WHY IS THIS FASTER THAN MY WIRED DOCSIS CONNECTION AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaa
The attention to detail is appreciated along with the scope of products tested.
Completely agreed about the speed and performance numbers as I have all three; the SCH-LC11 was the best balance, followed by Thunderbolt, and then the Pantec 290 (fastest but limited to USB connection).
this very informative, i can now open my vpn server, through my Ip address 192.168.1.1. because recently i spend days just to search a to fix my problem. Thanks alot!
I live in an LTE market and would be happy to accept some LTE devices if you don't want to be driving to Phoenix ;)
For that matter I also have a Droid X with the stock 2.2 build.
Playing with a Thunderbolt at a Verizon store the data speeds are really quick. Will be interesting to see how much they drop off though with more users.
They use 20MHz in 2.6GHz here in Sweden (few cities so far) so you can actually see speeds up to about 80 Mbits here, LTE-Adv on 800MHz is in the works of being deployed here now, but they will be using 10MHz spectrum. I'm guessing people in major cities will see 20-80Mbits and people in areas only covered by 800MHz will see 10-40Mbits. Latency is where it clearly matters though. Though 50 Mbits on 2x10MHz 700MHz is clearly at the top. It's not often you will see much of high speeds any way.
To bad they pretty much price themselves out of the market though. A 16Mbit Turbo3G connection is less then half of what 4G costs here. For limitless traffic at least.
Currently have an open ticket with VZW about the lack of public addresses. Have several LTE cards used with cradlepoints that are used for DMVPN backup connections and need public addresses. In testing, would randomly get nat'd address bring up a complete tunnel, but it was very rare. All of the IPs issued were 10.xxx in NYC.
Was told static public IPs will be available around May.
"Note that the Thunderbolt is a 2x1 device while the others are 2x2, which explains some of the upstream throughput distribution difference"
Do you mean that the other devices have more antennas than the Thunderbolt and thus why their speeds seemed to be faster than the Thunderbolt? Regarding the phone and its "unlimited data", I used 30gb in my last billing cycle and so far 70gb now with no peep from Verizon. It could also be that I'm currently a VZW employee. I hope that because I bought the phone, I can be grandfathered into the plan.
Also as a note, if you take the sim card from the Thunderbolt with its full voice and data plan and put that into a mifi or USB modem, you get the unlimited data as well. Just keep in mind you pay more per month due to having the voice along with it (which is useless on the modem devices), but still better than the current 5gb and 10gb caps. If you do vice versa, take the card from a modem to an LTE phone, you are charged for each minute of voice and each text unless you change your plan.
" AT&T on the other hand has a sprinkling of lower block B and C licenses that are both 12MHz. AT&T also purchased Qualcomm's licenses to blocks D and E, which are both 6MHz unpaired, though it's not entirely clear how AT&T will integrate both blocks of unpaired spectrum. All total that gives AT&T between 24 and 36MHz of 700MHz spectrum, again depending on market."
Since the only blocks that they own nationwide are the 6mhz D and E blocks shouldn't it be 12 to 36mhz of spectrum. Looking at auction maps it appears there're fairly large areas where ATT didn't win the A or the B blocks.
That's a good point. If they can manage to either TDD or FDD both of those it should be 12 to 36. Just don't forget about the lower C block which was involved prior to this latest auction, that's the 24 that I'm thinking of.
With 12 MHz of spectrum they can run 5 MHz FDD channels which really won't be much faster than current WCDMA systems. I guess that's why I mentally discounted it.
I notice that with my Sprint aircard, I maintain the 3G connection even during extended trips across the nation. However, the 4G connection on the same aircard appears to be unable to handoff and loses its connection while traveling constantly. I find that my connection disconnects every 2-3 minutes when actually moving. However, if I'm stationary in a building, it'll maintain the connection for hours.
What results did you have with LTE for these sorts of usage scenarios?
I mentioned that with LTE sometimes the handovers pause the data context while the handover happens. It's an occasional 50-500ms pause, sometimes a second. Honestly I noticed it more on the data cards than I did the thunderbolt or the Samsung hotspot.
That's another thing which will improve with time.
I dont think Bandwidth was much of a concern for mature 3G market. Even 1Mbps is good ( enough ) for web surfing. The problem is latency. And it is very high for 3G network,sometimes up to 1sec.
LTE was suppose bring round trip performance down to double digit ms range. But my skip through of this article sees no test on Latency.
Another growing concern for me, is that Data and Mobile Network just dont seems to work. You have a finite amount of total bandwidth, but people consume data far greater then anyone would expect. I think someday we have to deploy national wide Micro WiFi + LTE station to help with bandwidth. Especially in populated city. ( I cant even imagine how would it even work out in place like Hong Kong and China )
We tested latency on Page 10 if you're interested. Both latency as measured by speedtest.net (which isn't perfect) and by using pingplotter for almost 12 hours to a number of targets.
It's sub 100 ms for a lot of things, and I showed gaming at 50ms to a local CS:S server. It's a definite improvement again thanks to much faster signaling and a shorter frame time.
Unless I'm misunderstanding what the graph is showing, ATT's lower C block ownership is fragmentary with no coverage at all in large parts of the country.
I've seen another report from someone using LTE in New Orleans showing similar numbers. Anything sub 100ms should be fine for an fps. I've definitely seen worse under normal circumstances. FWIW using a D2 and comparing the ping times from the phones terminal to a pc using 3G hotspot, the wireless added 16ms latency.
I have to wonder if they didn't include USB tethering simply because they couldn't sustain the power needed. If you were having issues with a 700ma charger than the maximum 500ma from a computer's usb port could be problematic. It is interesting though that the other devices worked, so I'm guessing that the wifi is what is really eating battery life.
I have the Pantech UML 290 and a cradlepoint router all updated with the latest firmware (4glte and 3g)works great on 3G now converting to 4g LTE using a ZADACOM feed cut for verizon746-806mhz and a grid antenna( Hyperlink ) . Without the grid I get 1 bar constant sometimes gong to 2 bars with the GRID I get nothing, Does the cable in the Pantech modem need to be connected or disconnected for it work on the grid , I live about 3 miles from the tower . also is there a setting that i can use in the VZAM menu ( under the DIAGVZW menu) that I can set the modem 4g port to activate the external antenna port and deactivate the internal antenna ? I’m using a specan I can see the carriers from the tower at 783mhz.
Hey Brian: you've mentioned that current Verizon LTE devices are category 3 meaning they can only achieve up to 50mbps with 2x10Mhz. Are you sure that's the breakdown because I'm seeing 50+mbps on a daily basis here in NYC and when downloading sustained well seeded torrent I'm seeing around 6MB/s which makes no sense. I am convinced that Thunderbolt is capable of 73mbps with all the overhead up to about 60mbps. Am I wrong? I dod have poor upload speeds which explains Thunderbolt being 2x1 MIMO not 2x2 like other devices, but is there any other LTE handset that's 2x2 MIMO?
I have an IP Camera that I had no trouble setting up to view remotely from my home WiFi. But I cannot specify the port range on that IP the I address of the camera to forward, nor do I know which type of application it is.
Are any news there about GPS in UML290? According to my experience with other CDMA/UMTS modems I need to send some AT-command to init GPS module and start getting NMEA data from NMEA port. AT-command is the question..
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32 Comments
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milan03 - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
With my own testing and research, I've reached and exceeded 50mbps using USB tethered ThinderBolt here in NYC. Latency is also in the 50's and I'm extremely happy with the performance.Here are a few videos I've made:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVC10FMD8kg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccM_rbfVGDU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYVfZbmv34U
Brian Klug - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
Wow, 50 Mbps is impressive! I've yet to see anywhere near that - highest was around 39 Mbps for me in Phoenix.-Brian
jigglywiggly - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
WHY IS THIS FASTER THAN MY WIRED DOCSIS CONNECTIONAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaa
ViRGE - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
Don't worry. Once more than a handful of people are using LTE it won't be...Shared services are great until you have to start sharing them. And there's no sharing quite like sharing a limited RF spectrum.
milan03 - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
Why should anyone be worried? You sound pissed...quiksilvr - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
I'm pretty sure if you pay $50-$80 a month on it you will exceed it...unless on a barrel with Time Warner unzipping...Crazymech - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
Man.. This is kinda.. Embarassing, really!I remember thinking "Pff.. Yea, those speeds? Riiiight" like a year, or one and a half year ago.
This is faster than my fiber connection! And it's wireless, and on a cellphone!..
What's next.. Amazing battery tech that's not "3 to 5 years" away?
Well done, LTE, I'm in awe.
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
What's next? Cancer for everyone. Yay I cant wait.J_Tarasovic - Friday, May 13, 2011 - link
I am stoked about LTE as well. It really "grinds my gears" that both AT&T and T-Mobile are calling HSPA+ "4G" but I guess that is life, right?I am really waiting for MDM9600 based miniPCI-e WWAN cards. Any idea on this Brian?
Lord 666 - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
The attention to detail is appreciated along with the scope of products tested.Completely agreed about the speed and performance numbers as I have all three; the SCH-LC11 was the best balance, followed by Thunderbolt, and then the Pantec 290 (fastest but limited to USB connection).
OctavioShaffer - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
this very informative, i can now open my vpn server, through my Ip address 192.168.1.1. because recently i spend days just to search a to fix my problem. Thanks alot!strikeback03 - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
I live in an LTE market and would be happy to accept some LTE devices if you don't want to be driving to Phoenix ;)For that matter I also have a Droid X with the stock 2.2 build.
Playing with a Thunderbolt at a Verizon store the data speeds are really quick. Will be interesting to see how much they drop off though with more users.
Penti - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
They use 20MHz in 2.6GHz here in Sweden (few cities so far) so you can actually see speeds up to about 80 Mbits here, LTE-Adv on 800MHz is in the works of being deployed here now, but they will be using 10MHz spectrum. I'm guessing people in major cities will see 20-80Mbits and people in areas only covered by 800MHz will see 10-40Mbits. Latency is where it clearly matters though. Though 50 Mbits on 2x10MHz 700MHz is clearly at the top. It's not often you will see much of high speeds any way.To bad they pretty much price themselves out of the market though. A 16Mbit Turbo3G connection is less then half of what 4G costs here. For limitless traffic at least.
xp3nd4bl3 - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
Love the graphing.mars2k - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
Not good, I need USB tethering. This is a deal breaker for me. I need outside access in several places where wi fi is not allowed.Lord 666 - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
Brian,Currently have an open ticket with VZW about the lack of public addresses. Have several LTE cards used with cradlepoints that are used for DMVPN backup connections and need public addresses. In testing, would randomly get nat'd address bring up a complete tunnel, but it was very rare. All of the IPs issued were 10.xxx in NYC.
Was told static public IPs will be available around May.
nerdydesi - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
I'm curious on what you meant by this."Note that the Thunderbolt is a 2x1 device while the others are 2x2, which explains some of the upstream throughput distribution difference"
Do you mean that the other devices have more antennas than the Thunderbolt and thus why their speeds seemed to be faster than the Thunderbolt? Regarding the phone and its "unlimited data", I used 30gb in my last billing cycle and so far 70gb now with no peep from Verizon. It could also be that I'm currently a VZW employee. I hope that because I bought the phone, I can be grandfathered into the plan.
Also as a note, if you take the sim card from the Thunderbolt with its full voice and data plan and put that into a mifi or USB modem, you get the unlimited data as well. Just keep in mind you pay more per month due to having the voice along with it (which is useless on the modem devices), but still better than the current 5gb and 10gb caps. If you do vice versa, take the card from a modem to an LTE phone, you are charged for each minute of voice and each text unless you change your plan.
DanNeely - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
" AT&T on the other hand has a sprinkling of lower block B and C licenses that are both 12MHz. AT&T also purchased Qualcomm's licenses to blocks D and E, which are both 6MHz unpaired, though it's not entirely clear how AT&T will integrate both blocks of unpaired spectrum. All total that gives AT&T between 24 and 36MHz of 700MHz spectrum, again depending on market."Since the only blocks that they own nationwide are the 6mhz D and E blocks shouldn't it be 12 to 36mhz of spectrum. Looking at auction maps it appears there're fairly large areas where ATT didn't win the A or the B blocks.
http://www.cellularmaps.com/700_auction.shtml
Brian Klug - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
That's a good point. If they can manage to either TDD or FDD both of those it should be 12 to 36. Just don't forget about the lower C block which was involved prior to this latest auction, that's the 24 that I'm thinking of.With 12 MHz of spectrum they can run 5 MHz FDD channels which really won't be much faster than current WCDMA systems. I guess that's why I mentally discounted it.
-Brian
Lothsahn - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
I notice that with my Sprint aircard, I maintain the 3G connection even during extended trips across the nation. However, the 4G connection on the same aircard appears to be unable to handoff and loses its connection while traveling constantly. I find that my connection disconnects every 2-3 minutes when actually moving. However, if I'm stationary in a building, it'll maintain the connection for hours.What results did you have with LTE for these sorts of usage scenarios?
Brian Klug - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
I mentioned that with LTE sometimes the handovers pause the data context while the handover happens. It's an occasional 50-500ms pause, sometimes a second. Honestly I noticed it more on the data cards than I did the thunderbolt or the Samsung hotspot.That's another thing which will improve with time.
-Brian
iwod - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
I dont think Bandwidth was much of a concern for mature 3G market. Even 1Mbps is good ( enough ) for web surfing. The problem is latency. And it is very high for 3G network,sometimes up to 1sec.LTE was suppose bring round trip performance down to double digit ms range. But my skip through of this article sees no test on Latency.
Another growing concern for me, is that Data and Mobile Network just dont seems to work. You have a finite amount of total bandwidth, but people consume data far greater then anyone would expect. I think someday we have to deploy national wide Micro WiFi + LTE station to help with bandwidth. Especially in populated city. ( I cant even imagine how would it even work out in place like Hong Kong and China )
Brian Klug - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
We tested latency on Page 10 if you're interested. Both latency as measured by speedtest.net (which isn't perfect) and by using pingplotter for almost 12 hours to a number of targets.It's sub 100 ms for a lot of things, and I showed gaming at 50ms to a local CS:S server. It's a definite improvement again thanks to much faster signaling and a shorter frame time.
-Brian
DanNeely - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
Unless I'm misunderstanding what the graph is showing, ATT's lower C block ownership is fragmentary with no coverage at all in large parts of the country.http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=1...
DanNeely - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
nevermind, I misunderstood what you were saying....bman212121 - Sunday, May 1, 2011 - link
I've seen another report from someone using LTE in New Orleans showing similar numbers. Anything sub 100ms should be fine for an fps. I've definitely seen worse under normal circumstances. FWIW using a D2 and comparing the ping times from the phones terminal to a pc using 3G hotspot, the wireless added 16ms latency.bman212121 - Sunday, May 1, 2011 - link
I have to wonder if they didn't include USB tethering simply because they couldn't sustain the power needed. If you were having issues with a 700ma charger than the maximum 500ma from a computer's usb port could be problematic. It is interesting though that the other devices worked, so I'm guessing that the wifi is what is really eating battery life.tjk818 - Wednesday, July 27, 2011 - link
I have the Pantech UML 290 and a cradlepoint router all updated with the latest firmware (4glte and 3g)works great on 3G now converting to 4g LTE using a ZADACOM feed cut for verizon746-806mhz and a grid antenna( Hyperlink ) . Without the grid I get 1 bar constant sometimes gong to 2 bars with the GRID I get nothing,Does the cable in the Pantech modem need to be connected or disconnected for it work on the grid , I live about 3 miles from the tower . also is there a setting that i can use in the VZAM menu ( under the DIAGVZW menu) that I can set the modem 4g port to activate the external antenna port and deactivate the internal antenna ? I’m using a specan I can see the carriers from the tower at 783mhz.
feed back is welcome
milan03 - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link
Hey Brian: you've mentioned that current Verizon LTE devices are category 3 meaning they can only achieve up to 50mbps with 2x10Mhz. Are you sure that's the breakdown because I'm seeing 50+mbps on a daily basis here in NYC and when downloading sustained well seeded torrent I'm seeing around 6MB/s which makes no sense. I am convinced that Thunderbolt is capable of 73mbps with all the overhead up to about 60mbps. Am I wrong? I dod have poor upload speeds which explains Thunderbolt being 2x1 MIMO not 2x2 like other devices, but is there any other LTE handset that's 2x2 MIMO?Here is what I'm seeing these days: [IMG]http://i51.tinypic.com/dhe1rd.png[/IMG]
oz973 - Tuesday, January 17, 2012 - link
How long does it take for this to charge to 100%? And how can you tell?nema314 - Sunday, March 4, 2012 - link
I have an IP Camera that I had no trouble setting up to view remotely from my home WiFi. But I cannot specify the port range on that IP the I address of the camera to forward, nor do I know which type of application it is.palexxx - Thursday, February 4, 2021 - link
Are any news there about GPS in UML290? According to my experience with other CDMA/UMTS modems I need to send some AT-command to init GPS module and start getting NMEA data from NMEA port. AT-command is the question..