We’ve been traveling a lot this yea. Collectively, our sales team has visited four countries and 10 US cities, often several times. As providers of an online web service, we are constantly demoing our service and are really reliant on our internet connections.
It’s amazing how varied the experience has been, ranging from blazing speed to sub-56K modem speeds. Yeah, that’s slow (for you old skoolers who remember dial-up!). The major point behind this is that when people hit the Internet these days, they assume they are getting broadband (cable companies call it trickle feeding!), but are receiving connections all over the place. And it’s really hard to figure out what’s happening.
Internet connection speeds lacking at hotels
I have no problem paying $10 a day to connect up in my room, but I do draw the line when my connection speeds hover in the bytes per second range. The fastest performance I’ve gotten in Chicago’s Ambassador Hotel is 25 KBps. And that was for a short two to three second burst. The rest of the time, the speed monitor hugged the bottom of the speed chart. At my office, we see up to 1 MBps, which is 40 times that speed. Mind you, these are speed tests running out to major websites like CNN, Engadget and Slashdot.
My biggest observation so far is that the hotels that use Nomadix WiFi distribution points tend to have very poor connections. At first I thought Nomadix was the actual service provider (hey, it’s the only name that consistently shows up once the connection is made). But I realized that they provide hotel-grade versions of WiFi routers. It’s up to providers like WiFi Guys to provide the service. After sitting on the tech support line for 20 minutes, I gave up. To be fair, the hotel connection does work well in some floors and in the lobby; but just not on our floor, which is all we care about.
Apparently, managing a hotel connection for hundreds of random guests doing Skype or more “nighttime” activities is a really hard problem to solve. Skype seems to be really chatty, sending out tons of traffic which companies like Nomadix want to limit. I couldn’t connect up via iChat, so I figure that my hotel simply blocked that kind of connection.
Upgrading to T3
Several of our customers have recently installed T3 lines, which costs thousands of dollars a month but provide 45 MB/s of up and down speeds. That’s 30 times faster than the standard 1.5 MB T1s many of us have grown up with. It’s really noticeable on uploads because standard cable or DSL connections really suck at upload speeds (356 KB is common).
On the flip side, I’ve seen a bunch of offices with saturated connections recently. That means 50 to 100 people sharing 1 connection, pulling down internet radio or YouTube or actual business related files. The IT guy always tells me that they are working on the connection and a faster circuit is right around the corner. This is happening in about 30% of the offices I visit, so it’s fairly significant.
Wireless cards good in a pinch, but far from ideal
So, if you are on the road, why not use a fancy new wireless card and not worry about the connection issues from WiFi? Over the last two years, I’ve used an EVDO card from Verizon, an EVDO Treo 700p (also Verizon) and now an AT&T HSPDA Express Card for my MacBook Pro. First off, the wireless card is great for those times when you absolutely need to connect and have no other options. But it’s not perfect.
Like cell phones, wireless cards rely on cell towers for their connection. The weaker the connection, the slower the speed . . . all the way down to dialup speeds (like Edge with AT&T). The Verizon card can burst up to 80 to 90 KBps with a strong connection, but disconnects from the network often. The Treo 700p has the same general performance. But the phone locks up completely when a call comes in, because it’s not expecting the call and not downloading properly anymore. The only way to fix it is to pull the battery. Needless to say, I’m glad to be done with Treos.
The AT&T Card keeps a much more steady connection, but up until yesterday was confined to emergency connection situations. I’ve been using it heavily in my hotel for the last two days because it is many times faster than the hotel connection. Granted 26 KB/sec is not fast, but it’s consistent.
Regards,
Bill