Is Sprint Throttling LTE?

[ks-man]

So I was driving today on 294 and 290 in Chicago. During most of the trip I was receiving what seemed like a very strong LTE signal. I had my slingbox running to listen to the football games and I was getting pretty regular freezeups and dropouts. I ran a bunch of speedtests to see what my speed was and I got very poor download speeds but strong upload speeds. I've uploaded a screenshot of the results. For the first 10 mins or so I was in the car I wasn't having any issues so I'm wondering if after steadily connecting to LTE for my Slingbox if my speed started getting throttled. Am I correct that if I'm getting strong upload speeds that should mean that I had a strong LTE signal? Is there something else that could explain what I was seeing? I'm certainly not trying to cause any issues with this thread but I'm sure a lot of us are sticking with or switching to Sprint due to the concept of unlimited LTE without throttling so I wanted to find out what some of the experts around here thought.

[S4GRU]

So I was driving today on 294 and 290 in Chicago. During most of the trip I was receiving what seemed like a very strong LTE signal. I had my slingbox running to listen to the football games and I was getting pretty regular freezeups and dropouts. I ran a bunch of speedtests to see what my speed was and I got very poor download speeds but strong upload speeds. I've uploaded a screenshot of the results. For the first 10 mins or so I was in the car I wasn't having any issues so I'm wondering if after steadily connecting to LTE for my Slingbox if my speed started getting throttled. Am I correct that if I'm getting strong upload speeds that should mean that I had a strong LTE signal? Is there something else that could explain what I was seeing? I'm certainly not trying to cause any issues with this thread but I'm sure a lot of us are sticking with or switching to Sprint due to the concept of unlimited LTE without throttling so I wanted to find out what some of the experts around here thought.

 

Not likely throttling. This has happened a few times in other markets where they had a short term anomaly of really slow download and normal upload. Unless your device is having a malfunction in its reception. Do you know anyone else with a Sprint LTE device in your area?

 

Robert

[nahum365]

Not likely throttling. This has happened a few times in other markets where they had a short term anomaly of really slow download and normal upload. Unless your device is having a malfunction in its reception. Do you know anyone else with a Sprint LTE device in your area?

 

Robert

 

That happened once here too... I was getting regular speeds of 4Mbps despite being so close to the tower I could see the RRUs. And it was widespread. It was fixed the next day.

[ks-man]

My wife also has Sprint LTE but she wasn't with me at the time. I certainly have gotten much higher LTE download speeds (see the bottom two tests). The reason it would be surprising about a tower issue is b/c this occurred over a 15-20 mile stretch. You can see the time I did the tests (2 @ 3:27, 2 @ 3:32 and 3 @ 3:49) and assume I was traveling 60-65mph. What the results don't show is the initial burst of d/l speed was closer to 1-1.2 down but quickly went down to .4-.6. Also I typically would find that the first 1-3 mins of the slingbox would work fine after I closed the app but then would stop working.

 

I'll keep watching it over the upcoming few days and report back.

[nahum365]

My wife also has Sprint LTE but she wasn't with me at the time. I certainly have gotten much higher LTE download speeds (see the bottom two tests). The reason it would be surprising about a tower issue is b/c this occurred over a 15-20 mile stretch. You can see the time I did the tests (2 @ 3:27, 2 @ 3:32 and 3 @ 3:49) and assume I was traveling 60-65mph. What the results don't show is the initial burst of d/l speed was closer to 1-1.2 down but quickly went down to .4-.6. Also I typically would find that the first 1-3 mins of the slingbox would work fine after I closed the app but then would stop working.

 

I'll keep watching it over the upcoming few days and report back.

 

It'll be gone in the next couple of days.

[4GHoward]

It is probably just a Backhaul Issue.

[DaQue]

Yeah someone getting too much porn.

[Sgt. Slaughter]

Sub 400 kbps is ridiculous with 5Mbps upload...

 

I'd see an abnormal being 1Mbps but sub that is something that shouldn't happen ever once everything is out and rolling...

 

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[rayluis1988]

Yeah someone getting too much porn.

u made me laugh. Lol

[digiblur]

No one stated the actual signal strength they had during the slowness.

 

Sent from my C64 w/Epyx FastLoad cartridge

 

 

[ks-man]

No one stated the actual signal strength they had during the slowness.

 

Sent from my C64 w/Epyx FastLoad cartridge

 

Since I was driving there was only so much I could check without become (more of) a menace on the road. I'm assuming I had a strong signal based on some of the 10+ Mbps upload. I had full signal bars but I don't know if the Galaxy Note 2 shows LTE or 1x signal bars when connected to LTE.

[S4GRU]

My wife also has Sprint LTE but she wasn't with me at the time. I certainly have gotten much higher LTE download speeds (see the bottom two tests). The reason it would be surprising about a tower issue is b/c this occurred over a 15-20 mile stretch. You can see the time I did the tests (2 @ 3:27' date=' 2 @ 3:32 and 3 @ 3:49) and assume I was traveling 60-65mph. What the results don't show is the initial burst of d/l speed was closer to 1-1.2 down but quickly went down to .4-.6. Also I typically would find that the first 1-3 mins of the slingbox would work fine after I closed the app but then would stop working.

 

I'll keep watching it over the upcoming few days and report back.[/quote']

 

It wouldn't be a tower problem, but rather a network problem. If that's what is occurring.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 using Forum Runner

[digiblur]

Since I was driving there was only so much I could check without become (more of) a menace on the road. I'm assuming I had a strong signal based on some of the 10+ Mbps upload. I had full signal bars but I don't know if the Galaxy Note 2 shows LTE or 1x signal bars when connected to LTE.

 

I believe it shows 1X signal...but you'd have to test it or talk with the other Note 2 folks that don't have virgin LTE radios.

[gusherb]

You try different servers? I've had that happen because of bad routing sometimes. One time the speedtest app was acting up, causing slow downloads, then it crashed, I rebooted the phone and it was fine afterwards.

[lordsutch]

Another possibility is your connection was suffering from "bufferbloat." Unfortunately there isn't much you can do about it as an end user, although presumably Google will fold fixes in newer Android versions.

[WiWavelength]

Another possibility is your connection was suffering from "bufferbloat."

 

Yeah, "buffet bloat," that is the feeling you get after eating at Sizzler. Oh, wait, you said "buffer bloat."

 

 

AJ

[S4GRU]

I have definitely suffered from buffet bloat before.

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

 

 

[MacinJosh]

I have definitely suffered from buffet bloat before.

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

 

 

Same here, lol.

 

Sent from my LG-LS840 Viper 4G LTE using Forum Runner

[lordsutch]

If you're really bored, here's some technical background:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Delay (CoDel), a partial fix folded into Linux kernel 3.5 and later.

[Wolvan]

I've had this happen to me several times in the Chicago market. Or only getting 7k kbps down and up. Its getting better constantly here though. Big improvement over the last couple of months.

 

And I actually used the SVD over LTE this weekend!

[shmty25]

It may just be coincidence but I seem to have similar issues when trying to stream slingbox. I'll have a strong LTE signal and as soon as I open slingplayer to connect to slingbox, I get kicked back down to 3G. I know I'm probably crazy but it just seems that as soon as i try to run any data intensive programs on LTE, I get kicked back down to 3G.

[S4GRU]

It may just be coincidence but I seem to have similar issues when trying to stream slingbox. I'll have a strong LTE signal and as soon as I open slingplayer to connect to slingbox, I get kicked back down to 3G. I know I'm probably crazy but it just seems that as soon as i try to run any data intensive programs on LTE, I get kicked back down to 3G.

What device?

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

 

 

[EXLINE]

This has happened to me because of a server issue on Speedtest app

[nahum365]

It may just be coincidence but I seem to have similar issues when trying to stream slingbox. I'll have a strong LTE signal and as soon as I open slingplayer to connect to slingbox, I get kicked back down to 3G. I know I'm probably crazy but it just seems that as soon as i try to run any data intensive programs on LTE, I get kicked back down to 3G.

 

Did you have a good signal? My iPhone will connect to a horrible (-120dBm, 0 bars) signal when I'm on WiFi/not using my phone, and when I attempt to use it, it will immediately disconnect.

[shmty25]

What device?

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

 

Galaxy S3. I'm sorry, I'm too much of a noob to understand how to check signal strength, but when I'd do speed tests on LTE, I'd get 4-5 Mbps and then as soon as I try to watch slingbox, the picture was horrible and stuttered a lot. So I would close the app and sure enough, back down to 3G, and very slow speeds on 3G.