radem

Your guess is correct and that is all I will say on it.

I am glad they listened and fixed the streaming speed limit. I would be fine if they added a streaming speed limit after 21GB in the billing cycle. That would actually still be a very good plan.

I am not as well versed with network infrastructure as mhammett is, but I know a few things about it and have been around it for many years so I will attempt to answer this question. In almost every network design, having at least two completely separate paths for the data to follow is considered to be better than one. This is why nearly all major data centers are located very near an IX or have an IX inside of them. Multiple data paths not only increase the total data throughput available but add redundancy for when a network link is cut by construction, congested, rain fade blockage or misalignment affects one of the microwave transfer paths, or for any other reason one data path is not working optimally. It is not uncommon for important data networks to follow a ring pattern or a ring of data rings so that is there are always at least two paths for the data to follow. Hardwired and wireless can both contribute to the redundant paths as long as they really are redundant and separate. Redundant links for the internet and local networks were designed and implemented by the US Defense Department DARPA and research institutions well before home and business users were ever allowed on the internet. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-healing_ring for how redundant network links work. A data center that I have worked with in the past has backbone interconnects (both fiber and microwave) for AT&T, Sprint,and Comcast, plus it has several smaller carriers on either dedicated fiber, microwave, or both. It is used partially as a backup data center for one of the large Chicago data centers listed in the original post by mhammett. It has multiple ways to get data to and from its primary data center. If any data path is down (for example AT&T), the redundant nature of the networks causes it to automatically route around the problem to stay functional by possibly routing through Sprint or Comcast to a different IX and then back into AT&T's network. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Router_%28computing%29 for how enterprise routers work. In my opinion, Sprint should have rapidly deployed microwave in addition to the already in place slow wired connections (multiple T-1s) for any site it was having trouble getting the enhanced wired back haul to. Obviously this would not have worked for locations where the antenna location could not support the weight or positioning of direct line of sight microwave equipment. This would have allowed Sprint to have the bandwidth available quickly in many more locations. They could have then rapidly deployed Network Vision and it would have given them some connectivity redundancy. Some effects of this additional microwave use would have been a higher installation cost, more power usage, and possibly higher lease costs due to the additional tower weight for the microwave equipment. I believe it would have been worth it to get NV done quickly but I do not make decisions for Sprint. It appears that Sprint went with a less expensive option that took longer, left them with no redundancy, and made it look to others that they could not execute quickly. Marcello and Son appear to be changing this type of decision making within the senior ranks of the company.

Mr. Toad

The best wireless network in Disney World is the Disney WIFI network. It is available for free at all the hotels and covers nearly all of the outside area in the parks and much of the area inside the buildings. I had Disney WIFI almost everywhere I went when I was there in April. That left the macro networks working fine since all they have to cover is people traveling outside of the parks and hotels and the locals who live or work in the area. LTE usually will not be a decent competitor for corporate or venue WIFI unless they have a well built DAS at that location. Macro networks cannot handle very large groups of people in the same place very well. That is true for all carriers. I have Sprint and my Wife has AT&T. Both networks were just fine since we were on Disney WIFI nearly all the time and when we weren't on WIFI, there was plenty of capacity on the macro network.

I was there 2 months ago. The coverage was good but not great. I was on a iPhone 5S however so your experience may be better than mine. Disney's free WIFI covers all their hotels and all their parks and was slow at times but nearly always usable. I usually found Sprint LTE to be a little slower than the Disney WIFI and just auto-connected to Disney WIFI whenever it was available. Because of the large number of people on WIFI the macro LTE network has enough capacity available to work with those crowds. Recommendation: Bring a external battery and charging cord to the parks. People use mobile devices a lot when they are there.

http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/ Use the form under the article and above the comments to see when an average person with 20/20 vision could see all the detail on screens of different sizes at different resolutions and different distances. Just for fun, I plugged in a 7 inch diagonal screen which is larger than all telephones have. 7 inches is actually the size of the smaller tablets. The form states that you need to have your screen 2 feet or closer to see all the detail at 480p resolution and 1 foot or closer to see all the detail at 1080p resolutions. It says you have to have the screen 0 feet or closer to see the detail at 4K resolution. I do not know how close you like to keep your telephone screen from your face but I am guessing that you keep it 1.5 to 3 feet away when looking at it when watching video on it. This means that your eyes likely cannot see the difference between 480p and 4k resolution. You would have an even more difficult time seeing the difference if you were on a smaller screen than 7 inches diagonal.

There were hundreds of thousands of people at the Indianapolis 500 race. When the race was over, many thousands of people try to get for a taxi to get them out of the area. Taxis have special road routes in and out assigned only to them as the number of cars leaving the parking areas overwhelm the Speedway road system for hours. Many people including my party of 6 prefer getting away from there quickly and safely. The Taxi and bus routes within about 5 miles of the area are enforced by local police and barricades. Uber was a sponsor at the race to help with the shortage of taxis for this event. All Uber cars had a special notice in their window so that police could direct them through the taxi routes to assist with the overload of people. When the race was over, the Speedway taxi pickup area, which was about a half a mile away from the track and outside of the range of the COWs, had an Uber booth with Uber representatives to assist people with getting rides. Unfortunately all the providers were swamped and not working other than Sprint. I was able to make my reservation with no issues other than a little slowness in my iPhone 5S. The Uber table had MiFi devices from Sprint and Verizon to help people with connectivity. Uber was recommending that if you were having trouble using the Uber app, that you connect your wifi to their MiFi device. The only issue was the Verizon MiFi was overloaded and so was their macro network. Verizon slowed to a crawl and was barely working. T-Mobile essentially stopped. AT&T was overloaded and started timing out. Sprint was very slow but worked without timeouts or any other issues. The Uber people were directing everyone from other providers onto their Sprint MiFi and Sprint hotspot devices. In my party, I had fairly recent devices from all 4 major providers in the area. People from other providers were remarking at how Sprint used to be really bad in that area and were amazed Sprint was now the best provider to use there. Sprint will likely be getting some new customers from that experience. Maybe Sprint got lucky and their COWs happened to cover out to there but I expect that everything was working just because of more than one band 41 carrier gave them more capacity than the other providers away from the track. Verizon is an Indianapolis 500 sponsor.

Using 3G only mode right now at the speedway since LTE 800 and 1900 are slammed. My wife can't use data on her AT&T iPhone 5S at all so she is using my Sprint iPhone hotspot. Sent from my iPhone 5S using Tapatalk

Voice over IP (VOIP) services will work with as low a 30kbps upload and download. VOIP sounds best with 90Kbps upload and download and requires a low ping rate to work properly. This means your ping time must be less than 250ms (1/4 of a second). Satellite internet does not work well because of the high ping time and the ping time must also be fairly steady. Home broadband connections (not dial-up) are a minimum of 128Kbps upload and 512Kbps download on even the slowest plan and most have a slowest speed that is at least 4 times those speeds so almost everyone can run VOIP. If you do not have QOS voice prioritization on your home network, VOIP will break up horribly if you are doing things like downloading large files, streaming, torrenting, or anything that maxes out either your upload or download bandwidth while talking on the telephone. QOS fixes this problem by re-ordering your data packets so that the packets your router thinks are high priority are uploaded first. QOS does very little on the download side but that is usually fine since upload speeds are often much slower than download speeds on home internet connections.

8 page PDF on Ericson enabling Voice Call Continuity between LTE and CMDA that I found on Google. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=13&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCsQFjACOAo&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdg.org%2Fnews%2Fevents%2Fwebinar%2F120828_cdma-lte-roaming%2FEricsson-Enabling%2520CDMA-LTE%2520Interworking%2520-%252011.pdf&ei=hx9ZVbT0HYXYoASghIKYAw&usg=AFQjCNF7e1ZtoNaMp21S0diKBsyntaHbHA&sig2=jAOwaUgxx6N_eX-AbZVktg&bvm=bv.93564037,d.cGU

Regardless of whether it is good or bad for Sprint, I thought it was funny. But then again I am not a person that gets his news from SNL.

I am going to the Indianapolis 500 on May 24th. Any word on COWs or expanded capacity for 400,000 people to visit the speedway?

There is always the possibility of moving to the wired internet model. Pay X for up to 5mbps speed. Pay Y for up to 30mbps speed. Pay Z for up to 100mbps speed. That model is still unlimited, approved by the FCC, and it generates additional revenue. I wouldn't be surprised to see that occur in the future as speeds continue to increase.

The Magenta Trolls on Fierce Wireless cause many people and devices to puke. Your Uverse gateway cannot handle the trolling and gets sick when reading the comments there. This same issue occurs at least daily in many people and their devices who do not wear Magenta or have Magenta colored skin. It is to be expected and should be put in the AT&T FAQ. I can handle it because the buzzard in my profile picture has Magenta colored skin.

I have always thought a move like this makes sense. Imagine small remotely configurable CMDA/LTE repeater antennas integrated into the satellite dishes on people homes powered by the customer's satellite receiver. This is small cell heaven. The wire running into the customer's home would carry both TV and internet and the repeater would broadcast CDMA/LTE signals a few thousand feet for those users on the edge of a coverage hole. Sprint could offer their customers fixed wireless LTE over the repeater antenna connection, dramatically expand their coverage footprint, add streaming video to Dish, offer fixed home telephone service, and offer mobile, internet, satellite TV, home telephone bundles. In addition, they would gain access to Dish's spectrum holdings which are significant and could help bolster home fixed LTE internet and all of this would be available in the new SprintShack stores.

If the FCC approves the AT&T - DirecTV merger, they would have to approve a Sprint - Dish merger with the same conditions.

:censored: :censored: :censored: :censored: :censored: :censored: :censored: :censored: :censored:

Definitely enable QOS. Set your bandwidth for upload and download max bandwidth to 80% of your normal connection speeds to force your router's buffer to be the primary packet buffer on your connection. Use speedtest.net or similar to see your bandwidth before and after the QOS change. Then set UDP port 4500 (if Sprint WIFI calling uses the same port as T-Mobile) to the highest priority and your download ports to the lowest priority. When your router buffer has packets waiting to be sent, it will move your WIFI calling packets to the front of the buffer and your download packets to behind everything else. Your internet connection will "feel" like it works better as the traffic that you want to be quick will rarely get delayed by your big downloads. Reducing your bandwidth by 20% does not seem intuitive but it really works well once you understand how packet buffers work. I have been running Vonage over my internet connection for over a decade with QOS in place with no issues. You do have to watch your router CPU as QOS puts a CPU load on your router. If your router CPU maxes out, your connection speed will drop like a rock and will be very unhappy.

I do not know the exact amount of bandwidth that iPhone WIFI calling uses on Sprint but most VOIP calls with Vonage and similar providers take a maximum of 90kbs in each direction while sound is being broadcast in that direction. This is much lower than most home and business WIFI networks have for bandwidth. In the US is very unusual for an internet connection to operate at under 256kbs in each direction unless it is overloaded or the person is using dial-up or a throttled internet connection. Do NOT attempt to use WIFI calling over a satellite internet connection as you will not be happy with the results. Satellite internet has a terribly high data transmission time (nearly a second in many cases) and you will spend all your time talking over each other if it even works.

According to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ link under The Hub link at the top of each page): This is the area where spectrum use is under agreement with another country due to the fact that radio waves do not stop at country borders. If one country's radio waves interfere with another country's radio waves, that is a major concern to the country being interfered with. The US has agreements with Canada and Mexico to ensure that radio signal interference is kept to a minimum. Based on what I have read here, Sprint has already worked out arrangements with almost all of the organizations across both borders for their 800 MHz spectrum. It is waiting while each over the border organization changes and tests everything that they need to change and test so that Sprint can start broadcasting 1x and LTE on that spectrum without causing interference. As the cross border organizations let Sprint know that they are fine to start using 800 MHz in an area, Sprint starts to turn it on. The optimization process after it is turned on can take a period of many months so the signal will be set to low power when it is first turned on. You will see 800 MHz start to be used in certain IBEZ areas before it is available in others. It is totally dependent on the across the border organization as to when Sprint is free to use various parts of their 800 MHz licenses in the IBEZ area. You may also see 1x (voice and very slow data) carriers in use before LTE as 1x carriers use a small swath of spectrum that may be easier to clear first.

http://www.spigen.com/brands/apple/iphone/iphone-6-and-6-plus/iphone-6-plus/iphone-6-plus-case-ultra-hybrid.html are my favorite cases. Good protection, clear and not bulky. I use the 5S one on my phone. -edit corrected the link

The reason this all occurred in Chicago was that Bell Labs largest offices were in the Chicago Western Suburbs. It was the most convenient large city for testing. There is some interesting information about the history of Bell Labs on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs

This 11 minute long video is from the AT&T Archives and covers how the first cellular telephone network was built in Chicago by Bell Labs.