Question about Alltel EVDO speed inconsistency

pastortommy · EVDO Newbie Joined: 25 Mar 2009 Posts: 2 Location: VA

Hello,

I live near Charlottesville, VA and have Pantech UM175 air card. My connection stays -75dbM (I think this is as high a signal as it will show, kinda like my bberry curve shows -80 as the highest signal no matter where i am).

Here's my problem. From 11:30pm-7:00am, my speeds are around 900-1100kbps. From 7:00am-2pm, 100-200kbps. From 2-4, around 700-900kbps. From 5-11pm, 80-200kbps.

My ping times correlate to this as well. When i am recording the fast speeds, my latency isn't bad: around 200-350ms. When I am running those 1xRTT like speeds, it is around 500-999ms.

I live in a rural area and I REALLY DOUBT that the problem is tower congestion as there might be one other area in this area that even knows what EVDO means Wink

When I am 20 miles further away in Charlottesville, VA, where there are LOTS of people who use data services through alltel, i never get lower than 900kbps, regardless of when I use it. I am usually around 1000-1200kbs down.

Any ideas what is going on here? Why such a HUGE discrepancy with my service at home?
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Rev. Thompson

leebouknight · Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 12:02 pm Post subject:

Sounds a lot like my issue; my speeds vary greatly, although never so bad as 80. And it does correspond to a certain time period each day. But where I see the biggest change is not speed (it does vary a noticable amount) but in ping times. During what you call the slowest time 5pm -11pm, my pings double (measured using speedtest.net).

I'm in the middle of nowhere, so again, I doubt tower congestion (and have been told by someone I trust at Alltel that it is NOT congestion, although they would not elaborate). My best guess is some type of throttling going on during high-use times, even when a particular tower is NOT congested.