slow EVDO on Treo700P to MacBook Pro

NEdually · EVDO User Joined: 10 Mar 2006 Posts: 28

During my recent travels I ran some speed tests and found that EVDO was pretty slow most of the time.

As per http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
All tests were with "EV" displayed on Treo700P Verizon
using USB Modem v1.4.2 to MacBook Pro 10.4.7, Safari 2.0.4

7/23/06, 10:46 AM : 124/107, New Hyde Park, NY, 3 bars
7/20/06, 3:55 PM : 226/36, South Windsor, CT, 2 bars
7/20/06, 10:59 AM : 1525,124, Neshaminy PA 4 bars ***WOW***
7/20/06, 8:10 AM : 132/113 Morgantown, PA, 3 bars
7/19/06, 8:52 AM : 1163/96 New London, CT, 3 bars
7/18/06, 10:19 AM : 125/117, Brewster, NY, 3bars

I pay $60/month to Verizon and I'm sometimes waiting minutes for mapquest maps to load...PATHETIC!!!

I thought if you have "EV" then you are in an EVDO area and should be getting @400 at least??? Even 1X can get you 100-200???

Is this EVDO running on legacy towers and even though it shows EVDO it is really 1x because it has a bottleneck through 1x equipment?

Why so much variation in speed?

I want to be 400 to 800 average to get my work done and Verizon should offer this for $30/month until they can have it work properly!!!

Scott · Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 12:36 pm Post subject:

Two things that often effect data speed are signal strength and tower usage.

Most phones display the 'EV' when the signal level for EVDO or 'HDR' hits a certain predetermined point. I wouldn't take that as a guarantee of throughput.

I believe that the 'bar' meters on phones are registering the 1xRTT signal, even when the 'EV' is displayed. That's the way it appears to work on my XV6700.

Using 'Debug Mode' on your Treo (##33284 or ##33284# on a 700p? Don't own one, so that's a guess) to see true signal levels for either 1xRTT or EVDO/HDR may shed some light on your data speed. I would expect that those higher rates correspond to higher signal levels.

That said, tower usage impacts data speeds as well. When enough users hit a tower their speeds are reduced. I'm doubting that the 'EV' doesn't get changed to '1X' when this happens, since that change depends on signal level of the two networks not data throughput.