Hey all

 

Ive got a rather simple query with regard to the wireless PREPAID USB internet dongles you can get nowadays. (the ones that run on the phone network and use a simcard as your account)

 

Is the internet speed fast enough for gaming via a telstra one?

 

As i currently have a vodaphone one however in PR i get a relatively stable ping of 100 or so but as soon as VOIP is used it goes up to 500 or so. Which i can sorta live with, the issue i have is that after 15 -30 mins the internet compeltely drops out. Thus meaning i lose connection to the game.

 

If i was to use a telstra one (as they apparently have the fastest network, i just dont like the pricing and the vodaphone one was free ). Does anyone know if the telstra woudl give an advantage if so, id consider getting one for the benefit of getting a PR fix whilst away form home.

 

Cheers and any help is much appreciated :cowboy:

Ye I got a mate here living on the naval base has been using a telstra one past few months and his only complaint is the price

tell them your situation and that you are with a competitor and you would like to trial it for a week or a month - if you sell it well enough in most cases they will do it for you.

I'm pretty sure Nufty will tell you to buy an external antenna to prevent the usb from overheating too quickly. I'll let him tell you more as I know nothing...

Only one worth going for imo is Telstra. Steer clear of Voda/3, Optus/Virgin/etc.

 

I have a data pack for my phone with 3 and it is sugar.honey.ice.tea! My sister has Optus usb dongle and its sugar.honey.ice.tea. The only one worth a damn is Telstra altho the price is a kick in the guts!

None of them are ideal for gaming. You always going to get 100 plus pings on 3g wireless connection.

Telstra had the best coverage but Optus is gaining fast so you mileage may vary.

No way you can get a dsl connection ?

:hi:

Im now on my 2nd telstra wireless USB, i brought my 1st telstra USB for when i went away on holidays but when i went to go use it 12 months later( only 6 months after my existing credit expired) it was disabled. Its hidden in the details that if you dont recharge the credit to your account linked to the USB within 6-9 months of your credit expireing that it will disable the USB. Making it no good to use EVER again. I went right off at the poor random salesmen at the telstra shop because i was never informed of this. Is i wasnt they offered to give me my 2nd USB. But now i need to recharge it within 6 months of my credit expiring. Speed was fine though

I have a telstra ultimate 12 gig plan and its horrible i can no longer game but that may be just me

I'm pretty sure Nufty will tell you to buy an external antenna to prevent the usb from overheating too quickly. I'll let him tell you more as I know nothing...

 

i am on an army base and its the only thing i can use, however when people nearby are using the same it will congest something fierce, i have a telstra Elite USB (20mbs) compared to the Turbo(8mbs) and an external antenna is what you want if you wanna get to those "hard to reach places lol" but will not make any difference to the heating side of the modem, as it is the modem that heats up from data in and out of it, dont matter if you have an external ant hooked up or not as the data still must pass through it, however, it did give me another 1 to 2 bars of reception.

 

and on the odd day it will let me play PR fine, with VOIP and all, but then somedays i have the same drama as what your having with vodaphone with the whole ping issue.

 

GLWP

i am on an army base and its the only thing i can use,

Are you sure you cant get a phoneline ?

Ive seen private lines go into Singleton Holsworthy and Lavarack Barracks.

Cheers for the replies guys.

 

Fallen its only for when im away from home, simply seeing if its possible to get a PR fix that may be better then what vodafone did for me.

 

Ill give telstra a try but not till next year courtesy of that 6 month no use de activiation thing (id forgotten bout that sneaky trick of theirs) so thanks for reminding me about that "feature"

Thanks for the headsup on that 6 months thing, I better recharge soon I think.

Are you sure you cant get a phoneline ?

Ive seen private lines go into Singleton Holsworthy and Lavarack Barracks.

 

yeah mate there is a telephone port right next to my monitor and someone has written a phone number on the wall next to it which would indicate a line has been here before, however i threw the address at telstra and they said "unable to supply a service to that address" i assume if they can't do it, no one can.. but then again.. i asked internode and they said for me to conduct a test to the line by hooking a phone up to it and see if there is a dial tone, if there is they can help me out, but then i have the worry of my being transfered to the new live in lines (dont want to) and i think i have to speak to accomodation and pay some extra bs fee for the internet, it's all up in the air at the moment but with 9 days off i shall try and sort it out asap.

 

so i guess just a waiting game for me, but it would be the bomb digity if i can get it here as i am sick and tired of a 17kbs connection speed !

an external antenna is what you want if you wanna get to those "hard to reach places lol" but will not make any difference to the heating side of the modem, as it is the modem that heats up from data in and out of it, dont matter if you have an external ant hooked up or not as the data still must pass through it, however, it did give me another 1 to 2 bars of reception.

GLWP

 

Um Okay?

Efficiency of a transmitting antenna is the ratio of power actually radiated (in all directions) to the power absorbed by the antenna terminals. The power supplied to the antenna terminals which is not radiated is converted into heat. This is usually through loss resistance in the antenna's conductors, but can also be due to dielectric or magnetic core losses in antennas (or antenna systems) using such components. Such loss effectively robs power from the transmitter, requiring a stronger transmitter in order to transmit a signal of a given strength.

For instance, if a transmitter delivers 100 W into an antenna having an efficiency of 80%, then the antenna will radiate 80 W as radio waves and produce 20 W of heat. In order to radiate 100 W of power, one would need to use a transmitter capable of supplying 125 W to the antenna. Note that antenna efficiency is a separate issue from impedance matching, which may also reduce the amount of power radiated using a given transmitter. If an SWR meter reads 150 W of incident power and 50 W of reflected power, that means that 100 W have actually been absorbed by the antenna (ignoring transmission line losses). How much of that power has actually been radiated cannot be directly determined through electrical measurements at (or before) the antenna terminals, but would require (for instance) careful measurement of field strength. Fortunately the loss resistance of antenna conductors such as aluminum rods can be calculated and the efficiency of an antenna using such materials predicted.

However loss resistance will generally affect the feedpoint impedance, adding to its resistive (real) component. That resistance will consist of the sum of the radiation resistance Rr and the loss resistance Rloss. If an rms current I is delivered to the terminals of an antenna, then a power of I2Rr will be radiated and a power of I2Rloss will be lost as heat. Therefore the efficiency of an antenna is equal to Rr / (Rr + Rloss). Of course only the total resistance Rr + Rloss can be directly measured.

 

To say that all of the heat generated by these modules occurs from the antenna would be naive and misinformed... Of course heat occurs from the internal processing of data by the module itself, however antennas produce heat (the Optus E173 for instance has an 80% efficiency rating on their internal antenna) via the impedance coil/s coupled to them. When cooped up inside an itty bitty box next to multiple IC's processing large volumes of data the heat compounds and causes drop outs as resistance increases in impedance circuits. If you take away a proportion of heat generation by removing the antenna and the associated coil/s then you extend the connection reliability by allowing better overall cooling of the device (however the new Telstra modems have increased in size, with no documented explanation as to why, while Optus and Vodaphone have retained the flash-drive sized module). Although in saying this no-one should take this as stating the module will run ice cold either.

 

The idea of wireless network adapters up until this point in time is not for gaming. The requirement for the connection to suffer handoff's is its' biggest drawback. Due to the ability for an internet connection to be able to left "hanging" for an extended period of time (ie. a full second) during handoff's without severance of connection, allows its' priority to be set lower in the exchange listing.

 

If the exchange is busy you are reallocated a transmission frequency (or slot within frequency)(cell) in order of priority and connection (emergency services take priority then connections between the same provider and so forth) which causes ping spikes of over a 1000 for around 3-4 seconds as the two devices disconnect for a minute amount of time and re-establish said connection. This isn't a drama really, PR is still playable when these occur, it's the ping kick that's the problem as it takes so long for the ping to settle the time limit has generally been exceeded and its bye bye for you.

 

The connection strength/reliability is all dictated through the exchange. The higher saturation of the exchange the slower your connection will be, until it reaches its QoS cutoff and disconnects/kicks you off to another exchange if available. The issue with using it for gaming stems from the upload speed that is associated with 3G networks (1Mbps optimum availability in CBD areas). It's fine for PR as the uploads are not substantial game wise, not sure about games like Arma and the like though. If you jump on at 3am when no connections are being made, your upload speed is sufficient to carry out an ingame VOIP transfer, however if you jump on at peak times your upload (and subsequently download) speed will be reduced and by requesting VOIP transfer (which takes priority through bf2) your ping will spike as data bottlenecks through the network.

 

When they mention capable of 20Mbps connection, as Telstra do, they are referring to anything below 40% saturation of the exchange you connect to, full service to the exchange you have connected to and that the exchange actually has the hardware to support a 20Mbps connection.

 

Although the basis of wireless adapters is not for gaming, a stable and playable connection should be achievable in most circumstances. As long as the adapter is capable and the exchange is not working to capacity full time to cope (might mean waiting until after peak times to play), signal strength is sufficient to maintain an open connection and the exchange has the hardware to cope with the requested connections there should be no/minimal issue.

 

As i currently have a vodaphone one however in PR i get a relatively stable ping of 100 or so but as soon as VOIP is used it goes up to 500 or so. Which i can sorta live with, the issue i have is that after 15 -30 mins the internet compeltely drops out. Thus meaning i lose connection to the game.

 

Does the connection sever or drop out? Does it do it while you're on the net or only ingame? Could be a Vodaphone thing to close possibly unattended connections?

 

 

I have a telstra ultimate 12 gig plan and its horrible i can no longer game but that may be just me

 

Can you do a speedtest.net and pingtest.net and post the results?

 

 

Whirlpool has a heap of information regarding wireless modems these days as well.

Edited August 6, 201113 yr by rohan11221

2.98mb speed, ping 308ms

Cant even use team speak any more as i sit in the 1000's and then rockket to 5000 every 30 secs. Its pretty anoyying.

Im getting an antenna in but not sure if it will do much, my IT guy is also coming over to see whats going on as. Pretty nice guy

Enuf, it gives the "connection to server was lost message" But i dont think i was required to log back in? Nor can i remember if it happened to all of them.

 

Was about 6 months ago when i last tried PR on the USB thing. So i cant gaurantee it, though id presume atleast some of it was simply heat related.

Update:

 

It did it just then with the "your connection to the server has been lost" BUT it was only PR and just sent me back to the server browser.

 

and naturally it was as i was just lining up a couple canadians

Can you rejoin the server straight away? Does it do it after the same interval each time?

 

If it does perhaps try just loading google or another basic website (one that hopefully wont get you ping kicked), say every 10-15 minutes and see if that extends the connection and let us know how you get on.

Can you rejoin the server straight away? Does it do it after the same interval each time?

 

If it does perhaps try just loading google or another basic website (one that hopefully wont get you ping kicked), say every 10-15 minutes and see if that extends the connection and let us know how you get on.

 

I would presume so as i clicked on the server and it showed the updated number of players. Ill have another crack at it tomorrow night. And ill try your method

I live out in the stix of Tassie, I use a Telstra MF60 on a post paid account.

 

I have it hooked up to an external aerial on the roof through a patch cable and lead and it works a treat.

 

You can get them in pre-paid if you wish, make sure you get the MF60, not the old MF30.

 

I can d/l quicker than my old ADSL 2+ and pings to Big D are usually less than 100ms.