 4G cannot be considered broadband

Impetus

bealtine wrote: »

indeed it's not a lot of data and a user wouldn't bat an eyelid at that kind of normal data usage, however on 4G you can see the resulting monetary damage for yourself:)

While this kind of "bill shock" can arrive in the post 4G cannot be considered broadband

The stupid EU has all sorts of rules about expense limitation while roaming, but none to stop this type of racketeering by networks. Stupid, not unlike the cookie warning popups they mandated, which are among the biggest forms of spam on the net.

It is very easy for people to accidentally leave data switched on, and if they have lots of applications installed, which tend to call home every few minutes, run up a data bill without doing anything.