3g unstable

[damindor]

so I can play sc2 in the morning but then the same day at night it lags really bad.Now it is not my pc because my pc would have the same problems all the time so I ask around and I am told that my 3g may be trottled.What does that mean?My 3g is the cheapest in the country I get lots of MB's for very litle money.

why is it that 3g connection can be fast in morning but later that same day your ping is suddenly higher and can your ping be higher because of peek times?

[Anibal P]

Just like old broadband 3G is a shared resource, that's why it varies based on the time of the day, LTE I'm not sure of

[Radium]

Mobile broadband based on UMTS, HSPA, LTE etc are all shared. You can't fit an infinite amount into data into a specific spectrum.

Wired connection is superior if you're looking for low latencies and consistent quality.

Wired is shared much further away from you and is more stable due to travelning in metal wires and fiber optics.

I would never settle for a mobile connection at home.

Your connection gets a specific amount of time to send and recieve. When the wireless network has a high amount of users, then latencies will increase and your maximum speed will decrease.

Think of it like sharing a wired connection with other people. You're all trying to use the same cable and once the cable is saturated, everyone will suffer. The air between your computer and the nearest tower is one cable and everyone wants to use that single cable.

Barely anyone uses their home connection in the morning. People go to work in the middle of the week, they sleep longer and chill on weekends and don't use their connection until they come home from work or have done their daily chores.

Internet usage peeks when the general population is free from work and other things.

Cheaper means that the carrier has more users per slice of capacity.

Companies pay a lot of money but that's due to them paying for a higher capacity, a guarantee of how much capacity they can get at any given time and how stable it is.

So the cheap service you pay for is on the other side of the spectrum where the corporate services are on the opposite end.

You get what you pay for.

Also, mobile connections are bad for gaming where latencies are relevant to the performance of the game.

[damindor]

OK can one ISP be a lot faster perhaps 1 that is not so cheap.And adsl is a lot slower that 3g right?I have a family member that uses another ISP but it is also 3g so I am thinking why that it maybe be a good idea to randomly test its ping several times and then compare it to mine.It is a lot more expensive so hopefully it works better.I am not even sure what other tecnologies are avaible in south-africa or my general area in the middle of nowhere.But a adsl connection should be a lot worse for gaming than any 3g right?

[Radium]

ADSL is NOT slower.

Maximum speed might be lower, but the overall average speed and latency is very likely to be superior to cheap 3G.

Don't look purely on the maximum speed advertised.

I'm not in any way, shape or form familiar with internet services in South Africa.

But here, in Sweden, ADSL is superior to mobile broadband, hands down, even if you have a lower maximum speed over an ADSL service.

Mobile broadband speeds that are advertised are what's possible to achieve under perfect conditions.

Get ADSL, it's worth a try, trust me. However, if the phone lines where you live are bad, then ADSL is bad. But it's worth a true. Give it a shot, maybe you can get a few weeks or months of testing before you sign up for a long period.

[damindor]

OK thank you.I might get adsl soon

[Crisp]

Playing video games on 3G isn't the best anyway. As your broadband package is cheap, are you sure your ISP doesn't have peak times where you just get throttled. The fact that 3G is shared too may be the answer to your question of why it lags so much during the day.

What kind of speeds are you getting on 3G to be able to game on it? It would drive me mad with the fluctuating pings.

[Nashy]

3G is good for browsing, useless for gaming.

[Japlabot]

You get what you pay for. The less you pay for more likely it is that your provider will attract other customers also looking to pay as little as possible.

When cost is the main driving force, this makes it more likely that the ISP are also looking to cut their own costs resulting in lesser quality product (eg: spend less to get inferior networking equipment, spend less to have less backhaul that connects all their customers to the internet, spend less on staff and get less knowledgeable employees in the pool).

Even if you have an ADSL connection, your connection between you and your ISP will be fast, but then the connection between your ISP and the internet can be very slow at peak times if they are a budget ISP because all the ISP's customers will be sharing the same internet connection which goes from your ISP to the internet (this is called Backhaul).

A good ISP would buy a fast enough connection between themselves and the internet to ensure that even at peak times, it's still going to be enough for everyone, even if it is still probably going to be shared.

I would look at reviews for ISPs in your area for your area to see which are the good ones.

Generally ADSL, particularly ADSL2, ADSL2+, VDSL2, Fibre, etc. or other fixed services are going to be faster, because this speed is mostly constant between you and the ISP regardless of other users, it's just a matter if the ISP can handle the speed from their end with THEIR internet suppliers. With Wireless solutions, as said above, it is completed shared with all the other users connecting to the same radio tower in your area, regardless of how great the backhaul is from the Tower to the internet there is still this bottleneck.

Wireless radios work on different "frequencies" so that the wireless signals from other wireless radios do not interfere with each other. There is a finite amount of frequencies available for use because wireless radios are so common, from Radio Stations, Walky Talkies, CB Radio, Cordless Phones, Wi-Fi internet, Mobile Phones, TV, Radio, Military uses, Police/Emergency services, it is endless. A continuous group of frequencies is called spectrum (eg: all frequencies between 850mhz & 890mhz could be one spectrum).

The spectrum is auctioned off by the government to the highest bidder, and if it is your Wireless ISP who won it, then they only have between 850mhz and 890mhz to support all the Wireless internet connections in your area at once. In this example, 40mhz of spectrum (890mhz - 850mhz = 40mhz) can only possibly support a certain amount of users at maximum speed.

If you have more users than the 40mhz can handle, there are going to be slow downs unless your Wireless ISP can get new spectrum, which is a very long and expensive process to get the winning bid from the next government auction, and these auctions don't happen very often.

This is why fixed connections will always win over wireless. With a fixed connection, if the cable is not fast enough, the ISP can just dig up the ground and put in another. There is practically no speed limit (just have to pay for more digging and more cables) With Wireless, it is not so easy to add spectrum because there isn't much available to use, and when there is, it is an expensive long process to get it. You can't just start using someone else's spectrum without asking, because it will cause interference to their signals, it is extremely illegal and most likely would be hunted down by the government for doing it (Wireless radios can easily be traced to where they are coming from, just keep going in the direction where the signal is getting stronger).