CriticalityEvent

Towers aren't always towers. You will see many people here refer to them as sites. Some are panels inside other objects hiding the panels. Some are on top of buildings that you might not be able to see. Flagpoles, light poles, trees, etc.

downloaded cdma field test, now the primary tower is a totally different location. wrong again however, only single story residence, no towers, poles, tree with panels (really by the way?).

My head actually cocked to the side when I read that as well! Aside from the issues with anchoring panels to something that is alive and potentially growing, I couldn’t figure out how something like downtilt would work on something that has the rigidity of a real tree. Can you imagine what your service would be like in a storm? “I have signal! No, wait neverm… THERE! Oh, gone again.” It’d be like a giant metronome.

http://waynesword.pa...du/faketree.htm

These fakes are pretty spot-on from a distance! This is not good news for my driving skills since S4GRU.com has taught me to keep an eye out only for conspicuous panels. Now I'm going to start questioning everything.

I do pay for internet at home, it is WiFi, however, I dont have LTE at home, nor will I likely have it in the next few years anyway, regardless of Network Vision plans. Sprint told me "Oh yes, you WILL for sure have WiMAX indoors at your home location today, but we also are expanding so you will have it even stronger than you do already." verbatim only a few weeks after my trial was over to say "Oh, sorry, we arent expanding WiMAX so you will only get it a few blocks from your house now." So with that, I know Sprint wont really bring LTE to my house anytime soon, and if they do, Ill have to purchase a new device full price to get LTE on 800 ESMR anyway if I want to go that route.

 

As for the internet at home, yes I do pay for it, yes, I do use it, though it is slower than LTE (being far enough away from the CO) at only 8-10mbps, however, I pay next to nothing for it. Yes, it is unlimited as well, no throttle, no caps, just good old independent DSL company in my area. My issue is that if my mobile bill costs double my home bill (of internet, phone, electric, gas, etc combined) then yes, I want to get my values worth and use the shit out of it.

So, because your phone costs more, you’re going to use it more? I mean, that makes sense to a point, but it makes no sense if you’re at home because the increased cost of your phone’s service ensures that you can take it ANYWHERE. I think that most home ISPs plans are cheaper than a standard smartphone plan these days.

When you do get LTE at your home (and you WILL), and it clocks in at 25-35 Mbps, are you still going to use that over your 8-10 Mbps Wi-Fi connection? Like I asked someone else before, given that your latency will more than likely be lower over your home connection, what can you do with 25-35 that you can’t do with 8-10?

Years?

 

LTE's going on nearly every single tower, so unless you're in a fringe area, you'll get it eventually.

 

What's your RSSI (signal strength in dBm) at your home? If it's better than -95, you should be able to get an LTE signal once available.

 

This isn't the WiMAX deployment, by the way. The two have nothing to do with each other, and, to be blunt, you should not use it as a basis for your expectations for LTE.

Right? I wish more people understood what WiMAX was really about: http://s4gru.com/ind...otection-sites/

But you people who have a reasonably fast WiFi connection at home but want to use 'the shit out of LTE' in lieu of WiFi are extremely short sighted. Bet you won't be using 'the shit' out of it when Sprint institutes data caps. Idiocy.

I can still see people of this mentality not being able to connect their irresponsible abuse with the instituted data caps. It’ll just be another thing to blame Sprint for. That’s going to irk me more than the P!nk lyric asking “where’s the rock n’ roll?” in reference to music on the radio these days (though that’s like bin Laden asking “what happened to the NYC skyline?”).

Pardon my crude analogy, but plenty here and elsewhere treat Sprint like a battered woman. "She" may stay with you out of economic necessity and tell you that your behavior is okay, but that DOES NOT make it okay.

 

AJ

But if she knew what was good for her, she'd stay in the kitchen making us our Ice Cream Sandwich. Because, you know, she's asking for it otherwise.

http://www.s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/2626-Jelly-Bean-for-our-HTC-EVO-4G-LTE??

That sounds more of a moral issue than a contractual issue.

You are correct; you are absolutely under no contractual obligation to use Wi-Fi. What we are advocating here is the promotion of offloading for the benefit of everyone, including you.

The way I look at it is like this... I pay for unlimited use on my phone, and I should use as much or as little as I chose, for whatever apps I want to. Matter of fact, a lot of the music I like to listen to, TuneInRadio no longer works over WiFi signals, and ONLY works over 3G or 4G networks. Because of this, I have to turn off my WiFi when I want to listen to music at home.

This is…strange. It sounds like an issue that should be posted in XDA, but for now, I would agree that you should do what you could to use the services that you want.

With respect to watching movies or YouTube videos, I may occasionally watch them over 3G or 4G, especially if I am in strong 4G areas, I will 90% of the time use the network. WiMAX is dead, so I have pretty much used all I can before upgrading to an LTE device. Since LTE is not offered where I live, (well it is but not at my house, work, or any part in between), I continue to offload to WiFi. Not for the sake of anyone else, but for the sake I want my data to stream fast, or in HD.

Once you do get LTE again, and you are in a trusted Wi-Fi area, why use LTE? I know you are of the mentality that “you paid for it, therefore you should use it,” but what of your home internet connection? Did you not pay for that as well?

The moral issue here is should someone who has the opportunity, offload their data onto WiFi if it is available, for the sake of others? Others will use that as a reason we should do so for their benefit so they can use more data, speedy data, or even drive prices lower, unfortunately, this is extremely lopsided.

No, it’s not lopsided. You are offloading when you can so others can use the cellular network when they cannot offload. When they have the ability to offload, they will, which will free up the network to allow you to use it when you don’t have the ability to offload.

If you pay for it, you should use it as you see fit. Anytime you see fit. It would be like telling a car owner not to drive in-town and take a bus so that way other people can use the roads and prevent traffic. When you look at it like that, it simply does not work. Roads will get bigger the more people travel on them, same with wireless, the more people using it, the more there may be measures taken to ensure traffic flows normally, but also the larger the lanes will be. So if you are paying for it, you are paying for the upgrades for the future. Why do you think Verizon and AT&T have been able to expand so fast? More people paying, more people using the network.

Looking at metropolitan areas, we have hit the limit on road area, just as we are hitting the limit on spectrum. You’re going to have an easier (and cheaper) time getting around Manhattan in the subway than you are on the roads. The last wireless revolution (3G) didn’t come about from congestion, and the next will come about regardless of how the networks are treated. Treat them badly, and you end up with Sprint's 3G circa 2008-present and data caps.

Until recently, majority of Sprint users did not use the network as much as we do (since the EVO launch), now that we are, Sprint has to scramble to upgrade the network for the usage. Something they could have done a long time ago, had we been using it all along. So no, offloading to WiFi is not my idea of something to do, unless you REALLY feel obligated to do so, but contractually no, its not required. Sprint however is making it easier for the consumer by having Optimization Managers in new phones to allow offloading, 3G or 4G connectivity when and where it is strongest, that way it is fair, blindly managed by the carrier. However, I think if Sprint REALLY cared that much about offloading, they would pull an AT&T and T-Mobile and opt for WiFi in many high traffic areas, and have the phones automatically, seamlessly authenticate and connect to their O&O WiFi hotspots. They can still monitor the usage of where new towers and sites need to be, but offload heavy usage in high traffic areas to them instead. Of course, none of this matters if it is not a seamless experience, and WiFi to Cell and vice versa is definitely far from that.

 

Will I be obligated by someone elses issues to offload, absolutely not. I pay for what I think should be unlimited, offered as unlimited and definitely I manage myself for myself, not for others.

Most of these arguments have been made before, read these:

http://s4gru.com/ind...3557#entry73557

http://s4gru.com/ind...4043#entry74043

Until you leave the metro area and go to a more spread out normal Sprint network.

 

Sent from a little old Note 2

Oh, believe me, this I know. A friend is looking to get rid of her SIII when she gets her work phone, and she’s keeping it really wrapped-up, so I might take it off her hands in the next week or so. Fortunately, my time is spent mostly in/around the city, with work having the lowest site density of anywhere I frequent. Even at work, however, my signal is pretty consistent in my part of the building.

But, like you said elsewhere, it’s very much a “metro-only phone.”

That's what I'd like to hear!! My cousin is going to switch from Tmo to Sprint, and I don't want him to get stuck with bad service.

 

You're not experiencing EVDO or LTE blocks are you? Where your device shows full signal and great RSSI/RSRP, but no throughput.

No, I’ve never experienced that. In fact, I’ve never even heard of that. Did I completely glaze over some major issue that people are having?

I have a question for those who are connecting to LTE now; how's the signal handoff and throughput?

Even with the EVO LTE’s connection issues, now that the Chicago market is more filled-out, the handoffs (that I’ve seen while using the phone) are seamless and the throughput is like riding a unicorn on LSD. A tower by my house must’ve been accepted yesterday because I noticed some really nice signal strengths. Ran a few speed tests, they were all in the 25-35 Mbps range (8-13 Mbps up, 42-59 ms ping). Still, going to offload to my 20 Mbps Comcast connection while at home. 0:-)

But you failed to realize that all those devices I referenced are Sprint devices. Sprint also sale world phones also which guess what? Have GSM in them also.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

I understood that you referenced Sprint devices that have the *ability* to run on GSM networks, but read this again and pay attention to the information that he’s trying to convey:

AT&T in particular uses GPRS and EDGE for 2G technologies, UMTS, HSPA and HSPA+ for 3G, and finally (depending on your opinion and definition) HSPA+ and LTE for "4G" or has no 4G at all.

 

All AT&T LTE devices can make use of all of these technologies.

 

Sprint devices (except a hybrid hotspot) are either 3G EV-DO only, 3G EV-DO and 4G WiMax, or 3G EV-DO and 4G LTE.

He started by using AT&T’s *technologies* to show examples of 2G, 3G, and 4G networks. From there, he went on to state that all of AT&T’s LTE phones can use all of AT&T’s technologies. To tie it into something that we as a Sprint forum can relate to, he listed the 3G and 4G technologies that Sprint uses.

Regardless of whether or not a Sprint device can run on a GSM network, while that device is connected to the Sprint network, it will only run on EV-DO, WiMAX, and/or LTE. Again, I understand that the devices you listed have the *ability* to connect to GSM networks, but they will not use any GSM technology while connected to Sprint (unless you consider LTE a GSM technology, but that was a whole other thread).

Not quite, the Evo 4G design was a world phone with CDMA/GSM/WIMAX and the iPhone 4S CDMA/GSM, iPhone 5 CDMA/GSM/LTE, BlackBerry Bold 9930 and 9850 Torch are world phones with CDMA/GSM, and the Atrix 4g was a world phone I believe with wimax.

I think that he was referring to Sprint devices that run on Sprint’s network types, those types being EV-DO, WiMAX, and LTE.

By the way, the "G" just stands for generation.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

His first line…

The G's are superficial designations (not technologies or protocols) for wireless generations or G's

He’s saying that “G” stands for “generation,” but that the word “generation” (and by extension, “G”) does not refer to any single type of technology or protocol (e.g., “3G” can encompass EV-DO or HSPA).

So in the next 6-8 months, I'm going to be running into this debate head on. My wife and I just signed on to build a new home in a new community 2 miles outside of a small city in Michigan. From what I can tell at&t doesn't provide DSL there and WOW! doesn't provide cable either. The options for HSI are Verizon LTE hotspot, Sprint hotspot, or satellite. I'm know that my smartphone data usage will be going up significantly because I won't have in home wifi to offload to Any hotspot will have a data cap and need to be reserved for PC usage and/or streaming TV (unless we add back in a TV subscription).

I wouldn’t feel too bad; this debate is mainly arguing for people to offload when it’s completely reasonable (e.g., at home or at a trusted friend’s place). Those aren’t great choices for home internet, so nobody is expecting you to offload. Paying for a hotspot service is also perfectly acceptable, but since it’s limited, we’d understand having to shift more usage to your cellular connection.

The only time people here would take exception to someone’s usage would be if the person rooted their phone to tether through it and was burning through 10+ GB/month.

My point? Middle and lower america is chock full of smartphone users who understand very little about their smartphones. My parents had no idea what the password on their router was or how to find it. How many people can u think of who are just as clueless? All they care about is whether or not it works, not if they are having the best experience they could have. Something as simple as keying in a password will cause many users to become disinterested.

 

I dont believe unlimited has any chance of surviving 2015. The late smartphone adopters will be the most technologically inept

My dad’s girlfriend got an iPhone around the time AT&T began capping plans. By that point, she had already asked me how to hop on Wi-Fi networks because her service was pretty much unusable. What was bad was that had her son not told her about Wi-Fi, she wouldn’t have even known to ask. The congestion in the area has since died down, so she has usable service again, but she still prefers to use Wi-Fi when available.

You are not even on the right track. Not even close... You can keep believing that LTE has Godly capabilities, but it doesn't. It will be overwhelmed. This is why Sprint already has plans to start throwing gobs of spectrum at their towers. Verizon is already getting overloaded with twice the spectrum that Sprint is initially deploying. Wake up!

I totally agree. The effect of smartphones on cellular providers can be likened to Zippo or Bic replacing their customers’ lighters with flamethrowers. Once you have that, why bother with using the furnace at home?

I had a couple of interesting occurrences, but keep in mind this is with my EVO LTE, so these might be related to the connectivity issues.

Sitting at a bar last week between 9:30 and 11:00pm, I noticed that my phone was randomly switching between 3G and 4G. Looking at the RSRP/RSRQ values, it would either hover between -111/-8 and -107/-7 or between -93/-20 and -95/-20. While it was on 3G, I tried switching to “LTE only” mode and did the airplane mode dance, but couldn’t get it to connect.

I recently began getting LTE at work (X-D), but mostly just around my desk. At my desk, I typically see values around -107/-7 RSRP/RSRQ, respectively. I usually lose the signal as I go deeper into my building. For grins, I switched the phone to “LTE only” mode before going to a room where I always lose signal. The phone held on, hovering at around -120/-20 with speeds of 3.5 to 4.6 Mbps down and 1.2 to 3.9 Mbps up. However, while still in this room, I switched it back to the standard “CDMA + LTE/EvDo auto” mode and couldn’t get LTE to connect again, even after cycling through airplane mode. “LTE only” mode didn’t let me reconnect, either.

Not working on the EVO LTE, either.

Is there a way to gain access to the password protected forums for sponsors using tapatalk? I automatically get in using my pc but tapatalk prompts me for a password even though I am logged in. I don't think I ever got a password for those forums....I just suddenly got access when my sponsorship kicked in.

It's a known bug.

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/2382-password-on-tapatalk/page__hl__tapatalk__fromsearch__1

Workaround here:

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/693-sponsors-forum-via-tapatalk/

Basically, just set "The S4GRU Club" as a favorite and access it under your "Favorites" menu.

 

Not to change the subject, but it strikes me how this also helps illustrate/underscore the importance of Wi-fi offloading when available, particularly in the face of more egregious/abusive usage. Unless I'm misunderstanding the numbers here (and please by all means correct me if I am), say hypothetically you get more than say 10 max people downloading things over an extended period of time on one sector....and suddenly you're in danger of being back at square one in spite of Network Vision.

THIS. I was thinking the exact same thing. As soon as I saw these numbers, I began thinking of ways to incorporate this thread into the offloading debate thread.

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

sprint 3g < home internet/wifi ~1-3 meg < wimax < home internet/wifi ~5-10 meg < lte < home internet 10+ meg

 

This has been my point all along, sprint 3g sucks and 99% *any* wifi connection will be way better than cellular.

For the sake of argument, I will meet you half-way for a minute and agree with the bolded section. Based off what you have said before, you will pretty much always use the faster connection, regardless of whether or not you have Wi-Fi available. What can you do on a 20 Mbps LTE connection that you can’t do on a 5-10 Mbps Wi-Fi connection? Take into account that the Wi-Fi connection will likely have a significantly lower latency than the LTE connection.

Where this giant conflict of opinions comes in is wimax/lte.

 

Wimax and LTE are no where near the saturation/slowness of 3g, and often times way better than most wifi connections.

 

If we ever get to the point where wimax/lte are as overloaded as sprint 3g, then I would agree that offloading is as important as some of you feel.

 

When I was using my evo I pretty much used wimax exclusively because a) it was faster and more reliable than my dsl and any wifi that I would typically have access to.

 

Since recently I got an iphone5, and there is no sprint lte here yet, I am stuck with sprint 3g and I am always on the look out for wifi.

 

You can talk as long and as loud as you want about the tragedy of the commons et al, the fact is that on wimax/lte there is not the same constraints as on 3g and until or unless a person or group of persons are being affected by some overloaded wimax/lte then it does not make 1 bit of difference if they offload or don't.

Kind of the same argument twice here; “Why bother using anything else if the cellular network isn’t overloaded?” I think this article that you posted a while back deserves another visit:

some more interesting reading @ http://www.fiercewir...reless-blunders

Here are some excerpts that I like:

The common perception was, if CDMA 1x-RTT and EV-DO worked fine, why bother with Wi-Fi?

 

...

 

As late as 2009, Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) and Verizon were still wary of adding Wi-Fi to their BlackBerry devices. Network congestion from rising 3G data usage began forcing the carriers to rethink their stances on Wi-Fi though.

Up until 2008, 3G was GREAT, then it began to buckle under the stress of all the new subscribers. The honeymoon was over, and I wanted to punch Sprint in the face. The backlash from people who shared my frustration forced the carriers to start putting Wi-Fi on their phones.

Great, problem solved, right? Wrong. Now you have people who have gotten in the habit of not using Wi-Fi and either don’t know how to offload or don’t care to put forth the effort of a few flicks of the finger to offload. More people were still jumping on the smartphone bandwagon so the quality of service continued to deteriorate.

Now comes along WiMAX and LTE. I’m glad you admit that these are not silver bullets in the fight against network congestion. Even these will get overloaded, just like 3G. Do you like your 3G right now? How about being forced to use it in its current state for the last 3 years (when you didn’t have WiMAX available)?

This was a lot, so I’ll sum up my questions:

1.) What can you do on a 20 Mbps LTE connection that you can’t do on a 5-10 Mbps Wi-Fi connection? Take into account that the Wi-Fi connection will likely have a significantly lower latency than the LTE connection.

2.) Given that less than half of the U.S. currently uses smartphones, do you think that we’re not doomed to repeat history?

3.) Is it not worth pushing for more diligent Wi-Fi usage to avoid repeating what happened to 3G? I will admit that we might not see sub-150 Kbps speeds again, but with LTE, sub-1 Mbps speeds might become equally excruciating in 7-8 years.

Ok, apologies in advance for this barrage of questions, but I was trying to tie it all together here and needed a couple of things cleared up.

If the backhaul is faster than the theoretical airlink connection, it is wasted speed. Now if Sprint acquires additional spectrum or hosts Clear's spectrum I understand that can change, but for the most part, having 1gb/s backhaul when your airlink can only support 300mb/s is a waste.

Is the “theoretical airlink connection” that you’re referring to the maximum speed per sector? I would like to tie this into imekul’s question:

So when a site is complete, what would its capacity be? Are we talking three sectors times 37 Mbps, so essentially 110 Mbps per tower?

If each tower does have a total of 110 Mbps shared among three sectors, then would the backhaul only need to support a maximum of 110 Mbps? If this is the case, does it invalidate lilotimz’s comment about towers having a capacity of 300 Mbps?

iirc, sprint nv upgraded towers typically have microwave or fiber backhaul that has a capacity of 300mbps that can be increased if needed. Old legacy towers are typically supplied by T1 lines which has a capacity of 1.5 mbps each. Usually they bundle 3 of them together.

Does this mean that each legacy tower had a total backhaul capacity of 4.5 Mbps? If that’s the case, then per AJ’s comment…

Per sector·carrier, EV-DO Rev A has a peak throughput of 3.1 Mbps, but average aggregate throughput is likely closer to 2 Mbps.

 

AJ

…is it theoretically possible to use over half of a legacy tower’s capacity from a single sector?

This is assuming everything is running smoothly. Congestion can add tremendous latency. It can also add jitter. It obviously reduces throughput. Not all carriers connect to all other carriers.

Is this the kind of jitter that you’re referring to? http://en.wikipedia....delay_variation

http://fixedorbit.com/stats.htm shows how many peers the top ten networks have. A peer is another provider running BGP (the protocol of how providers talk to each other). Sometimes carrier A has to go through B, C and D to get to E. I will post some traceroutes from my border router to different Chicago area SpeedTest.net sites.

So, if I understand this, if I were to run a latency test while on a Level 3 network to a given server, it would be more likely that I would see a better result than if I ran the test on Sprint’s network to that same server, right? Since Level 3 has 2,703 peers compared to Sprint’s 1,316, is Level 3 likely to have a more direct connection to the test server than Sprint?

To make it more interesting... Just because that's the path my data takes to get there, it may take a completely different path on the way back.

Is this because the network determined that the path the data came in on was no longer the optimal path to return it on? Could the conditions of the original path have changed in that short amount of time?

Take a look at http://bgplay.routeviews.org/ and plug in an address block advertised on the Internet to see how connections between carriers change.

This looks really interesting! I’m just having a hard time understanding exactly what it’s telling me… What are the address blocks that I’m supposed to plug into it?

Queue... the Borg pictures of Robert now...

Can anyone tell me if these are NV panels?

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.

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!!!

*blush* Thanks. ;-)

 

BGP is a protocol. More appropriate words in your depiction would be <Internet>. I'll spin this off to a new thread as to not clutter the Chicago thread with how the Internet works. ;-)

 

http://s4gru.com/ind...net-works-haha/

Haha, sorry… didn’t mean to come off so kiss-assy, I do appreciate the explanation, though! I look forward to reading that post!

For me, latency is part of the overall results of the speed test, so while my IP can place me in Kansas, I have the feeling that if I test through Chicago, I will get a better ping because I can't beat physics. However, I have no doubt that the download/upload speed shouldn't suffer (much) due to the increased distance assuming that the server's capacity and bandwidth are sufficient.

 

Due to how TCP functions, latency plays a big role. Latency, jitter (worse on mobile networks), packet loss, etc. all affect what you can get.

 

Just because you are physically located in say Bozeman, Montana doesn't mean the Bozeman server would offer the best performance. Your provider may haul you all the way back to Westin in Seattle before interconnecting with other carriers and thus to the speedtest site. To bring a bit more localness to it, if he is in Arlington Heights, his signal will travel to the MSC (or LTE core) responsible for that site (LTE cores do make it more interesting because they're dynamic). From there it travels over Sprint's network (this part I'm fuzzy on) to wherever Sprint interfaces with the rest of the world. In Chicago, these locations are likely 600 S. Federal and 350 E. Cermak. If a speedtest server sitting on a network that BGP currently prefers is in Joliet, that is where you're likely to get the best performance. It is a lot further away than an Arlington Heights server, but how the Internet is connected is a much bigger factor than physical location. My credentials for this are that I have my own ISP with microwave backhaul and I have equipment in the major Internet exchange points in Chicago.

 

First of all, my post sounded more than a little arrogant, so I apologize for that. I had no doubt that you knew what you were talking about; despite your low post count (at the time of the post), it was pretty obvious that you knew a thing or two about network technology. You may have resurrected a lot of old posts, but at least you made use of the “MultiQuote” feature here and obviously have a genuine desire to contribute and not artificially increase your post count.

As for your explanation, thanks! I think I have an idea what you’re saying, but I’m still a little hazy on how the whole thing works. I was under the impression that a latency test was very distance-dependent (hence my “can’t beat physics” comment). As an example, here’s how I thought a latency test worked (and this is probably totally wrong):

Imagine a very long-distance, rudimentary network is set up between New York City and Los Angeles (straight-shot distance: ~2500 miles). If the network hardware itself somehow didn’t impact the test, the latency would still be a minimum of 27 ms (2500 mi / 186000 mi/s)*2. That number would go up because of the time it takes to change the signal from one form to another (wired -> microwave, for example).

As I wrote that, I began to realize that if you don’t take distance into account, you don’t get a true measure of how fast the network can get a response, which is what I think your explanation covers, right? If I’m in Arlington Heights and run a latency test to a server in Joliet, would the packet travel like this? Phone->Tower->MSC->BGP->Server->BGP->MSC->Tower->Phone. If so, is the latency a measurement of the time it takes to go from the BGP to the server and back to the BGP (bolded section)? Just to be clear, is the BGP the Sprint/Internet interface that you referenced?

...

 

Also, Sprint internally has said they are targeting 80% of their sites in each market to get LTE 800, on average. What I have seen so far supports that goal. However, the SoftBank investment could have impacts on the final LTE 800 deployment, as well as the FIT. All very preliminary at this point.

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

So I have a couple of questions that I've been sitting on for a while, but I think that my questions are only valid assuming that I've pieced the following information together right:

Based off of what I've read on S4GRU, it seems that Sprint has a greater site density than the other carriers. This is, at least in part, due to Sprint running only on 1900MHz for 3G which does not travel or penetrate as far as AT&T’s 850MHz or Verizon’s 800MHz (both also use 1900MHz for 3G). We know that Sprint has roughly 38,000 towers and T-Mobile has about 35,000. T-Mobile also uses 1900MHz in addition to 1700/2100MHz for 3G.

1.) Do Verizon and AT&T have lower density, but an overall equal or greater number of towers since they seem to cover rural areas better than Sprint and T-Mobile?

2.) If Sprint has more towers in a given market, then would outfitting 80% of those towers with 800MHz LTE still give them the same number of towers that other carriers have that transmit LTE on 700MHz LTE in that market? I also remember you stating that Sprint’s 800MHz LTE would still have 97% of the distance/penetration characteristics as the other carriers' 700MHz LTE, so we can assume they're about equal in that regard.

3.) Will Verizon and AT&T deploy LTE on all of their frequencies (700, 1700/2100MHz for both) across all of their towers at some point? Do they have a Network Vision-like strategy?

I believe that is accounting for the portion of hte country where Sprint doesn't own 800mhz licenses in SoutherLINC territory.

Ahh, gotcha, thanks! So it’s going to be more like a large, contiguous swath across part of the U.S. missing 800MHz LTE rather than an evenly-distributed 4 out of 5 towers across the whole country.

EDIT: Oh, er... not?

Yes indeed. The 20% that will not get LTE 800 are largely redundant urban sites in tight spacing where the site already gets an abundant LTE 800 signal from adjacent sites and they are designing to minimize interference. Also, sites that cannot handle RRU's and need ground based radios were not originally slated to get LTE 800. But this may change by the time LTE 800 FIT is complete and equipment goes into production.

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

I didn't say it was entirely wrong, let me elaborate... Regarding the 800mhz band, it penetrates buildings better and travels farther, that much is true. It is also less affected by weather than the higher bands. Conversely it is more prone to interfere with itself due to the distance it travels.

 

Now to the higher bands, Sprint is using 1900mhz and eventualy 2500 mhz. We all know 2500 mhz doens't travel as far but this is good for intereference reasons. 2500 mhz will be used as an overlay so that if you are in range, you will be bumped to this (ideally, this is assuming Sprint owns Clearwire, if Sprint is paying clearwire based on usage, I would not bet on this) to remove load from the lower two bands.

 

Before even approaching this however, it seems increasingly likely Sprint will be able to purchase the H-Block within the PCS spectrum from the FCC giving them another 10mhz. Sprint's site density was originally intended for PCS and it appears they would like to stick with PCS for the bulk of their network traffic, which makes sense since no lower frequency spectrum is available and 2500mhz has its own issues. Essentially though, they will have a 3 tiered network which has users on 2500/1900/800 depending on location. You are correct however that 2500 mhz will never be a network unto its own. Also, Clear has stated they have a "light" core which will allow seamless handoffs between frequencies.

This.

EDIT - Also regarding 800 mhz and site density. Sprint is not removing towers from their network to lose density. 800mhz will be used with the current desnity and I assume more downtilt to give much greater in-building coverage in the areas it covers. The main savings from NV will be incurred due to much cheaper backhaul, i.e. many T1's vs fiber/microwave/AAV as well as shutting down most of the Nextel towers. Right now Sprint is paying to operate two wholly different networks. The use of 800mhz will also reduce roaming costs incurred.

Just something I might have mis-read, but I thought Robert said somewhere that only about 80% of Sprint’s towers are going to get LTE on 800MHz. It would be absolutely killer if all of them did, though!

Does rooting help the issues of connection with the EVO LTE

No.