Wireless Isp Miracle Or What?

[Austin]

I just got my office connected to wireless highspeed Internet service. This service just became available and I was the 10th person that signed up. Here is the scoop: The ISP wireless antenna is on top of an 11-story building about 1000 feet from my office. I can sit at my desk and see the antenna so I figured I could get a good signal with an inside antenna. The installer came and stayed two hours and we tried every place inside the office and could only get a marginal signal for some reason. It worked on and off at rates of 425 to 475kbs. The installer said 512 was the maximum rate the system was capable of producing.
The next day he came back with a crew and put up an outside antenna and the signal strength was the highest he had ever measured with zero noise and a perfect signal to noise ratio. I have been running speed checks with consistent speeds above 700 kbs, which is 200 kbs faster than the system is capable of and 50% of what a T1 connection runs. My service cost $48 per month and the T1 connection is $1000 per month.
Anybody had any experience with this and might know what is going on.

 

[Carnivore]

Austin,

Thats great, sure beats a telephone line. Wireless is not quite as good as hardwire cable. I hit rates of one to two mips. or about 2 to 4 times faster than you have now. None the less thats super for you to have a good solid connection.

 

[Joshua Fookes]

are you comparing apples to apples?

kilobits vs kilobytes had me there for a while 256kb = 25 Kb

700kbs is only 70Kb. My church job has a wireless internet connection and we get 120-150 Kb very consistantly, and we're about 10 miles from the main office, but reflect off of a trasmiter 20 miles accross the valley. My 768kb or 76 Kb cable modem doesn't touch those speeds.

But who knows maybe my info is jacked up and you are figuring things correctly and that modem is walking on water.


Josh

 

[Austin]

You guys have me confused on these speed numbers. Right now I am on a modem connection at 48,000 bps or 48 kbps in my lingo. I left the b out in my first post. My office wireless service is rated at 512,000 bps or 512 kbps. I am running above 700,000 bps or 700 kbps. The speed check site lists a T-1 top speed of 1,500,000 bps or 1,500 kbps. So Andrew, how can you be two times faster that a T-1 connection? What kind of speeds are out there? I can't remember the difference between a bit and a byte or if there is a difference.
Has any one used a DSL DirecTV satellite system? I read on one thread that the cost was $350 to $500 for installation and $150 per month. I also read that it was not reliable and went out when a cloud goes over. I live in the middle of a 120-acre farm and about 3/8th of a mile from the public road so I can’t get cable to the home computer. Wireless is line of sight or within 1 mile of the antenna or so the installation man told me. What kind of speeds from DirecTV service?

 

[Carnivore]

Austin,

Its not uncommon for Cable to be as high as 3.5 Kilobytes in my area. Its also not uncommon for cable to drop down to 300 kbits due to heavy network use(thousands of kids gaming). Right now my lap top is tumed in at 763 kbits, but the desktop in the den is at 2.3 kbytes(2,300,000 kbits) due to its hardwire connection to the modem.

 

[Atlanta CG]

Austin: had the same problem. Moved into a new neighborhood, no cable or DSL available, went to Satellite and loved it, until I had it for 3 months. Constant dropping signals, clients saying my reports were not coming over to them when the system said all went well, every storm the system went down (it seemed), and the signal decreased in speed (correct lingo?) to the point where I often went to the 58K modem to send reports. Cable came in and with it I'm deleriously happy. In November, DSL is coming and I do not know if I should change. They say cable slows down when kids get home from school but I haven't noticed that. Anyone want to buy my $$$ dish???
John from Atlanta

 

[Austin]

Maybe this will clear the air???

Bits, bytes, baud, mega, kilo
Bits and bytes are a measurement of electronic information. A byte is always 8 bits. Communications speeds are usually measured in bits per second while many computer operations are measured in bytes per second. A "56k" modem is 56 kilobits and a "2m" DSL connection is 2 megabits per second. "128MB" of RAM is 128 megabytes. Ideally when abbreviations are used, b means bits and B means bytes. Baud rate is another measure of transmission speed and is the number of actual signals sent per second. At one time it was equal to the bits per second, but modern technology allows us to send more than one bit per electric signal. Traditionally kilo means one thousand exactly. In the communications world engineers call a thousand bits transmitted in a second 1 kilobit per second. Makes sense. Now while 1000 is a nice round number for humans to work with, it isn't for computers. Mathematically speaking humans use decimal or base 10 numbers and computers use binary or base 2. 1024 is 2 to the power of 10 which is a significant binary value and so is represented by kilo in the computer world. Mega is similar except it means one million and in the computer world is 1024 kilo or 1,048,576. Ideally when abbreviations are used, k means 1000 and K means 1024.

 

[Carnivore]

yes austin you really cleared things up with that brilliant post. Kinda of like when you explain the concept of proper sequence in making adjustments. I always understand what you say, I just cant ever remember it. :lol: :lol:

 

[Austin]

Andrew:
If you really want things cleared up, here is a quote from my most recent speed test from
http://www.bandwidth.com/tools/speedTest

Your web browser downloaded 1,071,147 bytes in 11.45 seconds. In other words, your download rate is 730.67 kilobits per second. At this rate, you could download a 10 megabyte file in 109.49 seconds.

My above post was a quote from another speed testing site. Now, in light of these two quoted and reliable sources, would any one like to explain what is going on. Actually I understand it but I can see how it can be confusing.

I am a ham radio operator and have used digital methods for years like RTTY and packet that uses baud rate. If I remember correctly the standards for baud rates are 8 or 9 bits per baud and the typical baud rate is around 2400 per second meaning 2400 sets of 8 bits encoded pass a point per second. Then you get into packets which is what the wireless systems use which brings baud rate back into the picture which is why they use bytes instead of bits because the bytes use bits to encode the data.
See how simple this stuff is?

 

[Farm Gal]

Your web browser downloaded 1,071,147 bytes in 2.89 seconds. In other words, your download rate is 2,891.62 kilobits per second. At this rate, you could download a 10 megabyte file in 27.67 seconds.

I think I'll stick with my cable connection...

It did slow at the peak of the Sobig virus... forgot to check but it WAS noticible

I might be interested in your $$$dish John, if you will sell it for <$