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[Varche]

Anyone know what causes issues with Internet traffic via 3G?

I am currently being driven insane by my Spanish supplier who is part of the Orange badge.

What happens is that I connect at 3G fine and can work perfectly OK for 3,5 maybe 10Meg of traffic and then the connection is still live but goes "dead". You click on a page and it comes up server not found,check address, check computer, Try Again.

I can normally connect at GPRS for really urgent work but that rather defeats the purpose of paying a whopping £40 a month for the service. Today I couldn't even connect at GPRS for over 30 minutes in the morning. Clear weather conditions so not wrong kind of clouds, etc.

I have just spoken to a non technical call centre bod who is going to investigate with a technical person and call me back. His suggestion was that "they have been having problems with operating system upgrades" I am running XP and do apply the altest critical updates from MS but haven't had any for a few days. I think that is a standard yarn.

Is this sort of issue one of too many customers on a node and rather than fail on an operating target of connecting every customer on demand they are connecting us knowingly to a dead connection.?

There are also times when the schools break for the day when the Internet just grinds to a halt. I have long since learnt not to use during those times.

Anyone know anything about how it works?   

[Kevin Wood]

You have a shared resource for which users contend. How that is managed depends on how the network is set up but I'd be surprised if they maintained a connection but blocked the traffic.

It sounds like you have two issues:

1) Your local node is getting completely swamped during peak times.

2) You have some issue that causes the connection to hang.

Not much you can do about 1) except use another provider.

Regarding issue 2, once this has happened do you then get a  good connection once more if you close then immediately establish the connection again?

Any idea where your local base station is? Do you have line of sight and roughly how far is it? Is it or you in a built-up or rural area? What signal strength does your phone / dongle report? Does this vary much?

Aside from the radio aspects of getting a signal to your local node, you could also be experiencing your service provider's core network getting congested. If you take a laptop somewhere where you know coverage will not be marginal is it any better?

Kevin

[Varche]

Kevin thanks for the answer.

1. I am sure you are right that the node is getting swamped. Third world country pretending to be 1st world methinks.

2. If I get the hung connection and drop it and reconnect it is just the same. I have also tried waiting in the hope someone else picks up my duff node port. Same happens then.

The local Orange base station is 5km away BUT we have perfect line of sight. Rural area with no hard wired landlines so no ADSL. probably never will be either as mobile takes off.

Dongle has 4 out of 5 bars on GPRS and 1 or none on 3G. In fairness it has always been like that but only recently have we started having poor quality connections.

Haven't got a mobile (only person you know without one?) but have now got a laptop so will try signal strength/quality test in Granada City at the weekend.

Sorry I didn't get back quicker but the connection dropped out

[Kevin Wood]

Sorry I didn't get back quicker but the connection dropped out

 

 

5km in line of sight should be do-able but, as you say, the 3G signal is low, and so will your signal be at the base station. It could be in such circumstances that if a user (or source of interference) closer to the base station is active, it reduces the signal-to-noise ratio of your signal enough for the link not to be viable.

Then again, you can immediately reconnect, which suggests that you have a stable signalling link with the base station. Could be that it's a network issue further into the mobile network - or even a driver issue in your PC or something? :-/

Kevin

[Varche]

They rang back(4 hours later) and said uninstall  their software and load latest version from their website that should cure the problem.

Been nice knowing everyone.................