Anyone using cellular for home/office internet?

[chazmo]

T-Mobile is unlimited data at $40/month, plus the 15-day trial period (free). Plus the router comes at no extra cost to the service!

Awesome, I'm going to try it!

 

[Wilmywood]

Starlink is cool, wilmywood. I would be wary, though, about the same issues that affect any satellite service. I'm pretty certain that would not work well in my area. Not at all sure how it'd be for you.

My friend outside Seattle has been on Starlink for about 6 months so far. He's very remote, and I haven't heard back from him since January to check up on him.

I figure with satelite issues I can sub my cellular hotspot like I do now, in a pinch

 

[chazmo]

This might be interesting for anyone checking this out. During my conversation with T-Mobile:

"I have great news for you! I checked your coverage, and it shows that your address has our EXTENDED RANGE 5G. This type of 5G coverage reaches the far corners of the country – deep inside places and buildings –with 2x faster speeds on average than our LTE today. T-Mobile has the fastest Nationwide 5G Network coverage in America!"

 

[Stagefright]

T-Mobile for internet only. We have ATt 4G as backup.

 

[chazmo]

T-Mobile for internet only. We have ATt 4G as backup.

I may be in touch, Stagefright!!! Thanks!

 

[Wilmywood]

Also, iirc, a while back I had an internet outage from Spectrum and streamed my Roku through my hotspot. It did buffer a bit at times but wasn't bad at all.

 

[chazmo]

A couple of days ago I ran a Zoom meeting through my (T-Mobile) hotspot and that worked great too, WIlmy. So, anyway, I'll keep y'all posted. Thanks for the great feedback.

 

[chazmo]

Another thing I'll hold them to:

"Sure Charlie! T-Mobile 5G Home Internet customers receive consistent broadband speeds and see typical download speeds between 72 – 245 Mbps, which is great speed for streaming video, surfing the web, working from home and most types of online gaming. 25% of our customers see speeds below and 25% see speeds above this range."

 

[fronobulax]

The AT&T info was about their product/service for home internet at the time.

AT&T is not my favorite company but there are places I get to a couple times a month where AT&T's signal is stronger than anyone else's or I am the only one who can get any service. AT&T shares or resells bandwidth but the fine print says that in times of congestion AT&T customers have priority over others on AT&T's equipment.

Note that uncapped data is not the same as unthrottled data. Google suggests T-Mobile does throttle heavy users.

The infrastructure bill passed last year had a lot of money to extend fiber to rural areas. The money is flowing, plans have been made and I usually see trucks laying fiber a couple of rimes a week. So if you are in a rural or semi-rural area your choices might be different in a few months. Check with local government, for some definition of local, to see whether they have any money and plans to use it.

 

[GAD]

I think I understand, GAD. So, streaming download speed should be OK, then. I'm still confused because TCP/IP requires acknowledges for each packet, and I thought that everything was round-trip... but I take it something different is done for large/streaming packet transfer. Do you know? I can't be right about each packet being ack'd because then upload latency would affect download latency. Pings take double-digit millisecond latency on my network so something's different for download speed.

But, bottom line sounds like I should investigate. I don't know if my cell service to my house would be strong enough to make it work, but I'll check with T-Mobile.

TCP is connection-based and requires acknowledgements for each packet which then supports retransmissions in the result of packet loss. Streaming is speed-sensitive and so uses UDP which has no acknowledgements. This is true of most VoIP as well.

Streaming works because your client buffers these UDP packets into a, well, buffer. The buffer holds video in advance of what you're watching so that any lags in network availability or increases in latency are (usually) invisible to the end user. If you see "Buffering" that actually means the buffer is empty and waiting to be refilled. The buffer is also important because without it if packets arrived too quickly then without the buffer your client would drop them since there are no acknowledgements. Without buffers there would really be no modern streaming.

 

[chazmo]

. . .

Note that uncapped data is not the same as unthrottled data. Google suggests T-Mobile does throttle heavy users.

. . .

I am concerned about this, too, Jamie. We'll have to see.

 

[chazmo]

TCP is connection-based and requires acknowledgements for each packet which then supports retransmissions in the result of packet loss. Streaming is speed-sensitive and so uses UDP which has no acknowledgements. This is true of most VoIP as well.

Streaming works because your client buffers these UDP packets into a, well, buffer. The buffer holds video in advance of what you're watching so that any lags in network availability or increases in latency are (usually) invisible to the end user. If you see "Buffering" that actually means the buffer is empty and waiting to be refilled. The buffer is also important because without it if packets arrived too quickly then without the buffer your client would drop them since there are no acknowledgements. Without buffers there would really be no modern streaming.

Outstanding. I didn't know streaming was done with UDP! That explains it.

 

[chazmo]

Ooh, one thing I forgot to mention folks...

The transition away from my cable company will mean that the email address they provided me with will (I think) be deprecated and disappear. Sadly that's a bit of an issue for me since I've been using that address for 25 years.

I have various other email addresses, but the one provided by my cable has been my primary all this time. That'll get a little messy, I suppose. Something to think about in the grand scheme.

 

[GAD]

Ooh, one thing I forgot to mention folks...

The transition away from my cable company will mean that the email address they provided me with will (I think) be deprecated and disappear. Sadly that's a bit of an issue for me since I've been using that address for 25 years.

I have various other email addresses, but the one provided by my cable has been my primary all this time. That'll get a little messy, I suppose. Something to think about in the grand scheme.

Get a gmail address. It’s basically the standard these days.

 

[Wilmywood]

Yes, get a gmail or yahoo address and send out an email blast to your entire contact list with the new one

 

[mavuser]

I have a dedicated Verizon hot spot (it is an "Orbic" unit), unlimited data for about $15 per month (plus my cell phone/smart phone bill). my verizon i-phone also has a hot spot feature (for back up). The Orbic (Verizon) hot spot is 4G right now (i-phone is 5G), but at some point will become 5G. Even the 4G works great. This is a cellular product, not a "home internet" product. That's all I personally need.

Of course my gf cannot live without cable or hard wired home internet, so we have that...but I do not need either of those things. can do everything I need to do, on my laptop, on the Verizon 4G hot spot. works great at home, and everywhere else.

 

[adorshki]

Starlink is cool, wilmywood. I would be wary, though, about the same issues that affect any satellite service. I'm pretty certain that would not work well in my area. Not at all sure how it'd be for you.

My friend outside Seattle has been on Starlink for about 6 months so far. He's very remote, and I haven't heard back from him since January to check up on him.

That doesn't sound like a resounding endorsement for Starlink.

 

[chazmo]

That doesn't sound like a resounding endorsement for Starlink.

Sorry, Al. It just means that we haven't been in touch. I just asked him about Starlink and here's what he said. Remember this is in rural low pop. area near Seattle...

Starlink has been great for me. Just ran the speed test. 164mbps down 11mbps up 25ms latency. Max latency in last 24 hrs 83ms. This is more than adequate for Me [. . . My son] says he see an occasional glitch gaming but it’s ok. We are supposed to get fiber next year and I’ll switch for 1Gb. When I started it was $100 a month, cheaper than a hotspot but the price is now $120 - blah

 

[fronobulax]

Yes, get a gmail or yahoo address and send out an email blast to your entire contact list with the new one

That works for the regulars but there is always that one bill that only gets emailed every six months and since you don't actually reply they are not in the address book/contact list.

My Gmail account is ancient. I got it when Gmail was in beta and you needed an invitation from someone who was already in the beta to get an account. 2004 or 2005? I also have a couple of accounts that go back to the 90's. Luckily I never fell into the trap of using an ISP provided email address for anything.

 

[GAD]

As someone who has run my own email server since the '90s, the only email worth a damn today is Gmail. All the other "free" emails suck in one way or another, oftentimes in ways that the end user doesn't see.

Gmail has the best spam filters by far
Gmail has the best interface by far
Gmail has the highest trust factor (other domains trust Gmail) of any email by far
Gmail is the best behaved of the Internet email servers by far
Gmail has the best admins of any email service by far

For the record, I don't use Gmail because I run my own server, and as much as I don't like to recommend behemoth companies, Gmail is the gold standard for email. No one else comes close. All my nerd friends long ago gave up running their own email domains and moved to Gmail. That's a big deal for nerds who had me@mydomain.com who gave that up to user me12345@gmail.com, but it's worth it to them because Gmail just freaking works.

I've banned hotmail for use on LTG (for new users) for about 380 reasons.
I've come close to banning Yahoo, Outlook.com, mail.com, and just about all the others because they are all a colossal PITA on the back end. If you ever try to do a password recovery on LTG and you never get the email, you probably have one of those services. Gmail always works.