Getting rock solid 160KB/sec on Vodafone HSDPA today

cgarvey

Ah, to take advantage at all, or to take full advantage? That would explain why I'm stuck on 384kbps.. and makes me more pissed off at the Vodafone store. My first new year's resolution will be to resolve that!

Urban Weigl

The E618 only supports 384kbps. Unfortunately it appears that Vodafone sold the card anyway, with the promise of HSDPA. At least that's what happened to me, but they exchanged the card. So basically, while the E618 will work with the new APN (hs.vodafone.ie), that's only because it's backwards compatible -- it will never give you any speeds beyond 384kbps. The E620 supports 1.8 Mbps, and the E630 supports 3.6 Mbps.

I wish Vodafone would do what they do in Germany: give customers a 7.2 Mbps ExpressCard (that card is software upgradable to 7.2 Mbps, see http://www.novatelwireless.com/products/expresscard/merlin-xu870.html for specs), with an adapter so you can use it with older laptops as well. That way it would support even higher speeds, new laptops like the MacBook Pro, as well as older laptops like the PowerBook, which still had PC card slots. Oh well. It seems like we always have to wait before we get new "handsets" here, as it's the same with phones.

thebman

Is there any information on Vodafone's mast upgrade to support HSDPA or would I have to contact them.

Also it seems that it is a business offering. Do they just offer it to businesses?

Urban Weigl

brim4brim wrote:

Is there any information on Vodafone's mast upgrade to support HSDPA or would I have to contact them.

Vodafone's HSDPA upgrade is almost complete at this point. Assuming you have HSDPA-capable hardware, and assuming you're within 3G coverage, you should be able to connect at HSDPA-speeds already. If not now, in the near future.

Also it seems that it is a business offering. Do they just offer it to businesses?

Anybody can buy it. The price is €48.99 a month inclusive of VAT. The hardware is about €100 (€129 for the 3.6 Mbps HSDPA USB modem). There's a 12-month contract.

SalteeDog

HSDPA is live in Castlebar too. I just checked it and got 983kbps down, 362kbps up.

Now ...I seem to recall Voda tie their billing to the APN used so I'll be interested in seeing if i get an extra change for connecting to hp.vodafone.ie.

Urban Weigl

There is no extra charge for using hs.vodafone.ie. It is included in the Unlimited Data tariff.

l3rian

what's the average speed like on vodafone hsdpa? 1Mbps? are there speed increases on the way?

what sort of pings are you getting to google.ie, would it be suitable for gaming?

got a link to hsdpa pricing on vodafone site?

anyone using this in dublin city center?

Blaster99

In Dublin I'm getting 500kbps to 1Mbps type of speeds, more often 500kbps than 1Mbps. Pings are diabolical, I'm sure in the region of 200-300ms.

cgarvey

Can some of the wireless nuts confirm that those pings are artificially high? I.e. poor network management, or deliberate (to hamper VoIP, I'm sure). Or is GSM/3G technology just that poor?

wiredup

SalteeDog wrote:

HSDPA is live in Castlebar too. I just checked it and got 983kbps down, 362kbps up.

Now ...I seem to recall Voda tie their billing to the APN used so I'll be interested in seeing if i get an extra change for connecting to hp.vodafone.ie.

What is the range of this? I'm 10k south of Castlebar near Partry.
I've read that VOIP does not work over these mobile services but why not? Surely data is data?

cgarvey

VoIP does work on Vodafone 3G (and I presume the other 2 as well), but is not great quality. The reason on Voadafone is high pings (300ms is typical to US servers for me.. 180ms+ to Irish servers), as against connection speed/contention (which does tend to vary wildly). Skype is more forgiving that some other VoIP software/setups, but even that is not the best.

However, it is worth noting that Vodafone don't allow VoIP on their network, and reserve the right to actively block it.

Urban Weigl

I get pings of 100ms+ to Irish servers, the average being between 100 and 150 on an idle connection, though it can go as low as 90ms. That said, downloading at the same time causes sporadic ping times going into the hundreds. Skype seems to work exceptionally well most of the time (as long as I'm not downloading while using it), but as has been said, it's less sensitive than "normal" VoIP.

As far as I know, HSDPA is supposed to give you "real world" average pings between 100 and 200ms. Note that Vodafone's back-haul network doesn't seem to be the best. I've seen it congested at times, and noticed that while the first few hops are usually in the 90-120ms range, if their backhaul is congested, this can increase significantly. They still have some work left to do to tweak performance.

Like I've said before, due to limitations in the technology, I don't think UMTS/HSDPA replaces your home or office DSL connection. At least not for most people. What it does do is give you a mobile internet connection that's fast and usable, and all without having to worry about how high your next bill is going to be. You'll still want to keep your DSL.

Here's hop 17, the last hop, doing a traceroute to BT Ireland's main DNS server:
17 ns.esatclear.ie (194.145.128.1) 109.853 ms 109.661 ms 109.975 ms

What's HSDPA definitely not for? I am certain that due to capacity limitations, and because this is an unlimited product with a fair use policy, Vodafone would not take kindly to you running any kind of P2P file sharing applications! People downloading tens of gigabytes off P2P networks would cause congestion for sure, and that's fair enough.

watty

Not good for hosting/P2P (Cap), VOIP or games (ping/latency).

It is a viable replacement for a dialup especially if you don't want to a phone line at all. Since the number of phone line users has fallen however from 80%+ to 69%- eircom in long term are damaging possibility of DSL roll out and BB USO in future with the extortionate line rental.

DaBreno

SalteeDog wrote:

HSDPA is live in Castlebar too. I just checked it and got 983kbps down, 362kbps up.

Now ...I seem to recall Voda tie their billing to the APN used so I'll be interested in seeing if i get an extra change for connecting to hp.vodafone.ie.

Guys, I have the same service and was wondering how you all check your download speeds? Cheers.

mr_disc

Urban Weigl wrote:

I had to change my APN to "hs.vodafone.ie" – using office.vodafone.ie will prevent you from being able to use the HSDPA network.

Hi there..... can u tell me how to change this , ta

croo

In the tools menu of the "Vodafone Mobile Connetcion" app is the option "Mobile profiles" you can change it there ... or since it's not available everywhere perhaps creating a new profile is the better option!

colin

Urban Weigl

Hs.vodafone.ie is backwards compatible, and works even where only GPRS is available. Nevertheless, creating a separate profile is still a good idea -- just in case, or indeed for testing purposes.

croo

Urban Weigl wrote:

Hs.vodafone.ie is backwards compatible...

Really? I've only gotten an error message when I tried so far! hence my "new" profile suggestion... 619 I think the error was ... is it literally Hs with a capital H? I've been trying hs.vodafone.ie without success yet. I thought I was just unlucky in that the masts in my local were not yet enabled ...
I have a E620 card ... anyone any hints on why I'm getting these 619 errors? All I've done is change "office" to "hs"

colin

wirelessdude

croo wrote:

Really? I've only gotten an error message when I tried so far! hence my "new" profile suggestion... 619 I think the error was ... is it literally Hs with a capital H? I've been trying hs.vodafone.ie without success yet. I thought I was just unlucky in that the masts in my local were not yet enabled ...
I have a E620 card ... anyone any hints on why I'm getting these 619 errors? All I've done is change "office" to "hs"

colin

call 1850287000 to make sure that your number has the hs.vodafone.ie APN on your profile on the HLR

croo

wirelessdude wrote:

call 1850287000 to make sure that your number has the hs.vodafone.ie APN on your profile on the HLR

thx wirelessdude that was precisely what was wrong. It seems all accounts should have automatically had the hs.vodafone.ie APN added to their (serverside) profile, but for some unknown (to the vodafone) reason it wasn't on some accounts (such as mine).

colin

thebman

watty wrote:

Not good for hosting/P2P (Cap), VOIP or games (ping/latency).

It is a viable replacement for a dialup especially if you don't want to a phone line at all. Since the number of phone line users has fallen however from 80%+ to 69%- eircom in long term are damaging possibility of DSL roll out and BB USO in future with the extortionate line rental.

Most people just want a dialup replacement. My father has said if he could get broadband over mobile for a reasonable fixed cost (being 40 Euro a month) with O2 that he'd cancel his land line altogether because its costing too much and everyone rings the mobile of someone they want to contact anyway.

eircom are ruining the market for themselves IMO. They need to get there act together. HSPDA will be their main competition because most people can live without VOIP, gaming and P2P/hosting. Those are really niche markets I think (given I'm a gamer that pisses me off but I see it as the reality). eircom actually have competition with HSPDA if its done properly which could be the little push we need to get them to invest in infrastructure properly.

Could HSPDA technologies be improved in the future somehow to reduce pings or is this just a given limitation of the technology that will just always exist? If they could get rid of the ping problem then it would be perfect.

Urban Weigl

3G definitely isn't standing still, and improvements are already in the pipeline. HSDPA is probably going to be rolled out to 14.4 Mbps this year, and the next improvement to be rolled out is HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access). This will dramatically increase the upload speed (currently while you can download at several megabits per second, upload is still limited to 384kbps). It will also reduce latency. You can find a good article about it here:
http://www.evaluationengineering.com/archive/articles/0406/0406challenges.asp

More in-depth:
http://3gamericas.org/pdfs/white_papers/2006_Rysavy_Data_Paper_FINAL_09.15.06.pdf

By the way, it seems Vodafone's terms and conditions for their 3G broadband product no longer prohibit the use of VoIP. Like I've said, I've found Skype to work brilliantly, and to be honest, running a web server from home probably wasn't the best idea anyway. As far as P2P and gaming, I agree that it's a niche. I doubt more than 10% of people actually use P2P networks regularly.

At the end of the day, cable will always be faster than wireless. Fibre optics, for example, will easily deliver 1 gigabit and beyond to every household, with almost no latency. Wireless simply won't do that, even when 4G comes around and you might be able to get peaks of 1 gigabit, this will be shared amongst all users and not dedicated to you. As such, it is my opinion that if you only use the Internet at home, it's best to get DSL or cable. If you value mobility, get 3G broadband. If you value mobility, but also download heavily and use online gaming, get both.

thebman

Urban Weigl wrote:

3G definitely isn't standing still, and improvements are already in the pipeline. HSDPA is scheduled to be rolled out to 14.4 Mbps this year (technically it's already available), and the next improvement to be rolled out is HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access). This will dramatically increase the upload speed (currently while you can download at several megabits per second, upload is still limited to 384kbps). It will also reduce latency. You can find a good article about it here:
http://www.evaluationengineering.com/archive/articles/0406/0406challenges.asp

By the way, it seems Vodafone's terms and conditions for their 3G broadband product no longer prohibit the use of VoIP. Like I've said, I've found Skype to work brilliantly, and to be honest, running a web server from home probably wasn't the best idea anyway. As far as P2P, I think this is a niche. I doubt more than 10% of people actually use P2P networks.

That was a great article thanks. I think given the mobility of HSUPA, its going to be the consumer preference similar to wireless networks in the home. People like the idea of none or few wireless and Irish users have already demonstrated they don't actually want landlines because of the high cost here and the hassle of dealing with the networks.

Our mobile providers however are much more pleasant to deal with and seem to be rolling out HSDPA services fast so is there a reason not to expect the same for HSUPA? If that is rolled out at reasonable cost then the mobile providers in Ireland can expect to be taking over the home broadband market in Ireland. The only real issue is the cost of the service which at the moment is reasonable considering the cost of broadband in Ireland.

Worst case scenario if they did roll out HSUPA (and even with HSDPA) it is putting pressure on eircom to compete.

Urban Weigl

Either way, as you say it's putting pressure on Eircom to compete, and that can only be a good thing. Inherently however, wireless technologies will never be able to deliver the kind of uncontended, quality bandwidth possible over coper or especially fibre. Is the tradeoff worthwhile for most customers, given the advantage of not being tied to a specific landline or location? I think that for many users, the answer yes.

I currently have both, and I don't see that changing in the future.

watty

With micro cells, Wireless can offer better than ADSL. In Sparse Rural areas with large cells Wirelss can be better than ADSL.

It can't beat Fibre though. Good Wireless & DSL are to an extent complementary as in case of Cable TV vs Pay Satellite TV.

SkepticOne

In certain situations DSL can indeed beat wireless and cable but that is in areas where there is already good copper and a short run from the exchange to the subscriber. We look at 24mb/sec DSL offerings in other countries but we forget that that is the theoretical maximum for the ADSL2+ technology they utilise. They offer "up to" 24mb/sec but make no guarantees that you will get that speed.

If you are looking at the sort of people who can't get broadband today in Ireland, then only a minority of these will be catered for by DSL at slow speeds. The rest will be covered by FWA and cellular wireless tecnologies at higher speeds.

bugler

For someone on the new offer for €39.99 per month - I take it there's nothing to stop you using "hs.vodafone.ie"? I mean this doesn't incur any extra charges does it?

wirelessdude

bugler wrote:

For someone on the new offer for €39.99 per month - I take it there's nothing to stop you using "hs.vodafone.ie"? I mean this doesn't incur any extra charges does it?

you have to use that APN inorder to get 3G Broadband/HSDPA speeds....no extra charge for using it

croo

Urban Weigl wrote:

By the way, it seems Vodafone's terms and conditions for their 3G broadband product no longer prohibit the use of VoIP.

Just to be clear on this (because I misunderstood)...

The "3G Broadband" package for €39.99 (Incl VAT), with a 5Gb limit and 12c per Mb after... does allow VoIP. But, the "Unlimited Data" package for €49.99 still does NOT allow the use of VoIP.

Urban Weigl

To be honest, I doubt Vodafone cares, and they probably just put that in there because upper management was afraid of the threat posed. Now that it turns out that VoIP isn't really doing any damage, they've taken it out for the new product.

Not that I use VoIP. I'm sticking with the Unlimited plan, though, for the simple reason that I don't want to be limited to 5GB a month. Also, it's €48.99, so it's actually only €9 more a month for the peace of mind of knowing there is no 5GB limit (though at the same time, I'm sure if I ran BitTorrent and downloaded 12GB, they wouldn't be very happy). Still, you know what I mean.