3G data speed testing - XT on iPad vs iPhone 4 on Vodafone

[Zimsar10]

Last Sunday I undertook some comprehensive 3G Data Speed Testing – XT on iPad vs iPhone 4 on Vodafone.

For anyone who is interested, I have written a blog about this, which can be viewed here:

http://grantisnz.wordpress.com/3g-data-speed-tests-telecom-xt-on-ipad-vs-vodafone-nz-on-iphone-4/

Have a read of the blog – I understand there are some differences between the devices, but pretty much all of that is covered in my blog & feel free to leave a comment on the blog, if you want.


Cheers,



Grant

[Gremlin]

I'm surprised vodafone exceeded telecom at all. Tested data sticks in Parnell on the same laptop late last year. Vodafone's red zone, the best you should be able to get couldn't come close to Telecom.

[Zimsar10]

I'm surprised vodafone exceeded telecom at all. Tested data sticks in Parnell on the same laptop late last year. Vodafone's red zone, the best you should be able to get couldn't come close to Telecom.

Vodafone "Red Zone" has nothing to do with Mobile Broadband (which is what I was testing) - that is landline broadband that you are talking about.

[Gremlin]

well, vodafone is using the wrong terminology for its own gear then. The test was data stick vs data stick, minutes apart, same identical place, same laptop.

[Suntoucher]

Could have tried the same test but alternating devices. Thus you would also see how each device reacts to signal strength and have an overall fairer result.

Otherwise it makes me glad I made the swap to XT.

[Zimsar10]

well, vodafone is using the wrong terminology for its own gear then. The test was data stick vs data stick, minutes apart, same identical place, same laptop.

I haven't seen Vodafone advertise Red Network on any of their Mobile devices.

[Zimsar10]

Could have tried the same test but alternating devices. Thus you would also see how each device reacts to signal strength and have an overall fairer result.

Otherwise it makes me glad I made the swap to XT.

I could have - but for the extensive testing that was done - I couldn't be bothered with the hassle. ie removing microSIM from iPad putting it into the iPhone & vice versa....

[Gubb]

I haven't seen Vodafone advertise Red Network on any of their Mobile devices.


Considering that Vodafone doesn't do home broadband, everything they do is "Mobile".

[jonbuoy]

It is a little bit unfair to be using speedtest, a laptop with a USB 3G and Wget command would have been a better comparison, one thing I have noticed doing speedtests on mobile broadband is that the providers throttle you back a fair bit on downloads to try and keep general web surfing for all users snappy, you can see this with Wget - downloads starts off high and as it continues you can see it get capped or throttled back to 64K/bs or whatever by the provider.

[hayd3n]

i wouldent call ita comprehensive test but
i would call it a test tho

[Brian d marge]

It is a little bit unfair to be using speedtest, a laptop with a USB 3G and Wget command would have been a better comparison, one thing I have noticed doing speedtests on mobile broadband is that the providers throttle you back a fair bit on downloads to try and keep general web surfing for all users snappy, you can see this with Wget - downloads starts off high and as it continues you can see it get capped or throttled back to 64K/bs or whatever by the provider.
not just in NZ , the lying dodgy baskets I pay my wedge to throttle , but I cant prove it and they deny it , Ive tried all the shaper detectors etc on the web but when I download , bang you can see it kick in

next to bankers these toe rags are on my hit list for trip to Le Guillotine or just taken outside and shot

Not only do they advertise 100Mbps . and only give 33, national and 1.6 international
and download speeds of 250 Kbps ........

I cannot believe the fraud...... even dodgy used car salesmen give better service

ooops Ranting better stop

Ps , iphone 4 ,,,,, not going to get , have iphone 3g , next will be EVO 4 HTC ,,,, ooohhh ahhhhhh arriving in October

Stephen

[jonbuoy]

not just in NZ , the lying dodgy baskets I pay my wedge to throttle , but I cant prove it and they deny it , Ive tried all the shaper detectors etc on the web but when I download , bang you can see it kick in

next to bankers these toe rags are on my hit list for trip to Le Guillotine or just taken outside and shot

Not only do they advertise 100Mbps . and only give 33, national and 1.6 international
and download speeds of 250 Kbps ........

I cannot believe the fraud...... even dodgy used car salesmen give better service

ooops Ranting better stop

Ps , iphone 4 ,,,,, not going to get , have iphone 3g , next will be EVO 4 HTC ,,,, ooohhh ahhhhhh arriving in October

Stephen

For sure, they should give out the guaranteed minimum bit rates not just a peak or "burstable" bit rate.

[Zimsar10]

Considering that Vodafone doesn't do home broadband, everything they do is "Mobile".

LOL!!! That's not true at all - Vodafone NZ brought iHug in October 2006 & have been selling Home Broadband since.... http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/FCA45182E0D5F68CCC25720200226874

Here are their Home Broadband plans: http://www.vodafone.co.nz/broadband/

[Zimsar10]

i wouldent call ita comprehensive test but
i would call it a test tho

It is comprehensive, in terms of the number of sites - 15 in total, this provides a far greater overview of Mobile BB Data speeds in my area.

[Zimsar10]

It is a little bit unfair to be using speedtest, a laptop with a USB 3G and Wget command would have been a better comparison, one thing I have noticed doing speedtests on mobile broadband is that the providers throttle you back a fair bit on downloads to try and keep general web surfing for all users snappy, you can see this with Wget - downloads starts off high and as it continues you can see it get capped or throttled back to 64K/bs or whatever by the provider.

Huh?? There is nothing wrong with using www.speedtest.net to determine the Mobile Speed in a given area (or landline speeds for that matter), it is accurate & I'm not aware of any NZ company deliberately slowing Mobile Data Speeds down....I'm happy to look at some evidence if you can prove it though.

You need to remember, that when more customers are using a cell site for Data, the speeds will decrease (by how much depends on backhaul to the cell site) & also the coverage area will decrease (cell site breathing).

My tests were done at a busy time of day as well, to provide a more "real world" indication of the speeds, at the time of testing.

You may also be interested in some Speed Tests that a person I know of completed in Dunedin, they were more comprehensive, in terms of measuring data throughput than mine & they certainly did not show any indication of speed shaping/throttling on either network.

View the tests here & check out the video to see actual download speeds:

http://buttonmasher.co.nz/ahmad/2010/08/05/iphone-4-dunedin-speed-test-xt-vs-vodafone/

[Zimsar10]

For sure, they should give out the guaranteed minimum bit rates not just a peak or "burstable" bit rate.

No provider in New Zealand "guarantee's minimum data throughput" for Residential Internet or Mobile Data internet. There are just too many variables to factor in.

Business plans (for landline internet) are a different kettle of fish altogether, but that's not what we are talking about here.

[jonbuoy]

Huh?? There is nothing wrong with using www.speedtest.net to determine the Mobile Speed in a given area (or landline speeds for that matter), it is accurate & I'm not aware of any NZ company deliberately slowing Mobile Data Speeds down....I'm happy to look at some evidence if you can prove it though.

You need to remember, that when more customers are using a cell site for Data, the speeds will decrease (by how much depends on backhaul to the cell site) & also the coverage area will decrease (cell site breathing).

My tests were done at a busy time of day as well, to provide a more "real world" indication of the speeds, at the time of testing.

You may also be interested in some Speed Tests that a person I know of completed in Dunedin, they were more comprehensive, in terms of measuring data throughput than mine & they certainly did not show any indication of speed shaping/throttling on either network.

View the tests here & check out the video to see actual download speeds:

http://buttonmasher.co.nz/ahmad/2010/08/05/iphone-4-dunedin-speed-test-xt-vs-vodafone/

There is - google it, internet providors have cottoned on to the fact a lot of people use speedtest.net for checking their broadband, its easy to fool it by bursting the data rate for the few seconds that speedtest and the relativley small file it downloads. Thats why proper testing should be done with a larger file over a longer period. But you´ve already made up your mind so I´ll leave you to it.

http://superuser.com/questions/30107/cable-modem-speed-test

[jonbuoy]

No provider in New Zealand "guarantee's minimum data throughput" for Residential Internet or Mobile Data internet. There are just too many variables to factor in.

Business plans (for landline internet) are a different kettle of fish altogether, but that's not what we are talking about here.

Thats the problem, a lot of people pay a fair amount of cash to go on "higher" data rate plans which they probably wouldn´t need if the ISP´s gave them what they were sold in the first place, even if they garanteed the base rate at a lower rate and sold the plans with a seperate peak and a garaunteed lower rate, even if the lower rate was quite low ie .25MB it would give a fairer comparisson between the providors.

[Zimsar10]

There is - google it, internet providors have cottoned on to the fact a lot of people use speedtest.net for checking their broadband, its easy to fool it by bursting the data rate for the few seconds that speedtest and the relativley small file it downloads. Thats why proper testing should be done with a larger file over a longer period. But you´ve already made up your mind so I´ll leave you to it.

http://superuser.com/questions/30107/cable-modem-speed-test

No - if you read my blog - I stated:


Whilst I appreciate that downloading a 20MB file provides more accurate data throughput information for HSDPA Networks, this was not possible to do on the day of the testing.

The Speedtests are still accurate & they give an good indication of throughput on the network. This is backed up by a comment from Enternet Online, in the comments section of my blog, from an email I received from them, here is that email - note their comment in the last paragraph:


Hi Grant,

Mark has asked me to respond to you with information about EOL’s network, and in particular speedtest.net and the comments on your blogg from Anonerd.

The only thing this person got right is yes we are a small company.

However, our bandwidth to the outside world until recently provided us with an excess of 100Mbps over and above our maximum use, this has now been increased to over 1Gbps. The reason we need such a high amount of spare bandwidth is because of our specialised customer base which is predominantly business, Government and Corporate to whom we have to allocate a guaranteed speed even though they never use it. Hence we have more spare bandwidth available than most other ISP’s. You can easily see this by running speedtests to all the NZ speedtest.net sites from a nice fast connection and you will see that EOL is usually the fastest.

In addition EOL has this bandwidth spread over more than one upstream circuit, and to more than one upstream provider. OOKLA the owners of speedtest.net chose EOL as their only NZ beta test site for 3 months before launching it because we where the fastest and most reliable of all their NZ mirrors.

Small does not always mean slow or inferior, so I would say that your 3G tests are accurate and we are grateful that you chose our server to perform them on.

Kind Regards,
Terry Coles

–
‘As Fast As You Want To Go’
EOL Wireless Broadband
http://www.eol.co.nz
Tel: +64 7 5770066
Fax: +64 7 9286063

Furthermore, did you look at this link? http://buttonmasher.co.nz/ahmad/2010/08/05/iphone-4-dunedin-speed-test-xt-vs-vodafone/ < this link shows real time download speeds of a 31.08MB file & speeds go up to 200-300Kb/s and higher - there is no speed capping evident there.

[Zimsar10]

Thats the problem, a lot of people pay a fair amount of cash to go on "higher" data rate plans which they probably wouldn´t need if the ISP´s gave them what they were sold in the first place, even if they garanteed the base rate at a lower rate and sold the plans with a seperate peak and a garaunteed lower rate, even if the lower rate was quite low ie .25MB it would give a fairer comparisson between the providors.

I agree - this would be nice - but at this time, it doesn't happen & IMHO it's unlikely to in the near future. If a New Zealand provider ever offers "dedicated speed plans" they will be at a premium price unfortunately.

[Brian d marge]

I cant talk about NZ

I sure as hell can see the data rate being throttled , I emailed one guy ( set up a torrent of large size ) he was seeding at 500 KBps I received at 450 ,430 or something
like that
after a few seconds it clearly dropped to 230 Kbps

All of my large file drop to the same amount

Also when there is few people on line ie 10 am Monday morning , my speeds have been as high as 650 Kbps

had the engineers arrive the line is ok, Soooooo its the provider

and I am due to ring them up today , and it will be the usual run around.

I dont mind getting 230KBps ( of course I want one gig ) but if I was told thats yer lot , then fine

dont tell me 100 Mbps ( here is your rolls royce sir, once your money has been deposited inmy swiss bank account , you may look at your car once every Summer equinox , depending on availability )

lying cheating toe rags

Stephen

ps and I use Linux so the usual excuse is , Oh you are not using windows , well that might be the problem

[Gremlin]

Stephen, its quite possible that if you're speaking to the normal tier 1 support, they have no clue as to the back end operations, how it works etc.

However, I don't fancy your chances of getting to speak to the ones who actually run the systems...

[jonbuoy]

OK no point in wasting my time arguing on the internet, all I will say is check out WGET if you want to do some larger file testing. All most of us are saying is that Speedtest.net is a rough and ready way to test download speeds for a few seconds. For serious and "comprehensive" testing a few zaps on speedtest doesn´t give the full picture.

[Brian d marge]

Ok
this thread got me off my arse

I knew I was being throttled , but all I got was denial from customer support

so I rang today ( just got off phone) and after a bit of bullshit on his part , he finally admitted that trasmission software ( linux) was on the hit list and he said throttled at 80 percent

Now I don't know how they can detect what software , the port number sure ( mine was random) but ,,,,,,

anyway these are the numbers

provider speed test said 89mbps down
shaper detector software said 85Mbps down
downloading using transmission ( random file ) 2.7Mbps best

so I was being throttled by 96%

Btw the measured available bandwidth was over 221 Mbps ( according to software)

and they all do it apparently ( as far as I can tell )

Stephen

[Bald Eagle]

The nasty word in all this is contention. All the ISP's without exception oversell based on user connections per circuit. They figure we just dumb users and can suck it up.

The bottom line is they don't care, they've got a license to print money. They own the pipe and charge for the water as well.

[Brian d marge]

The cue for my tired saggy old arse ( the governments and Corporations that rape it repeatedly ) is:

The Tax man

The bank

The Government ( in all is shapeless underhanded taxes)

Telcos ( private)

The Utilities ( private, water electricity and Health )

Education ( now that's a running con)

The wife's credit card

My liver

and the mangy old dog my mother in law owns


Please feel free to add to the list , My poor tired arse has been abused more times than a .................


Stephen

[Zimsar10]

Gah - this thread has gone completely off topic.....

[hayd3n]

* Home
* Forum
* Off topic
* Rant or Rave
it started off topic

[Brian d marge]

short attention span , get bored easily

What was the topic

Stephen