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3G experiment

I've sent the antenna back now - it wasn't worth the cost, considering I was getting worse performance than using my phone.

Mark, did you happen to see the Sky fibre trial in Hampshire BTW?

Also, BT are trialling a mobile network in partnership with EE - thought you may be curious ;)
 
Are you enjoying your new speeds then - we have Three plugged in at the moment, haven't checked to see if EE is back up yet.

A quick test (we use a VPN, hence the ISP name - but this is Three)

3575875573.png


It might slow down a bit after 11pm tonight when we put YouTube on the TV ;)

I don't think Sky will be trialling anything much here though those sorts of projects are interesting in terms of how they might pan out.

My cynical side says that BT will buy a service from EE, charge the taxpayer for doing so, claim that "they" have solved the "how do you get 2Meg to everyone" problem and that in some areas, like this one perhaps, the EE network will grind to a halt as it has far more users than it can cope with and so in the end, only deliver 2 Meg if that ;)
 
Can I ask about the VPN DTMark?
Are you able to use port forwarding and all the usual ports without CGNAT using this?
How much a month do you pay?
 
Mark, do your speeds on Three remain consistent throughout the day? Ours seem to go up and down like mad.
 
The speeds I saw with it and am seeing now that I've been using it again wander between 12 Meg and 21 Meg down, and between about 2 Meg and 4 Meg up - has always been the case. It does wander about because it's a contended service. 12 Meg was about the lower bound of the speed at any given time that I saw, but then I wasn't running diagnostics on it all the time.

To compare that with EE's 3G - that delivers between 0.5 Meg and 7 Meg down and between nearly nothing and 1.5 Meg up.

Comparing with EE 4G - that's between about 16 Meg and 25 Meg down, and 12 Meg to 21 Meg up. They all "wander" though EE 4G was/is the most consistent.

ADSL was consistent here - circa 1.6Meg down on a 1750kbps IP profile, and nearly nothing up just about all the time. Consistent, but consistently useless.

There are actually 3 Three cells we can connect to. Depending on signal strength the dongle might wander from one to another and each will have varying levels of contention. A correctly aligned directional antenna causes it to "latch" to the same one every time as it becomes by far the strongest signal. The strongest signal does not necessarily equal the fastest speed at any given moment because of contention.

The VPN is Astrill - yes, you can port forward, you can for instance remote to your machine at home using RealVNC over it and it does manage that even with CGNAT. We also have the private fixed IP address option too which is what causes the ISP to identify as "Simply Transit" and not "Three" or "EE".

https://www.astrill.com/pricing.php
 
I've never seen downstream that bad on Three. That would be a 'critical point' - any lower than that and streaming - say YouTube on a TV - would stutter. It never did this here. That said, contention could certainly be responsible and I just never happened to try a test when it was heavily contended. Though I did use it for a long time.

On the other hand you're getting more upstream on average than I was. Over 3.5Meg was relatively rare. 2.5Meg was normal.

What would be useful to see is the Site ID to which the dongle connects and see if it's flicking from one (perhaps uncontended) cell to another (more heavily contended) one. That's what that MDMA software I linked to enables you to see.

You are just a bit further from one cell than we are - the one in the direction of Holyborne (shared with T-Mobile I think) so it might be that we can pick that one up and you cannot. I am assuming that you're connecting to the same cell that we used to connect to most/all of the time which is the Bentley one just slightly further away than the phone exchange is. Although you're only a short distance away, perhaps height comes in to it too.

Without specialised diagnostic equipment it's all a bit vague.
 
Perhaps you can get an app for it that shows the same thing.

With dongles you're recommended to have it upright as opposed to lying flat, so that might help signal strength.

Is it conceivable that some of the speed drops are attributable to the phone itself drawing bandwidth for e.g. updates and notifications?
 
One more thought... are those speed tests with the phone in *exactly* the same position e.g. hanging out of the window?

I found huge performance variations depending on where the dongle was.

e.g. 15 Meg+ with it outside fixed to the metal guttering that runs across the top of one of the upstairs windows - move it just inside the house e.g. on the window sill, and that drops to 3 Meg not least because the walls of the house are 14" thick. Even though actually, it has only moved about two feet in distance.
 
IIRC the number in the signal strength is "the lower the better".

When I had the diagnostic kit on it I think we were seeing something like -81db which is fair > marginal and the antenna brought that to -70db or thereabouts which is fair > good. Distance/alignment is the key here.

But no matter what you do with that, it remains contended. Despite a fair signal one of the problems with Three is the unlimited aspect - "unlimited" and "performant" don't work together most especially with mobile services. Though I still never saw speeds drop as low as 6 Meg. Is the signal really staying consistent and latching to the same cell or is it a bit borderline and flipping around - that might explain it.

I've come to view 3G/4G as a "better than" service. There's a "floor" to the performance and that's the key thing. So Three was 12 Meg or better, 4G is (or was, it's still broken) normally 20 Meg or better, and expect the performance to be variable. Since the average ADSL speed round here is only 2.5Meg it doesn't have to try very hard to beat that. Though over time, and in search of any performance, more are bound to move over to 3G and 4G contending it further.

Thankfully EE 4G is still monumentally expensive so it doesn't get really contended. But then it has been broken for two weeks now - I think the transmitter is knackered. The power cut two Saturdays ago knocked it out and it's still down. You'd think they'd be able to detect this, wouldn't you ;)
 
We are talking EE, who as Orange took 2 years to replace dodgy equipment at my sisters exchange, even though I told them the exact fault on day one. (I had one of the same dodgy pieces of kit installed at my exchange - replacement time = <2 weeks).
 
Customer service is a bit of a non-existent entity.

For example:

- The only number for mobile broadband support is a mobile number.
- It takes four attempts by people transferring you internally until you get the "person who can deal with 4G".
- There is no electronic means of contact at all except by means of an intermediary - Facebook or Twitter. I have neither.
- There is an online forum but it's just left to run amok since it is not monitored or tended by staff. It's supposed to be 'community help'. Fine for say phone issues but ordinary customers cannot help other customers with network issues. So it's basically a forum riddled with unsolved complaints, a bit like the BT one, which would and/or probably should make any prospective customer run a mile.

When I finally did manage to speak to the right person I was impressed with the manner in which the call was dealt with but that doesn't alter the fact that it's still broken. Broken EE transmitters seem to feature highly as a complaint source.

The advert says "The UK's most reliable network". I'm not sure I find that claim credible.

I can never understand people who enter 24 month contracts for things like this. Thankfully ours is PAYG and we have Three as a competent alternative.
 
EE's Welsh support seem to be okay. Their Indian support are shocking though - funny that that seems to only be for Orange customers!
 
We've been using Three for a couple of weeks now - I have to take the EE dongle back to the shop on Saturday to have it tested since we actually drove to where the transmitter is (towards Yarnhams, then up the hill - it's quite a long way), got 5 bars, but still only 3G. It may be that it's faulty.

There's a phenomenon I used to see with Three a year ago and it's why I went over to EE - that and the speed. That it drops out now and again. Normally 5 bar HSPA. When it drops out you can see it flick to 3 bar 3G. Then 1 bar 3G. Then back to 5 bar HSPA and it's back on again. So you get perhaps a 7 second "pause" while it does this.

This used to "cycle" like this repeatedly. This is what I mean by "they broke the network". As I've been using it - every day has been fine except today when it has been doing this all day long.

Do you see this, or is it just me - I'm wondering if the Three dongle is faulty too.
 
I don't see this - signal is fairly consistent.

But, 3G signal will reduce when the mast is congested as I recall.
 
It has been flawless today apart from at exactly 1pm when the dongle showed 'no network' (never seen that one before!) and I had to unplug it and plug it back in.

Actually it has been fine every day except for yesterday when it was a nightmare. I never did get to the bottom of what causes this.
 
It has been flawless today apart from at exactly 1pm when the dongle showed 'no network' (never seen that one before!) and I had to unplug it and plug it back in.

Actually it has been fine every day except for yesterday when it was a nightmare. I never did get to the bottom of what causes this.

Mark, I don't suppose you would install a speed tester on your computer that tests the speeds every 10 minutes or so, just to see if they vary as much as ours?
 
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