Mobile internet for home use

DMC · Post by **DMC** » Wed Dec 09, 2015 4:16 pm

We have to change our household internet connection so I was wondering about using a mobile internet connection. I spoke to Sonera and they suggested adding a 4G wifi modem to my existing mobile phone contract, with a corresponding change to the service to support that. The price was OK but I don't know about speed and reliability. Occasionally a storm takes out the lines and we are cut off and I would hope that a mobile connection would not have this problem. Also, if the advertised speeds are correct, a mobile connection would be faster. Is this really true or is Sonera being optimistic? Our existing land line connection is no speed demon but is adequate for us; speedtest.net gives 31ms ping, 9.57 Mbps download and 1.33 Mbps upload. Sonera claim that 4G coverage at our home is good, almost excellent.
Any comments? Tips? Our current connection terminates at the end of this month so we need to sort something out before then.

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Upphew · Post by **Upphew** » Wed Dec 09, 2015 4:21 pm

DMC wrote:We have to change our household internet connection so I was wondering about using a mobile internet connection. I spoke to Sonera and they suggested adding a 4G wifi modem to my existing mobile phone contract, with a corresponding change to the service to support that. The price was OK but I don't know about speed and reliability. Occasionally a storm takes out the lines and we are cut off and I would hope that a mobile connection would not have this problem. Also, if the advertised speeds are correct, a mobile connection would be faster. Is this really true or is Sonera being optimistic? Our existing land line connection is no speed demon but is adequate for us; speedtest.net gives 31ms ping, 9.57 Mbps download and 1.33 Mbps upload. Sonera claim that 4G coverage at our home is good, almost excellent.
Any comments? Tips? Our current connection terminates at the end of this month so we need to sort something out before then.

It seems you already have Sonera's sim... so does it have 4g data? If yes, shouldn't the speedtest.net give you the answer?

DMC · Post by **DMC** » Wed Dec 09, 2015 4:42 pm

Upphew wrote:It seems you already have Sonera's sim... so does it have 4g data?

Unfortunately my current SIM only gives 3G not 4G.

Upphew · Post by **Upphew** » Wed Dec 09, 2015 4:50 pm

DMC wrote:
Upphew wrote:It seems you already have Sonera's sim... so does it have 4g data?
Unfortunately my current SIM only gives 3G not 4G.

Then ask for a loaner that does 4G?

rinso · Post by **rinso** » Wed Dec 09, 2015 6:32 pm

We have 4G from Saunalahti it is advertised as max 50Mbs. In practice it's between 25 and 30 most of the time. (ping 21ms, upload 10 Mbs) Not to bad since we're 6 km from the nearest tower.
We do have interruptions, on average once or twice a month for several hours at a time.
DNA and Sonera have no towers in the neighborhood so I cannot comment on them (everyone in the village uses Saunalahti, double cheap

).

Piet · Post by **Piet** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 12:57 am

In general one could say that the land-line is more reliable than the "over the air" line, if there is a big power outage, most of the time the cell tower have no power either (not all have a backup generator and still, it needs to start up and reconnect everyone... takes time).
So from reliability point of view there would be no real advantage for over the air internet, more the other way around.

4G also gives you a disadvantage when using bittorrent hence the shared IP address, port forwarding is not as straight forward and you might have problems with remote connections getting connected.
On the other hand, it gives you a bit more privacy hence the shared IP address, any copyright troll would need not only the IP address but also the port number and time-stamp to trace you (if you are ever using your connection to download copyrighted material in the first place of course), which is just one step extra.

However 4G with added a 3rd party VPN subscription gets you all the benefits from the shared IP address and the port forwarding by the VPN.

Now for speed, this is totally depending on the amount of users connected to "your" nearest cell tower and the amount of connections made and disconnected all the time. While a single connection with one web-page might be quick (for example speedtest.net) browsing could still be a pain in the **s due to new connections set up with every change of a page and the new connection being qued all the time.
In general it greatly depends on your local signal strength too, the higher the antenna the better, preferably in line of sight with the cell tower.
4G might be fast once working but it is also more sensitive to congestion with continuous (streaming) connections, but here again, your modem is very important here.

But summarized one might expect the 4G to be much faster than the 10Mbit/2Mbit standard (in most housing companies free) internet speed. (ADSL?)
As said, it depends a bit on the (quality of the) modem you are going to use.

meplusthree · Post by **meplusthree** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 8:10 am

I have both a Saunalahti 4G ( 100M) and an Elisa Viihde (20M) wired connection at home.
Wired connection is used by the 2 boys - online gaming, surfing NEtflix etc.
4G used by me and elisa Viihde TV.

General obsevations.

Wired connectionsare better for on-line gaming due to lower ping, on the 4G with only one user the ping is often around 90ms.
The speedtest ping value I get is always lower than the value obtained while gaming..

Get better download speed on the 4G - Steam games were downloading twice as fast over 4G.

Wired connection seems to be better at handling multiple connections. With 2 devices watching video or IPTV Via the 4G then the sevice gets noticiably worse.

As always the answer is 'It depends'

DMC · Post by **DMC** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 8:28 am

rinso wrote:We have 4G from Saunalahti it is advertised as max 50Mbs. In practice it's between 25 and 30 most of the time. (ping 21ms, upload 10 Mbs)

That's good to hear. Obviously slower than claimed but still an improvement on what we have now.

rinso · Post by **rinso** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 3:40 pm

Obviously slower than claimed but still an improvement on what we have now.

When we had 10 Mbs 3G service, the real speed was often below 1Mbs

.

tuttu · Post by **tuttu** » Fri Dec 11, 2015 9:47 pm

DMC wrote:Occasionally a storm takes out the lines and we are cut off

i take it you are not in the capital region then?
you should really find out about 3G/4G/whateverG coverage for where you live.
also keep in mind uploading speeds as well as downloading speeds. they do not have to be as high, but a modern internet experience requires both.
also keep in mind that, when you look closer, mobile broadband contracts don't promise much (basically, 10M can mean anywhere between 0(zero) and 10M) - whereas landline/cable connections do promise at least 50% of sold bandwidth (just an example).

JormaOikarinen · Post by **JormaOikarinen** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 3:03 pm

In my case I had the following setup in order to access internet at home : A DNA Prepaid sim card (4G enabled, Bough it at K-kioski for less than 8€) , and a Huawei Mobile Gateway (Just a wifi modem which uses a SIM instead of landline cable) . It was also possible to plug a cordless phone and place national calls for free (It's one of the most expensive packages from DNA : 0,99€/day (~30 per month) , Includes unlimited voice , SMS , and no data limit.

Speed was really really great even indoors at Tampere downtown , 45mbps download approximately.

DMC · Post by **DMC** » Thu Dec 31, 2015 4:29 pm

Thanks for all the info everyone.
@tuttu: No, I am not in the capital region. About 300 km north.

I now have a 4G modem on trial and there is not a lot of difference in the speed compared to the wired connection:
Ping is 26 ms for mobile compared to 31 ms for wired.
Download speed is 9.96 Mbps compared to 9.57 Mbps.
Upload speed is 3.61 Mbps compared to 1.33 Mbps.

So it is basically the same except for upload speed which is faster, but not reliable. The above figures are an average of 5 tests which varied between 0.83 and 5.68 and on another run the upload test failed completely. The jury is still out I guess.

onkko · Post by **onkko** » Fri Jan 01, 2016 5:37 am

bit over nordic circle. 40/40 with 4g. http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4959810800

DMC · Post by **DMC** » Fri Jan 01, 2016 3:33 pm

If you are trying to make me jealous, you have succeeded!
I just did another 5 tests and the average was 0.62 Mbps download and 0.41 Mbps upload. I am less than impressed. I think I will do daily tests for a while and see if it improves when folk go back to work.

rinso · Post by **rinso** » Fri Jan 01, 2016 6:05 pm

I use this to keep track of the fluctuations.
http://www.gmwsoftware.co.uk/

I now have a 4G modem on trial

You should check the maps from the different providers for your coverage.
For me only one had a decent signal.

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