EVDO in Vermont

Jon_Endres · Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 2:37 pm Post subject: EVDO in Vermont

I received my modem (Novatel 727 w/ Verizon service) through 3GStore yesterday. My son has a Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop, which is currently the only computer in the house, as my office and all other computers are in another location. We are in a heavily wooded area, below the treetops, about 1 mile from the New York border and on the south slope of a hill. The nearest tower is about 4 miles, maybe 5.

Setup and installation was a breeze. VZ Manager was simple to use. I am used to Comcast Digital cable, so going from 8MBps (sometimes as much as 20!) down to half a meg was somewhat of a waiting game. Surprisingly, it wasn't bad. Speedtest.net gave me connection speeds of 630Kbps down and 283Kbps up. That's with the little antenna on the modem, nothing more. VZ Manager told me I had one bar of service, but was connected fine. I surfed the web for an hour and a half, no hiccups, no loss in connection, no speed changes of any significance. In that 90 minutes, I sent and received approximately 26 MB of data. Since what I did was pretty typical (e-mail, some basic and some graphics-intensive websites, and one Youtube video) I can spend almost 50 hours a week online without hitting Verizon's "speed limit" of 5GB per month. Since I am not a heavy user, this won't be a problem.

Now I need to figure out how to increase my speed a little, maybe get three or four bars.

Alex · Site Admin Joined: 19 Sep 2006 Posts: 1754

Jon_Endres · Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 11:11 am Post subject:

I checked last night when I got home, the signal ranged from -95 to -92, and I had two bars. I have not had a chance to move the thing around yet or go outside because of the weather, I doubt that anywhere else in the house will get me a better signal.

My kids had the day off from school today, and the oldest was using the EVDO to play Guild Wars online. He reported that it was perfctly acceptable to him, no latency to speak of, no interruptions, no hesitation. The weather is overcast and heavy rain here, so it does not seem to be a factor at all. His game eats about 20Mb per hour of bandwidth.

So far I'm pretty happy.

vteds1 · EVDO Newbie Joined: 16 Feb 2008 Posts: 3

Jon,

The agreement I signed with Verizon refers to an "unlimited kilobyte" allowance. Am I missing something here?

PS I'm also in Vermont