Anyone get internet through a mobile (4G LTE) hotspot?

[VirtualLarry]

How well does it work for you? What network / carrier? What is your max and ave bandwidth? Transfer limits monthly?

Can you use it 24/7? Does it handle torrents? Do you have any interruptions of service?

 

[JeffMD]

they work fine as long as you got a good signal. Problem is always the bandwidth caps. even 15-20gb cost a small fortune.

 

[VirtualLarry]

even 15-20gb cost a small fortune.

I'm getting "unlimited" for $10/mo. (See the "Lifeline Internet 2016" thread for how.)

 

[dave_the_nerd]

If I use my cell phone (iPhone 5c) as a hotspot for any length of time, it gets pretty hot. Eats battery accordingly.

Works fine, but with cell phones, well, YMMV based on coverage, etc.

Was in a building tonight (first night of class, new school!) with ZERO cell phone service. Pretty nasty.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I regularly use a Verizon 6620 for work, day to day for a laptop and a phone. It works well most of the time.

If you have a solid connection to the cell phone tower, then it's pretty good.

I drive around with it running, that's tough sometimes. Some areas have spotty signals which can make it frustrating. Stay near city areas, fine though.

 

[JeffMD]

I thought lifeline was broadband. Chances are your lifeline cellular connection will have a low speed cap. There is a reason they don't offer it to paying customers. You will probably be better served at Howard's forum.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, I got my R850 MiFi hooked up. Only get between 1 and 2 bars of signal (out of 4 or 5).

It's barely enough bandwidth at times to stream internet radio, which is what, 80Kbit/sec?

I moved the MiFi into the other room, and my fast.com speedtest went up from 200Kbit/sec to 1.7Mbit/sec, but judging by the fact that the radio is skipping badly, it's having trouble. I have my main router connect to it via WiFi client mode.

Edit: I'm downloading three Linux ISOs at once, and I'm getting something like 5-6KB/sec for two of them, and 85-200KB/sec for the third.

I checked Sprint's coverage map for this device and my address, and they show two items, "Best" (which they say is what you get from an indoors experience), and "Fair" (which is supposedly what you get if you're "on the road" there).

So, if their coverage map shows "Best", why am I only getting 1-2 bars of signal, and such poor xfer rates? When I signed up for the service, they claimed 12-40Mbit/sec speeds. Which I thought was perfectly fine landline-esque speeds.

 

[mxnerd]

Didn't you check signal strength map before signing up with the wireless ISP?

Move the hotspot to outdoor probably will help a bit.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The router in Client Mode is functioning a bit better for my LAN, now that I disconnected the WAN port ethernet cable. I guess I figured that if I configured Wireless WAN, that it would ignore the ethernet port, but ... hmm, don't know if it's a bug in Tomato, or just my lack of understanding.

Anyways, with the WAN cable disconnected, my internet radio isn't skipping horribly anymore.

And viewing pictures on this forum is a lot smoother.

Edit: I was hoping that I would get more speed, during non-peak hours, but that doesn't appear to be the case. I seem to max out at 2Mbit/sec down and up.
http://beta.speedtest.net/result/5583477804

 

[cbn]

Virtual Larry, are your speeds increasing now that is night time?

 

[VirtualLarry]

http://beta.speedtest.net/result/5583528054
5.75 down, 3up.

I guess they are getting better, slightly, after midnight EST.

My Win10 G4400 desktop auto-updated to 1607 while I was sleeping, so it's possible that my earlier testing was somewhat invalid, if Win10 was downloading the 1607 update silently in the background.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wow, the ISO I was just downloading, is now downloading at 1.0MB/sec, according to Waterfox.

Edit: For $10/mo internet, I can definitely live with that, even if I have to wait until midnight to download ISOs off-peak.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Downloading another ISO, this time at 3:45PM EST on Sat., and it's going at 50-150KB/sec.

At least, my internet radio streams aren't breaking up.

Edit: Just tried a Skype video call on my laptop. It was fairly decent, could hear each other well, video skipped occasionally (rarely). The killer was the connection latency. We were talking over each other, until we got used to it.

 

[cbn]

Is the internet any faster when running directly off the MiFi (ie, MiFi--> PC) rather than MiFi to router (ie, MiFi--> Router--> PC)?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Is the internet any faster when running directly off the MiFi (ie, MiFi--> PC) rather than MiFi to router (ie, MiFi--> Router--> PC)?

Not bandwidth-wise. That's how I was testing it initially, on my G4400 @ 4.455Ghz Win10 desktop with a PremierTek 8812AU USB3.0 AC1200 wifi. (The MiFi is only 2.4Ghz N wireless. I don't know if it's N150 or N300.)

I found out something though. If any of my Win10 PCs start doing updates, my bandwidth goes to [bleep], and even my internet radio streams die off, after stuttering badly.

This doesn't happen with large, or many, HTTP downloads using Firefox on the same PC.

So, something about Win10 Updates is bandwidth-abusive. Do they use their own form of bittorrent for WU now?

Edit: They do! No Bueno to my poor bandwidth...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyl...nt-style-p2p-to-deliver-updates/#147703201a54

 

[cbn]

I've never used one, but there are such things as 4G signal boosters.

Maybe something like that would help?

Another thing you try before resorting to signal booster would be to move the MiFi as close as possible to a window.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Another thing you try before resorting to signal booster would be to move the MiFi as close as possible to a window.

It is pretty close to windows. I don't think that the 1-2 ant. bars is the problem, I think that the towers are just that loaded-down.

Edit: The reason that I think that it's the tower load, is because things speed up after midnight-1AM EST.
If it were purely a signal issue, I wouldn't think that it would have a daily-usage peak/valley in the bandwidth.

 

[Sean Kyle]

Did you try changing your location (a different tower may be) to test?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Did you try changing your location (a different tower may be) to test?

Am I just supposed to pick up my whole apt. and move it? LOL...

 

[XavierMace]

No, you're supposed to walk/drive to another location and test again to rule out your home as the issue. Every MiFi I've ever seen is small enough to fit in a pocket and I know you've got plenty of tablets to test with.

For example I get 3 down, 1.5 up at work because of the design of the office. I get 30 down, 20 up at my house which is 1.3 miles away. At my parents house across town, I got 40 down, 20 up last time I tested it. TMo 4G.

 

[Sean Kyle]

No, you're supposed to walk/drive to another location and test again to rule out your home as the issue. Every MiFi I've ever seen is small enough to fit in a pocket and I know you've got plenty of tablets to test with.

For example I get 3 down, 1.5 up at work because of the design of the office. I get 30 down, 20 up at my house which is 1.3 miles away. At my parents house across town, I got 40 down, 20 up last time I tested it. TMo 4G.

This right there

 

[cbn]

Virtual Larry,

Have you passed the 23GB barrier yet and thus entered into data deprioritization ? If so, how are your speeds holding up?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Have you passed the 23GB barrier yet and thus entered into data deprioritization ? If so, how are your speeds holding up?

I was headed pretty strongly in that direction, but I entered a new billing cycle five days after I signed up, so my monthly usage total got reset.

And then I figured out multi-WAN on Tomato, and set up my FIOS as my primary WAN connection again.

(Got really fed up with multi-ISO downloads going at 50KB/sec, and worse yet, timing out and "failed", requiring me to repeatedly manually re-start the downloads, although they re-start from where they left off.)

 

[XavierMace]

I thought the whole reason for getting this $10/mo internet was because you couldn't afford your real internet but now you have both?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, I couldn't really afford both my FIOS and Comcast at the same time very easily. (I mean, I could, if I had to, but that's like $150 for internet right there.)

If the Sprint 4G LTE MiFi was a bit better behaved, then I was considering getting rid of both of the other ones, but then my neighbor, that used to have FIOS a few years back, and is pre-wired, couldn't sign up for it again, for some reason, well, I figured that I had best keep my FIOS running then, for fear I might not be able to sign up for it again.