I could use a little help with networking wireless broadband..

[dongiovannii]

Hi all, I'm new to the forum but i've used this site to test my connection speed several times before. Today, just on a lark basically, I decided to try and visit this site from my cell phone's web browser and what do you know, it worked. I'm an ATT&T customer and I have their unlimited mobile broadband plan for 14.99 a month, and I believe its the same one advertised on all those commercials with that guy from A&E's American Justice saying, "the internet can't hide out here" or whatever. Anyway, it's 3G speed so i decided to test it out on this site and sure enough, it was averaging 2.9-3.2 Mbps and around 350-402 kb/s just about everytime I ran the test. I have very slow CAVTEL dsl on my home computer and it doesn't even come close to matching that speed as it runs on average 0.6 Mbps, 70-74 kb/s, and that's really on a good day. Okay be patient, i'm getting to my question but I just want to lay out the entire situation for you readers lol. Now, I can hook my cell phone up to the pc thru Nokia PC Suite, and using a cable, I can access my wireless broadband so that it's the sole internet provider for the pc or laptop (basically i'm using my cell phone as a modem). Here's the problem though, the speed drops significantly to a paltry 0.01 Mbps or 17-26 kb/s when I do (ouch, testmy.net actually said this in the results), so basically I just need to know what's getting lost in translation from my cell phone to the pc and if ther'e anything I can do to have that same 3G speed on the pc? If so, I'll cancel this CAVTEL dsl that has basically been one problem after another since the day I signed up, and just use my wireless broadband for all my internet needs. One more note, it's the same speed whether I'm using a router or just using a direct connection from phone to pc, and i've even been able to network it to my PS3 using Internet Connection Sharing and play some games online (SOCOM 2, Team Fortress), though its been pretty laggy. Please, any help with this matter would be greatly appreciated. Much thanks in advance ppl.

[dlewis23]

First what browser are you using on the phone when you do the speed test? And when you connect it to your PC are you sure its still connected to the 3G network and not the edge network?

Also you will not be able to game on this connection through your cell phone. The latency will be just to high.

[dongiovannii]

Ok first off, when I did the speed test on my cell phone I was using Opera Mini (TMN suggested this one), and secondly, how can i tell for sure whether or not I'm on the 3G or EDGE netork when connected to the pc? I didn't think it would switch on/off automatically like that. And just so you know, while on SOCOM 2 I was able to stay logged on for most maps and even talk to ppl using my headset the entire time i was there. Certain maps though i did lag out but overall it was a decent playing experience. If however i can get this problem figured out, that will cease to be an issue cuz my 3G network is even faster than my home dsl anyway. "IF" i can ever get it figured out that is..

[dlewis23]

Do not use opera mini or opera mobile to do a speed test. They all use a proxy to render the full page so when you do a speed test using that browser it actually does the speed test on operas servers not your phone.

[pat w]

Isn't that a bit misleading when this site shows average speed in my city is 125MB/s, and then when I create an account it turns out that it is opera mini proxy?

There's all kinds of articles here about avoiding bias, and they represent data that way???

[mudmanc4]

4 hours ago, pat w said:

Isn't that a bit misleading when this site shows average speed in my city is 125MB/s, and then when I create an account it turns out that it is opera mini proxy?

There's all kinds of articles here about avoiding bias, and they represent data that way???

 

You can look a bit closer at results https://testmy.net/city/san_mateo_ca

And by the city https://testmy.net/list/state/ca

As well as here by the member ranking https://testmy.net/hoststats/wave_broadband

 

I would not say misleading, considering those particular results are labeled as a 'proxy'

[pat w]

When casual users land on your site, tired of biased results, as far as I can see, they only see XX% lower than 'my city average', requiring creating an account to see what that entails. Is there any proxy 'ID' attributte listed without an account membership that I missed?

 

Also, when I go to the other pages you suggest, they are highly skewed by the opera proxy results. I don't see a filter to remove those readings.

 

edit: I do see I can filter by my provider. Now I feel much better as I am in the realm of other users. But, If I didn't create an account, I would think I was FAR worse than the average.

 

I'm all for this site and what it provides, I just thnk it should be more forethcoming to people that stop by and run the test, and haven't created an account to delve into the details. Especially, since that's the kind of thing it was designed to provide.

[mudmanc4]

There are many features here at testmy.net, most of which cannot be set via cookie, considering personal preferences on the view must be associated with a profile. 

As far as I am aware, viewing results of city / ISP or member ranking does not require a profile. Maybe I am missing what you are saying. 

[Sean]

From what I can see, the Opera Mini ISP needs to be separated so it is not associated with any city.  Probably something for the bug reporting forum.

 

For curiosity, I ran a speed test in Opera Mini and the test results appeared in that Opera Mini Proxy's speed test log for San Mateo.  The App's proxy also compresses both downlink and uplink traffic, so the reported speed was considerably quicker than a direct connection such as with the default Chrome browser App.

[CA3LE]

2 hours ago, Sean said:

From what I can see, the Opera Mini ISP needs to be separated so it is not associated with any city.  Probably something for the bug reporting forum.

 

Yeah, I could just make it so that Opera Mini and Opera Software results aren't logged to city and country databases anymore.

 

14 hours ago, pat w said:

When casual users land on your site, tired of biased results, as far as I can see, they only see XX% lower than 'my city average', requiring creating an account to see what that entails. Is there any proxy 'ID' attributte listed without an account membership that I missed?

 

Also, when I go to the other pages you suggest, they are highly skewed by the opera proxy results. I don't see a filter to remove those readings.

 

edit: I do see I can filter by my provider. Now I feel much better as I am in the realm of other users. But, If I didn't create an account, I would think I was FAR worse than the average.

 

I'm all for this site and what it provides, I just thnk it should be more forethcoming to people that stop by and run the test, and haven't created an account to delve into the details. Especially, since that's the kind of thing it was designed to provide.

 

I'm working on deeper and more comprehensive statistics.  Your suggestions will be used to make TMN better.  Already working on results grouping options, now I'd like to add a way to filter.

[CA3LE]

4 hours ago, Sean said:

From what I can see, the Opera Mini ISP needs to be separated so it is not associated with any city.

 

16 hours ago, pat w said:

Also, when I go to the other pages you suggest, they are highly skewed by the opera proxy results. I don't see a filter to remove those readings.

 

opera_mini_proxy and opera_software_asa and opera_software_america will no longer be detected as being in a city or country.  Stats already saved to city and country databases are being removed right now.  Hope this helps.