The online racing simulator
Anyone use Mobile broadband?
(17 posts, started )
Anyone use Mobile broadband?
Can anyone comment on using a mobile bb dongle? I was looking at getting one but it would have work well as it would replace my ridiculous land line connection. Could i game with one of these things?
I had to use Mobile broadband for half a year while I was living in another city for work. Atleast here in Germany it does work well, even tho it was not as fast as promised. Instead of 7.2/1.2 Mbit the best I could get was about 2/0.5 Mbit. But that is still enough for everyday use. But gaming is another story: regardless where you are, the latency is pretty high, so unless you play mmorpgs it is pretty useless.
But I think it is an alternativ if the cable connection is unreliable/pretty bad.
I still have my mobile bb flatrate as a backup and for travelling.
Quote from anttt69 : Could i game with one of these things?

No, it's absoloutely horrendous to game with imo, I had a Vodafone one in Ireland, and I lagged real bad.
With LTE aka 4G they promise finally really low latencies and donwload speed up to 80Mbit(theoretical limit is 100Mb/s) First network started in Sweden and Norway as far as I know so maybe someone could confirm?

Otherwise every other type of Mobile connection sucks for gaming.
#5 - CSU1
Yes!

Meteor mobile bb.

Setup:

1 X server pc in the attic with an old sky TV dish with dongle on it
1 X wireless router connect to eth NIC on server with ICS from bb > home network!

Wireless BB for a fraction of teh price!!!


why?

because I'm a cheap bastard
A friend has a Vodafone dongle at (i think) 1.5 meg, which is fine if you want to do all your interneting at 3 oclock in the morning. But if you'd rather not be online with perverts and the unemployed, then you're looking at speeds not much better than dial up (at least that's the impression i get). Plus he's got a pretty stingy download limit (not entirely sure what it is, but i'm guessing about 3gig)

Having said that, if you're in range of free wifi, then bob's yer uncle fannies yer etc etc. BT seem pretty keen to push the free wifi thing i.e asking people to open up a portion of their connection to BTFon (i think it's called). It's what i've done with mine, and it doesn't appear to affect my paid for connection speed, and the free wifi bit's not that slow either.

You may have guessed that i'm not terrible knowledgable about this sort of stuff, but, basically, an internet dongle seems to be something to be used in emergencies or a last resort type of thing, and not as a replacement for home/landline internet connection. (again. i'd say that's the impression i get)

N.B. remember chaps that this is the UK we're talking about here, you Europeans are streets ahead of us when it comes to broadband speeds.
#7 - CSU1
...everyone complains of mobile bb because it's pretty much pot-luck with reception and signal loss depending on how far you are from any give mobile repeater/antenna.

Also, old folk living in old style housing with the old style lead-based paint on their walls have not got a chance in hell of getting any kind of decent signal...and the other variables too - I could be blasting down the straight at Blackwood , just about to hit the brakes and turn for the apex and BAM! my missus or neighbor or some eejit decides to throw aa baked potaatoe in the microwave oven

80% good 20% not so good
Even with best signal the latencies of current networks simply sucks. Thats why I would like to have someone from Sweden or Norway to confirm if the LTE is really that much improvement they claimed.

3G is pretty decent in some places with the speed.
I have to use a T-Mobile USB stick in my appartment @ uni. It's around 7mbit average, but ping is never under 100ms. (I had 98 in CS:S once )
Quote from CSU1 :Yes!

1 X server pc in the attic with an old sky TV dish with dongle on it
1 X wireless router connect to eth NIC on server with ICS from bb > home network!


an old sky dish? how does that work?
Quote from anttt69 :Could i game with one of these things?

I've got a 384 kbps connection I use in the middle of nowhere and to my own surprise I could connect to an LFS server fine, not time out even once and other people didn't seem to lag much. I couldn't/can't test it properly because my laptop isn't gaming spec (lfs@25 fps ftw!), but I guess I could have drive with it.
#12 - CSU1
Although i have heard of satellite internet your setup sounds quite different. I know what a dish does, im more interested in finding out how you use one to receive a broadband signal?
Quote from anttt69 :I Although i have heard of satellite internet your setup sounds quite different. I know what a dish does, im more interested in finding out how you use one to receive a broadband signal?

Sounds like he's just using it to improve reception to the dongle.
Possibly putting the dongle where the LNB usually goes.
#15 - CSU1
Quote from Bean0 :Sounds like he's just using it to improve reception to the dongle.
Possibly putting the dongle where the LNB usually goes.

correct

Don't have proof of concept because meh


e;

I suppose driving on [CAD] for hours on end with full grid is proof enough

anttt69 - get your hands on any parabola and these calculators will guide you along the way

...also to save some headache the setup goes like this:

Mobile BB > Server(ICS to LAN) > LAN > Wireless Router(router must have DHCP disabled and a static ip) > Wireless Router > home wireless network!

ICS gives the LAN NIC on the server an ip of 192.168.0.1, so set the static address of the router to 192.168.0.2 and all clients to get their IP's auto.

Also select the WAN to dial a connection when a client connects or else it will fail to hand out IP's and the clients will be left to make up their own IP, though this is a pain in the arse you can manually assign the client in the 192.168.0.xx range if you need to remote into the router for maintenance etc
Well im on 3 mobile broadband pay as you go using a huawei e156g dongle, and i was getting about 2 to 3 bars of signal (out of 5) and a download speed of 0.4-0.7mb/s upload was 0.08mb/s and my ping was often 900ms if not more, plus i was forever having to disconnect and reconnect when the speed just ground to a halt and no pages would load :X

That was until i got an active repeater USB extension cable (as recommended by S14 drift) and moved the dongle out of the back of the pc and put it into the extension cable and it is now in the top of the window as high up as possible (a clear line of sight is important with these things) and i have also got it pointed at the base station/mast that i connect to as its only about 800 yards away and i can see *roughly* where it is as its opposite the window just over some rooftops.

The mast itself is at the back of the football ground, so i have just lined the dongle up with one of the floodlight poles, and it is now much better, usually 5 out of 5 bars of signal, although it will occasionally drop down to 4 if its really busy at peak times, and this is the speed i get now, which i don't think is too bad really.




The ping still aint brilliant for gaming but it is doable if you race in quiet servers.
I had one, with 5/5 signal I had like 400ms ping to servers from my own country, to which I get ~5ms ping with cable. -.-

Anyone use Mobile broadband?
(17 posts, started )
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