What kind of performance to expect PC574/Mid-Michigan area

coleman · EVDO Newbie Joined: 25 Jan 2008 Posts: 4

Hello,

My dad has been with Alltel on Axcess broadband for well over a year. The performance has never been that great, but it hasn't been much different then DSL. I'm trying to help him determine if there is anything else we could be doing, short of replacing the hardware(which we are considering at this point).

We live in the Mid-Michigan area. I initially convinced him to try it given the benefits of a mobile broadband connection, the fact that DSL to his home was terrible, and very surprisingly, we appeared to be an early roll out site for Alltel's high speed wireless.

Since then I don't think my dad's ever seen much more then 128kbit out of the connection. I certainly never have. But the way things are confuse me and seem like they would limit things. So questions:

- Is the fact that we were an early deployment area a BAD thing?

- He normally gets around 2 bars out of the 4 possible on the app. Is that enough to get better then what he's getting?

- The card config seems VERY odd to me. It looks like it sets itself up as a modem on a virtual com port. Since this is a virtual serial port, it's rate limited to 119kbps(or at least that's the max value we can set it to). Won't that limit the max rate even if he were able to get better rates based on signal?

- I tried to adjust the MTU size, transmit windows and such, but since the drivers set it up as a modem/serial port and not a NIC, I don't see those settings as available(there's no NIC to apply them to).

- Is it even reasonable to expect better then what he's seeing out of this service/equipment/service area?

Sorry for the long post! The local Alltel people were not very helpful. He would get 4 bars INSIDE their store, and 2 bars in the parking lot. Go figure. They said that's all they ever get performance wise, which is sad at best, and very angering at worst since they sold up this service and it's barely managed 20% of what they claimed were average speeds.

Thank you!

Bigdave · EVDO Addict Joined: 08 Nov 2006 Posts: 1069

Could you please run a speedtest at a couple of sites like www.speedtest.net and www.speakeasy.net/speedtest

Also, please let us know what your latency is by typing the following at the command prompt:

"ping www.google.com" (Without the quotation marks)

Also open Quicklink Mobile and go to tools and click on "About Quicklink Mobile". About 3/4 of the way down it'll show what your RSSI is.

Then report your speeds, latency and RSSI. This would really help knowing exactly what's going on.

coleman · EVDO Newbie Joined: 25 Jan 2008 Posts: 4

Sorry, I've been trying to get this posted for a while, I keep running into the anti-spam, but I wasn't sure what was causing it.

speakeasy.net speedtests:
519kbps down/99kbps up chicago
461/76 chicago pass 2
363/93 Washington DC

speedtest.net to recommended city
153/84

DSLReports:
205/73

RSSI indicates -99 dBm

google pings(sorry about the funny format, I think this is what set off the anti-spam before):
216ms
237ms
201ms
377ms
215ms
197ms
364ms
177ms
167ms
157ms
163ms
322ms
161ms
195ms
514ms
222ms
509ms
216ms

Thanks!

Bigdave · EVDO Addict Joined: 08 Nov 2006 Posts: 1069

OK now. You appear to be getting WAY better than the 128kbps you mentioned in your OP. You're actually not getting terrible EVDO Rev 0 speeds but you can probably see a pretty decent improvement by getting a better signal. -99dBm is not good at all. For now, don't worry about the bars or the com settings, tweaking the MTU size, etc. And I'm fairly certain being in an early deployment area isn't a factor.

You are using an older model card. I used the same card for about a year and a half until I recently switched to a KPC680. I heartily recommend this card as my speeds have about doubled.

But, your main concern now should be to get as good a signal as possible. Is your dad using this in a laptop? If so try moving around inside his house to find where you get the best signal. Again, never mind the signal bars. Check the RSSI, giving it a minute or two to adjust itself to each new location. Remember, the lower the RSSI the better, You want to be shooting for getting as close to -60 dBm "ish" as possible. After finding the sweet spot inside then take the laptop outside to see if there's any improvement and if so where. This will help you determine if an antenna will help.

My best guess is that if you can get the RSSI down to even the -70's you'll quite possibly see as much as a 200kbps improvement in his downloads. (The uploads you reported are about as good as it gets for Rev 0 by the way. You'll see some improvement there as well but since the absolute top DL speeds for Rev 0 is 144kbps you don't have very far to go there.)

Now go to work and get your dad hooked up!! Good luck and let us know how it goes!

coleman · EVDO Newbie Joined: 25 Jan 2008 Posts: 4

Thanks for the quick reply. Well that's what the speed test to chicago is, but frankly, in practice it's never that good constantly, and it pauses frequently. I can do a long transfer from a fast site that I have no problem pulling 800K/sec from on my cable modem, and 5MB/sec from at work, and it'll be lucky to 10K/sec from on that card.

But I was thinking that the poor reception was a lot of the problem and we are pretty much at the point of moving to a KPC680. Uploads really aren't that big of a concern, but the downstream is just bad.

Does the KPC680 have an external antenna connector? It sounds from the promotional material that it doesn't but it sounds from discussions here that it either does, or there's a way to attach one anyway?

Thanks again!

Bigdave · EVDO Addict Joined: 08 Nov 2006 Posts: 1069

Yes. The KPC680 has an external antenna connection. 3GStore sells the antenna adapter as well as good antennas. Even changing to the KPC card obviously you'll need to find the best location for the card/antenna. My suggestion would be to buy the card off Ebay too. That's what I did. Got it for just under $65 including shipping. No contract extensions ever again! I sold my pc5740 on Ebay for $20 too so I ended up only paying $45 for the KPC card. Add to that the $100 I originally paid for the pc5740 card a year and a half ago I'm not doing too bad me thinks.

One really good idea that may cause you not to have to buy an antenna is to buy the KPC680 and the CradlePoint router. I don't have one yet but everything I've read says the performance of the CradlePoint routers even exceeds the EVDO devices being used directly in the laptops/desktops in a lot of cases. Some kind of new technology CradlePoint has developed.

One thing's for sure though. If you buy the KPC680, the CradlePoint router and the express card to USB adapter you will have the best of all worlds and you can really pinpoint the sweet spot without having to rearrange the laptop/desktop setup. Lots of times when being able to stick the router/card combo in the window or something no antenna is even needed. Just an idea.