Debate on whether you should offload smartphone data on WiFi, even though you pay for "unlimited"

[vryan44]

All this arguing is giving me a headache ????

(Posted using my iPhone while offloaded to wifi at Golden Corral) excuse me while I pig out out the Buffett and then use the carry out boxes I brought from home to stock my fridge. It's okay though because since I paid the 10$ I'm entitled to it.

[irev210]

All this arguing is giving me a headache

(Posted using my iPhone while offloaded to wifi at Golden Corral) excuse me while I pig out out the Buffett and then use the carry out boxes I brought from home to stock my fridge. It's okay though because since I paid the 10$ I'm entitled to it.

 

Using carry out boxes violate the TOS.

 

The all-you-can eat buffet is only what fits into your mouth, not your tethered box.

 

Tethered take home boxes are available for additional fee.

[mhammett]

For the betterment of mankind, always offload.

[centermedic]

My response was to AJ talking about non-critical data usage and how it impacts other sprint users and if it bothered the sprint subscriber.

 

My position on wifi offloading is posted pages back.

Sorry. Was not trying to single you out. Just made a general observation based on your post.

[vryan44]

Using carry out boxes violate the TOS.

 

The all-you-can eat buffet is only what fits into your mouth, not your tethered box.

 

Tethered take home boxes are available for additional fee.

 

I realized this the first time I made the visit. (I was kicked out)

I made sure i brought my breifcase to hide the boxes on my way out.

[Ascertion]

Some Verizon devices don't even let you turn WiFi off. Coming from the leader of cellular, it should mean a bit.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[PythonFanPA]

 

 

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Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

 

I'll contribute $100 to the site if anyone (other than he himself or an immediate family member staging such) can produce a candid photo of Robert directly drinking from the chocolate fountain *g*

[WiWavelength]

I'll contribute $100 to the site if anyone (other than he himself or an immediate family member staging such) can produce a candid photo of Robert directly drinking from the chocolate fountain *g*

 

A candid photo? I can do better than that. Here is a video clip:

 

 

We will be expecting your PayPal donation shortly.

 

 

AJ

[CriticalityEvent]

After catching myself up on this thread, I feel comfortable sharing this observation: the vast majority of people here that are extremely well-versed in network implementation/deployment support the “offload when possible” mentality. When I am not the subject matter expert in something, I tend to defer to the experts’ judgment if it is something that I don’t have the time to learn myself. Interestingly enough, once I educate myself on the subject, I almost always end up coming to the same conclusion as the experts (not that “educating myself” necessarily makes me an expert).

 

I want to try summarizing the arguments and examples into points, that way, we can reference them directly and hopefully stop going in circles. I’ll get us started with a couple, and I would encourage you to reference the number to keep it organized. Mainly, I’d like to hear from people that, for whatever reason, dislike or have argued against the idea of offloading.

 

1.) If 10 people are connected to a cell tower and one person is streaming HD video to their phone, the other 9 will notice it more than if the same 10 people were connected via their respective (wired) broadband connections (even assuming they have the same home ISP and connect through the same local hub/switch).

 

All of the network gurus have pretty much come to a consensus that a wire-backed home ISP infrastructure can handle several high-speed transfers in an area with MUCH less strain than a cell tower under similar loads. This means that if everyone had the same mentality that some on here have towards offloading, there WILL be a noticeable difference in the quality of service.

 

2.) If your home connection can give you a minimum of 1.5 Mbps (or whatever you need to stream HD video to your phone), even during peak hours, and the latency is equal to or less than that of your cellular network, you will notice no difference unless you are performing a speed test (in which case, who cares?).

 

3.) Given points 1 and 2 are true, there is no disadvantage to using your home’s Wi-Fi connection. In fact, you may benefit from the decreased battery usage since your phone isn’t communicating with a tower that’s potentially miles away.

 

4.) You pay for Sprint’s service, which you are entitled to use, but you also pay for your home ISP. Whatever data-intensive task you are performing likely requires more than a few keystrokes, so the extra press of the Wi-Fi button on a widget prior to executing that task can’t possibly be terribly inconvenient (I realize the few iPhone people in this thread don’t have this option, but accessing the settings is stupid easy in iOS).

 

But do you want to know why all these points could be invalid? BECAUSE SPEEDTEST!!!

[dedub]

1) if the 10 people connect to their own wifi/home isp, then they have no correlation at all to each other as far as what bandwidth is used.

 

posit this; if 1 person out of the 10 is streaming hd video, that 1 person will just as likely be able to 'notice' the other 9 people doing whatever they are doing, as they 9 people will 'notice' what the 1 person is doing.

 

in other words, the network balances the bandwidth according to the priorities of the network. Assuming that the tower in question is not over loaded, its more likely that no single person of the 10 will 'notice' or even care what the other 9 are doing, even if 1 or more other people are using more bandwidth than 1 more other other people..

 

in the case where the tower is overloaded, its unlikely that the person streaming HD video, will not really be doing so, due to the aforementioned overloading in the first place.

 

3) I don't think anyone argued that there is any disadvantage to using wifi, at least if its equal or better than whatever you can get from cellular.

 

I think most most people are going to use whatever is fast enough for whatever they are doing, and really the only people this whole argument affects are the folks with the 1 to say 5 meg or so home internet, that get faster/better wimax/lte speeds than home.

 

In other words, no one ever in their right mind is going to consciously choose a slow-poke 3g connection over a home wifi/broadband connection, especially if we are talking 10+ meg home connection.

[pyroscott]

1) if the 10 people connect to their own wifi/home isp, then they have no correlation at all to each other as far as what bandwidth is used. posit this; if 1 person out of the 10 is streaming hd video, that 1 person will just as likely be able to 'notice' the other 9 people doing whatever they are doing, as they 9 people will 'notice' what the 1 person is doing. in other words, the network balances the bandwidth according to the priorities of the network. Assuming that the tower in question is not over loaded, its more likely that no single person of the 10 will 'notice' or even care what the other 9 are doing, even if 1 or more other people are using more bandwidth than 1 more other other people.. in the case where the tower is overloaded, its unlikely that the person streaming HD video, will not really be doing so, due to the aforementioned overloading in the first place. 3) I don't think anyone argued that there is any disadvantage to using wifi, at least if its equal or better than whatever you can get from cellular. I think most most people are going to use whatever is fast enough for whatever they are doing, and really the only people this whole argument affects are the folks with the 1 to say 5 meg or so home internet, that get faster/better wimax/lte speeds than home. In other words, no one ever in their right mind is going to consciously choose a slow-poke 3g connection over a home wifi/broadband connection, especially if we are talking 10+ meg home connection.

 

I choose a wifi connection that gives between 3 and 5 mbps over LTE at work. 2-3 times per day I have to go in and agree to the TOS to use the wifi also... It is a pain, but I choose to offload, and this is what we are discussing in this thread, not "my 10 mbps home internet is faster, so I choose that over 3G"

[dedub]

I choose a wifi connection that gives between 3 and 5 mbps over LTE at work. 2-3 times per day I have to go in and agree to the TOS to use the wifi also... It is a pain, but I choose to offload, and this is what we are discussing in this thread, not "my 10 mbps home internet is faster, so I choose that over 3G"

 

Well, that is just silly, in my opinion.

[pyroscott]

Well, that is just silly, in my opinion.

 

As was stated earlier, the only reason I would need faster speeds would be for a speed test, there is nothing I need to do on my phone that requires more than 3mbps. Why latch onto the more fragile shared resource? I firmly believe that your opinion is the silly one, and that people of your school of thought, using cellular instead of wifi, is one of the major contributors to Sprint's legacy network being overwhelmed the last year+.

 

This discussion made me think up a new term: Unlimited laziness - when someone refuses to put forth any effort to use Wi-Fi because they have an unlimited data plan.

[4ktvs]

I don't off load at home, because I have a PC to use the internet. Now because I will be moving into the "stick's" as one youtube commenter put it. I will very likely be using my unlimited 4G LTE verizon Data plan to offload from my soon to be 250GB cap As to the guy or anyone who think's there CS is so good. Then Why did I have to nearly sue them for pushing out a bad software update and swapping my phone out? But yea I seen the hard throttled way, that using 4G LTE over your home ISP just "cuz it's faster" is not good. ( And to play a crap load of 1080p video to my 46in tv with out skiping, like 50-80GB of 1080p video is not a good idea as well, just do 720p/480p even 360p just don't do that.)

[stopsign002]

I always offload. Why? Because ping is basically always better on a wifi network then on a cellular one. If you know anything about how the internet works, you know that ping really is the most important factor to having a good satisfying wireless connection. If you don't believe me find someone who has satellite internet. Yeah, they get 2-3 mbps, but the ping is over a second. Regardless of if it is socially responsible or not, the better ping wins out for 99% of what a user is doing on a smart phone. I literally just leave my wifi on so when I get to the various places I go it automatically connects. Almost every place I spend lots of time (school, work, home) has wifi so why not go for the better ping? Lets put it this way. Guy has a car with 1000 horsepower but his transmission takes a full 2 seconds to shift. Hes gonna lose to my Lincoln LS with 300 horses because of my faster transmission. Pings can be a huge bottleneck.

 

PS I have a degree in computer networking and am working on another one in computer information systems.

Edited November 29, 2012 by stopsign002

[CriticalityEvent]

1) if the 10 people connect to their own wifi/home isp, then they have no correlation at all to each other as far as what bandwidth is used.

 

Really? You're saying that people with cable connections have the same bandwidth available to them at all points during the course of a day?

 

posit this; if 1 person out of the 10 is streaming hd video, that 1 person will just as likely be able to 'notice' the other 9 people doing whatever they are doing, as they 9 people will 'notice' what the 1 person is doing.

 

in other words, the network balances the bandwidth according to the priorities of the network. Assuming that the tower in question is not over loaded, its more likely that no single person of the 10 will 'notice' or even care what the other 9 are doing, even if 1 or more other people are using more bandwidth than 1 more other other people..

 

 

I think you're taking my 10-person example a little too literally here; obviously no tower is going to be overloaded by 10 people (I think).

 

in the case where the tower is overloaded, its unlikely that the person streaming HD video, will not really be doing so, due to the aforementioned overloading in the first place.

 

And then we get to this. The current state of Sprint's unlimited network. The person who wants to stream HD video via his cellular connection can't because of of the overloading. I should apologize at this point as I meant to take my example a step further and say there are two groups; one 10-person group with access to Wi-Fi and a 5-person group forced to use the tower. The people with access to Wi-Fi might be doing something that's less data-intensive, but collectively, it has a noticeable impact on the other group because they're refusing to offload. Let's say that the 10-person group is just doing light browsing, but the 5-person group wants to stream something. The 10-person group consumes equal or more resources than the 5-person group, but each individual might only notice a slight lag when loading a page. This effect is more pronounced in the 5-person group by manifesting itself as vastly increased buffer times.

 

In short: no one drop believes that it is responsible for the flood.

 

3) I don't think anyone argued that there is any disadvantage to using wifi, at least if its equal or better than whatever you can get from cellular.

 

I think most most people are going to use whatever is fast enough for whatever they are doing, and really the only people this whole argument affects are the folks with the 1 to say 5 meg or so home internet, that get faster/better wimax/lte speeds than home.

 

In other words, no one ever in their right mind is going to consciously choose a slow-poke 3g connection over a home wifi/broadband connection, especially if we are talking 10+ meg home connection.

 

Why the hell would one not use a 5 Mbps Wi-Fi connection with a 20 ms ping vs. a 25 Mbps LTE connection with a 75 ms ping? Can these phones render pages fast enough to notice a difference in the time it takes to download? I don't think so. Can these phones still react fast enough to take advantage of lower latencies? I think so. The battery conservation is just gravy.

[swintec]

the better ping wins out for 99% of what a user is doing on a smart phone.

 

PS I have a degree in computer networking and am working on another one in computer information systems.

 

Are you running "ping" tests all day long on your phone? Care to tell us what users are doing 99% of the time on there phone where it is latency sensitive? Also, your analogy is very poor.

[stopsign002]

Are you running "ping" tests all day long on your phone? Care to tell us what users are doing 99% of the time on there phone where it is latency sensitive? Also, your analogy is very poor.

 

Do you run speed tests all day long on your phone? I would guess not. The typical user is using their phone for Facebook, Email, light browsing, and some stream video (not counting gaming which generally doesnt need internet access).

 

I'm not really sure what you dont understand about my post so I'm not sure how to answer. If you asking for how a bad latency effects users I can explain that, but I'm not sure. Just about anything you do on your phone is latency sensitive. Why do people say their phones are 'faster' on Verizon? Because the latency is lower so when you open a app everything appears much quicker, or when you go to a website it loads faster initially. Not to mention any sort of video chat which is EXTREMELY latency sensitive and is becoming very popular. Phones appear to be faster when the latency is lower because whatever it is they are doing starts loading much faster. People want their devices to be very fast as they move through webpages/facebook pressing links and going from page to page. Latency is going to effect how fast that phone appears to be much more than bandwidth (unless your bandwidth is EXTREMELY bad, like under 250kbps bad like some of us are experiencing). You can stream netflix HD no problem with 700kbps and a low latency. I know, I do it at work (where I have checked the network speeds to see whats going on). But if my latency goes up then its game over. Its more important to have the packets moving back and forth faster after you reach a certain bandwidth (unless we are just downloading big files, which normal users do not do).

 

I dont know how much you know but this is a good article explaining what I'm talking about; http://www.aidanfinn.com/?p=9566

Edited November 29, 2012 by stopsign002

[swintec]

The typical user is using their phone for Facebook, Email, light browsing, and some stream video (not counting gaming which generally doesnt need internet access).

 

Right. All of which are not latency critical apps. Voice over IP depends on latency to operate satisfactorily. Online gaming (Xbox, etc) depends heavily on latency. Streaming netflix does not. it will run without issue as long as throughput is high enough..roughly 2 MBits for a standard def video. Which will work fine on a satellite connection like wild blue or hughesnet.

[stopsign002]

Right. All of which are not latency critical apps. Voice over IP depends on latency to operate satisfactorily. Online gaming (Xbox, etc) depends heavily on latency. Streaming netflix does not. it will run without issue as long as throughput is high enough..roughly 2 MBits for a standard def video. Which will work fine on a satellite connection like wild blue or hughesnet.

 

Ok, I guess we wont call them latency 'critical', but to make these apps appear fast, which is critical to the customer, you will need a low latency.

[swintec]

Ok, I guess we wont call them latency 'critical', but to make these apps appear fast, which is critical to the customer, you will need a low latency.

 

Just low latency? Think of it this way, if we take a generally low latency connection, say a cable modem, and set the defined speed caps in the modem to that of dial up (56k)..how well will netflix or even facebook work on a low latency connection then? Despite the low latency, they would certainly not appear fast given how these services are developed for "high" bandwidth throughput.

[stopsign002]

Just low latency? Think of it this way, if we take a generally low latency connection, say a cable modem, and set the defined speed caps in the modem to that of dial up (56k)..how well will netflix or even facebook work on a low latency connection then? Despite the low latency, they would certainly not appear fast given how these services are developed for "high" bandwidth throughput.

 

Of course, which is why I said in my earlier post that as long as there is an acceptable bandwidth latency becomes much more important. Do you really believe most people need 4G to check facebook or email? Absolutely not. 4G is total overkill for most things people do on their phones. With a stable (low latency/packloss/not overloaded like sprints network) 3G connection people can do basically all of what they need/want and its fine. I would argue that the average user would say a low latency 3G connection (2mbps) is 'faster' than a high latency 4G connection (20mbps) in just about everything but netflix/download a big file. Latency is what the average public (besides us sprint users and our bogged network) sees as 'slow' connection speeds. Once you have more than 1.5mbps the average user isnt going to notice increased bandwidth, they are going to notice latency. I agree that they will notice with netflix though

Edited November 29, 2012 by stopsign002

[WiWavelength]

Why do people say their phones are 'faster' on Verizon? Because the latency is lower...

 

I would like to see some documentation. Do you have any stats to corroborate this assertion?

 

AJ

[stopsign002]

I would like to see some documentation. Do you have any stats to corroborate this assertion?

 

AJ

 

What? That Verizon has lower latency than Sprint?

[WiWavelength]

What? That Verizon has lower latency than Sprint?

 

Yes, I think that I was very clear in my previous post. Do you have any stats to show that VZW somehow has generally lower latency than does Sprint?

 

AJ