Sprint 3G Mifi @ SFO Aug 19
I promise that after this week I won’t focus so much on the Mifi and this Sprint 3G service. From an early Wednesday morning perspective here’s what I’m seeing for performance.
Sprint 3G Mifi @ SFO Aug 18
So here's how the Sprint 3G service measures now that I'm away from my home office location. Note that my laptop clock is on CDT. It's just before 6am west coast time. As you can see I tried tests against…
Sprint Mifi: Day #3 @ Home Office Location
I thought that I’d have another check of the Sprint 3G data rate now that we’re into the weekend. The performance in the mid-afternoon during the week was not bad at all. I was wondering if there would be any change on the weekend.
It seems to be markedly improved on the weekend. Today it measures: 1.94 Mb/s download, 520kbps upload with a ping time to Dallas of 155 ms. That was at around 2pm CDT.
The real test will be when I’m in SFO next week.
Taking The Plunge On Sprint Mobile Broadband
After thinking about 3G based mobile broadband for the past month, and suffering through another bout of paying for less than stellar access at hotels, Andy Abramson finally broke through the last of my resistance with a post about weekend Mifi deals on Amazon. I fell for the offer of the one cent Mifi device and decided on Sprint as the carrier.
As I mentioned earlier in the week I had been wanting to add the service to my T-Mobile account, since that where I have my cell service…and I’m happy with them. But many people told me that T-Mobile’s 3G network was not up to the task. Also, they don’t yet offer a Mifi-style device. That left Sprint and Verizon as my options.
VoIP Over 3G In The UK
In mid-July I traveled to the UK, visiting my employer’s head office in Cambridge. Being away from my home office is in some ways a drag. I’m so accustomed to being in control of my local network, which is certainly not the case when I’m abroad. Suffice it to say that I can’t use anything VoIP related from within the office LAN at HQ, with the possible exception of Skype.
At the hotel where we typically stay near HQ there is wired internet access provided by Swisscom. It’s a decent service, reasonably fast and reliable. However, at 15 Pounds Sterling (around $22 USD!) per 24-hour period it’s also very dear. To get around some of this cost one of my co-workers loaned me a company issued Vodaphone 3G USB dongle. This was the first time that I’d used one of these little gadgets.
Choosing A Router/Firewall For A Small Office
One project that I’m am about to start is moving from my m0n0wall router to a new one build around pfsense. The motivation for the project is the integration of our Comcast Business Class internet service into the rest of the household. At present there are two separate networks, with only a few devices enjoying the high speed cable service. The pfsense system will be configured for dual WAN, accessing both the cable service and Covad DSL circuit.
My existing m0n0wall runs on an old Soekris Net4801. In service for many years, it has been extremely reliable. If m0n0wall does what you need I have no hesitation in recommending the software. Support from the user community is tremendous as well.