mobile computing...
I've been itching to try it out for a while and report on the current status of mobile computing possibilities in Ireland.
Back in October of last year I went to New Zealand for 3 weeks and had hoped to create entries on my blog using my mobile phone or blackberry (i had both with me). Unfortunately my plans were dashed on arrival when I found both my phones could use very few of the data services available. There was also a bug in the blackberry Google Mail client I was testing at the time which meant i could read email but not send any.
fast-forward to March 2007... I'm on a fast train to Cork and this seems like a perfect time to test out tethering my blackberry to my laptop. I had attempted to get it working a few weeks back with no joy but this time I had strong signal and the availability of an EDGE-enabled mast.
After hooking up my blackberry to the laptop, starting the blackberry device manager and dialing into the o2 network i'm connected! First time, no messing, it just worked!
Firefox is opened and I head for www.google.com to check I can actually connect to the internet. I get redirected to www.google.ie and everything seems good if not a little sluggish. Next I try to connect to my gmail acount and the login page is reasonably fast for the type of connection. I log in but it fails to load due to my connection speed. A few refreshes later and I'm in but things are awful slow.
I connect to redbrick over ssh and get in but again latency is poor but usable. As a result i fire up WinMTR to check what the latency and packet loss are like...
the results are interesting:
From analysing the mtr output in realtime it becomes obvious that any hickup in connectivity to the base station results in the lots of timeouts. Fortunately it looks like TCP connections timeout and just retry so ssh connections stay alive. nice!
So summing up... Based on the past hour or so I found that it's actually easier to use my blackberry with it's limited screen size to read and reply to email then to connect directly to sites using my laptop-blackberry solution. The gmail blackberry client works amazingly well in this high packet loss, high latency environment which shows you can mitigate the issues with network access by writing good software. I also see possibilities in being able to work offline and then bursting your updates when you have decent network connectivity. For example: i didn't need to be online while i wrote this entry, only when i click sumbit and upload my data to the server. I can see some of the older protocols such as telnet (ssh these days), pop3, imap and rss pulls be redployed for users on these types of networks.
In summary, I have to say that mobile computing is no-where near viable in it's current state. I had hoped to be able to catch up on some emails on the journey to cork but this is nigh on impossible using web 2.0 websites. I did manage to post to my blog though! :)
Update (10mar2007):
I'm at my destination in Cork and sitting in front of a glowing fire watching the italy vs wales rugby match. No EDGE connectivity here so I'm limited to GPRS which is providing 25.7 kbps down and 15.3 kbps up (about the equivalent of using a poor dial-up connection) as indicated in the speedtest image below...
Latency looked really good for a few seconds (about 210ms to www.hea.net) but then jumped to over 5000ms a number of times. Next exactly stable or reliable!
Still, if you're stuck in the middle of nowhere and need to get online it proves you can do it. You must deploy a certain amount of patience though...
Back in October of last year I went to New Zealand for 3 weeks and had hoped to create entries on my blog using my mobile phone or blackberry (i had both with me). Unfortunately my plans were dashed on arrival when I found both my phones could use very few of the data services available. There was also a bug in the blackberry Google Mail client I was testing at the time which meant i could read email but not send any.
fast-forward to March 2007... I'm on a fast train to Cork and this seems like a perfect time to test out tethering my blackberry to my laptop. I had attempted to get it working a few weeks back with no joy but this time I had strong signal and the availability of an EDGE-enabled mast.
After hooking up my blackberry to the laptop, starting the blackberry device manager and dialing into the o2 network i'm connected! First time, no messing, it just worked!
Firefox is opened and I head for www.google.com to check I can actually connect to the internet. I get redirected to www.google.ie and everything seems good if not a little sluggish. Next I try to connect to my gmail acount and the login page is reasonably fast for the type of connection. I log in but it fails to load due to my connection speed. A few refreshes later and I'm in but things are awful slow.
I connect to redbrick over ssh and get in but again latency is poor but usable. As a result i fire up WinMTR to check what the latency and packet loss are like...
the results are interesting:
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 62.40.41.2 - 24 | 520 | 396 | 711 | 5822 | 32536 | 24094 |
| 213.191.233.98 - 24 | 520 | 398 | 621 | 5938 | 32476 | 23994 |
| 213.191.233.34 - 24 | 520 | 396 | 551 | 5888 | 32356 | 23884 |
| bla-rtr-01-fa0-0.net.o2.ie - 24 | 520 | 398 | 570 | 5817 | 32326 | 23764 |
| wil-rtr-01-s4-0.net.o2.ie - 24 | 520 | 399 | 500 | 5819 | 32257 | 23624 |
| atm1-0-2.cr103.cwt.esat.net - 24 | 520 | 397 | 601 | 5819 | 32157 | 23513 |
| vlan500.rt501.cwt.esat.net - 23 | 520 | 402 | 601 | 5886 | 32047 | 23383 |
| vlan51.rt001.cwt.esat.net - 23 | 520 | 402 | 671 | 5905 | 31946 | 23123 |
| ge0-0.br001.cwt.esat.net - 24 | 520 | 398 | 551 | 5863 | 32036 | 23033 |
| hyperion-gige6-1.cwt.core.hea.net - 23 | 520 | 401 | 711 | 5854 | 31956 | 22943 |
| gige5-1-ar1-cwt.hea.net - 24 | 520 | 399 | 691 | 5875 | 31936 | 22792 |
| blanch-sr1-po1.services.hea.net - 23 | 520 | 404 | 631 | 5916 | 31836 | 22702 |
| cyclops.heanet.ie - 24 | 517 | 397 | 661 | 5948 | 31686 | 23974 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR - 0.8. Copyleft @2000-2002 Vasile Laurentiu Stanimir ( stanimir@cr.nivis.com )
From analysing the mtr output in realtime it becomes obvious that any hickup in connectivity to the base station results in the lots of timeouts. Fortunately it looks like TCP connections timeout and just retry so ssh connections stay alive. nice!
So summing up... Based on the past hour or so I found that it's actually easier to use my blackberry with it's limited screen size to read and reply to email then to connect directly to sites using my laptop-blackberry solution. The gmail blackberry client works amazingly well in this high packet loss, high latency environment which shows you can mitigate the issues with network access by writing good software. I also see possibilities in being able to work offline and then bursting your updates when you have decent network connectivity. For example: i didn't need to be online while i wrote this entry, only when i click sumbit and upload my data to the server. I can see some of the older protocols such as telnet (ssh these days), pop3, imap and rss pulls be redployed for users on these types of networks.
In summary, I have to say that mobile computing is no-where near viable in it's current state. I had hoped to be able to catch up on some emails on the journey to cork but this is nigh on impossible using web 2.0 websites. I did manage to post to my blog though! :)
Update (10mar2007):
I'm at my destination in Cork and sitting in front of a glowing fire watching the italy vs wales rugby match. No EDGE connectivity here so I'm limited to GPRS which is providing 25.7 kbps down and 15.3 kbps up (about the equivalent of using a poor dial-up connection) as indicated in the speedtest image below...
Latency looked really good for a few seconds (about 210ms to www.hea.net) but then jumped to over 5000ms a number of times. Next exactly stable or reliable!
Still, if you're stuck in the middle of nowhere and need to get online it proves you can do it. You must deploy a certain amount of patience though...
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