Does anybody have EVDO and Xbox Live?!?

mj911sc · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 16 Jan 2007 Posts: 21

Well I tethered my cell to a pc and tried out cingulars lowest grade service gsm or something like that...BAD!!! I got 40 down and 20 up, mind you my dialup gave me 26.4 d/u so this was a bust...I plan to try out alltel next week and will post my experience....I would be pleased with a slightly ffaster than dialup connection. Oh and cingulars latency was bad also 450+ ms (ping yahoo)

Bighurt49245 · EVDO User Joined: 30 Dec 2006 Posts: 62 Location: Homer,MI

Jayson · Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 6:44 pm Post subject:

I got on the sprint evdo network and im dowloading anywhere between 500 and 800 kbs and 150 to 200 upload and i have had noproblems at all playing fps games now ....I play counterstike soure and an rpg game called ultima online....both run great for me .....when i was only 1xrtt it wouldnt run the games.....was to laggy ....im anxious now for rev a to come out its supposed to be updated by the end of this month ...i should then get around 1 mb dloads and 250 up....well see ....

isamu · EVDO User Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 81

Walter · EVDO Junkie Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 307

isamu · EVDO User Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 81

Thanks for the reply Walter. So let me get this straight....

you're saying that I will need a PC to activate my PCMCIA card, along with an EVDO router connected to it at the same time? And then once I get my card activated, I can use an EVDO router to connect to Xbox 360 and get online WITHOUT the need for either the PC or the PCMCIA Card? I'm, assuming the router doesn't have a slot to plug the pcmcia card into, right?

So that means the router and only the router will be transmitting the EVDO signal?

Walter · EVDO Junkie Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 307

No, you plug the PCMCIA card in the PC once and get it activated. Router is sitting idle and disconnected during this time. You then unplug the card from the PC and plug it into the router. That group of routers are specially made to work with these cards and indeed have a PCMCIA slot. From then on, you use the PCMCIA card and router combination for internet access. You can then connect whatever computers (or other devices such as an XBox) to the router (either with an Ethernet cable or via 802.11b/g wireless Ethernet).

Maybe that's where the confusion is? These routers do have their own wireless connection, but that is for connecting computers at home to the router at home via wireless Ethernet. It still needs the EVDO modem (PCMCIA card) to make the wireless connection to the cell phone tower and from there, the internet.

Hope that's more clear.
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isamu · EVDO User Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 81

Thanks. Crystal clear now Smile

Well I hope Michael or Scott or anyone else can provide some answers to my questions in *THIS* thread Smile

isamu · EVDO User Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 81

Jason and Bighurt: How far away are you guys from your nearest towers?

isamu · EVDO User Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 81

Walter · EVDO Junkie Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 307

Nope. The antenna on the router is for the wireless Ethernet only. However, if your EVDO modem has an antenna port (and most do), then you can connect an additional antenna to that. For instance, I have an external omni antenna (bought from 3GStore) mounted on my roof and connected to the antenna port on my U720. It seems to have helped my connection stability considerably.

EDIT: Oh, and just in case you were thinking it: no you can't use the router's antenna on the EVDO card. It's for the wrong frequency. Well, technically you *could* hook it up via an adapter cable, but it's very unlikely it will help any. You need an EVDO (or cell phone) antenna (either 800MHz or 1900 MHz or dual band).
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isamu · EVDO User Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 81

walter do you PERSONALLY use Xbox LIVE with your EVDO connection? If so, how is the experience?

Also, what city are you in and how far away are you from your tower?

Walter · EVDO Junkie Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 307

Nope. My kids whoop me at Halo 2 far too bad. Embarassed

My kids have an original X-Box that I think they had connected to the internet at one time. This was probably awhile back when we were using Verizon EVDO. So I can't really tell you how well it works here. I do know that Counterstrike is still playable over EVDO. You still lose any quick firefight around a corner because of the higher lag, but it's still playable.
About the same performance as when we had ISDN. ISDN has lower latency by a little bit but lower throughput too. I think the higher bandwidth of EVDO compensates a bit for the higher latency. My kids still complain about it, but it's very playable on many servers. I just ran Steam and found about 40 Counterstrike Source servers with latency under 150 msec. Not great, but playable.

I live in Ventura County in California. According to the tower maps, I have a tower about 3.5 miles to the east of me and another one 1.4 miles to the west. I finally saw the west tower(s) today. They're up on a ridge, close to the same altitude I'm at. The location looks like they (there's more than a Sprint tower there) are trying to cover the major highway just to the north. I probably don't quite have line of sight to them, but it's pretty close. Probably why the omni on the roof is working so well.
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Llama · Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 10:48 am Post subject:

isamu · EVDO User Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 81

Awesome

Hey, do you guys know if they are working on even FASTER technology than RevA or even EVDO itself? When do you suspect we will be able to get speeds that rival cable but all wireless?

Is WiMax the solution? If not, what else are they working on for the future?