[crazy4laptops]

So I bought a Virgin Mobile MiFi to bring the internet with me wherever I go. (will make the trip to/from/around New York more enjoyable for sure)

In home tests, it's faster than Verizon! 1-1.25mbps download .5mbps upload (VZ .4mbps up and .4mbps down)

However, the real test will come when I go to a small ski resort in the Smoky Mountains.

In mid-January I should be able to see what it can do when the entire campus internet goes down at TTU... (it was down for 2 days, sporadic for the next 4)

How is your 3G experience on the computer/cellphone?
Is 4G worth it yet?

[LiveBrianD]

What's the data cap?

[Evildave]

Back a few years ago, I had an 'unlimited' Sprint 3G connection that worked alright, and (more importantly) never had any errors. I used their 3G card, plugged into a wireless router for a couple of years. But they changed the agreement, and shortly thereafter, I bid them adieu.

T-Mobile 4G Hot Spot (10GB)

When you hit the glass ceiling, performance makes you wish you had dial-up. They throttle it down to a feeble trickle.

Submitted for your perusal...

Imagine, if you will, TCP/IP allowing, not the occasional error through once a year or so... but a dozen times a day.

POST a form? ERROR.
Download a web page? ERROR/Corrupted.
Download a (HUGE) file? Corrupted.
Site like 'google' appears to be down? Not usually true! DNS records corrupted, and cached that way.
Streaming a video? Works great, or works great for a while, then crashes. Of course, if watching 'hulu', you get to start over and watch all the commercials again, to get back to that point, too.
Commit changes to subversion? Try again... and again...
OS update won't apply? Manually go into the file system, track down and delete the cached/downloaded corrupt content, and start over again! Wee!

You get the idea. UDP packets have a CRC on them. You receive a UDP packet, or you get nothing (whatever got the error, throws it away). TCP/IP has built-in error correction that asks for various parts of the stream back again, if an error is encountered (loses a UDP packet).

Somewhere along the line, T-Mobile decided that getting CORRUPTED data as fast as possible was the same as getting data as fast as possible.

So, though it's convenient, and (when it works) fast, it's also infuriating. Especially when placing an online order, and having an 'error' page pop up. Will re-submitting order it TWICE? Go back to the 'shopping cart' and check. Oops. There's that error again. Now it refreshed. Did it ship? Not in the history. OK. Resubmit. Now I have to enter everything again. This time it loaded. Now watch for the email confirmation....

Just tonight I got to add a BRAND NEW idiosyncrasy. They have 'Web Guard' on the back-end. A feature to protect children (or people who have not agreed to a credit based plan) from internet content.

With that fully disabled in my settings, and on a two year contract that included my driver's license, T-Mobile began 'filtering' content anyway, out of the blue, just tonight. Even NEWS content. Thanks a lot, BIG BROTHER! It even manually appended 'safe search' onto google searches 'for me'. Very thorough. Thoroughly F*****.

Fortunately, I was able to re-re-configure the DNS in the device, power cycle it (battery, too), and get it to start visiting my evil/smutty sites again. Or (more importantly) read NEWS that T-Mobile and the nazis at 'web guard' apparently don't approve of.

So, all in all, I don't recommend this device very heartily, if at all. It's just plain broken, T-Mobile is broken for thinking it's 'adequate', and their back-end is broken, too.

[crazy4laptops]

LiveBrianD, on 26 December 2011 - 09:21 PM, said:

What's the data cap?

$10 for 100MB
$20 for 500MB
$50 for 2.5GB (unlimited but throttled after 2.5GB

I'll rarely ever hit 500MB, webpages and information/articles are most of what I need to access and/or Tumblr.