Cat Cdma Download Interruptions

[joka]

I can't connect at all now, and neither can my friend in town. I think we have been cut off due to billing problems. I called CAT today, no joy. And they will be closed for the next 4 days. Happy Holidays!

[loong]

OMG - don't say that Joka, you've made me realise that I have not had a bill from CAT so I hope that they don't cut me off!

[nikster]

Yeah I had that problem last time. Didn't check my mail for 3 days and suddenly I was cut off. The cut off dept. seems to be way ahead of the bill-sending dept at CAT....

Update on the download issue: Still ongoing, very consistent at about 40MB downloaded. I noticed just now that Skype calls also disconnect after about 5 - 10 minutes, so that's also affected.

[LivinLOS]

Can anyone with the new hardware (ec226) post an international speed test.. Someone is claiming 3 - 4 Mbit speeds and I tend to think thats.. erm.. optimistic (and thats being polite)..

Also whats a normal Rev A card giving on a international test ?? I thought it was ballpark 800 kbps - 1.5 Mbit on those ??

www.speedtest.net would be great... Thanks guys..

[nikster]

Not using CDMA right now so no speedtest but I do get 130KB/s to international servers on downloads, and 50KB/s up, so it's somewhere > 1Mbit down and somewhere > 500Kpbs up. I am intentionally using terms that are a bit vague because it varies.

3 - 4Mbit? Nope. Absolutely not. Download managers will max out my incoming connections at 170 - 180 KB/s. As a side-note, 3Mbit is the maximum possible speed for EV-DO Rev. A. But in my experience it's pretty normal for the actual throughput to be well below that, and I mean on any network world-wide. I had HSPA with a theoretical speed of 7Mbit in Europe and it was capped at 1Mbit...

Edited May 8, 2009 by nikster

[loong]

Rev A with MC727 modem

to Bangkok, London, New York and Singapore.

It was much better than this 2 weeks ago. I was getting about 50% better than this then.

Often takes at least 3 attempts to connect and the connection drops quite regularly.

[ThaiLife]

My connection is also down on normal..

[LivinLOS]

3 - 4Mbit? Nope. Absolutely not. Download managers will max out my incoming connections at 170 - 180 KB/s. As a side-note, 3Mbit is the maximum possible speed for EV-DO Rev. A. But in my experience it's pretty normal for the actual throughput to be well below that, and I mean on any network world-wide. I had HSPA with a theoretical speed of 7Mbit in Europe and it was capped at 1Mbit...

Exactly what I thought.. But theres a poster on this thread who claims otherwise..

Hes now saying (on another forum) he measured international speeds at 3.62 Mbit/s but wont post a speedtest.net report. I was of the understanding that was out of the possible speed of the CDMA2000 system itself.

[greenwood01]

if i recall right, 6years ago, some wireless isp using EV-DO in chicago had speed upto 15mbits for each customers.

I remember the guys in that area posting speedresult and wishing i had more than 1mbit.

Might have been something else than evdo but im 90% it was EV-DO

[LivinLOS]

According to wikipedia its..

The EV-DO feature of CDMA2000 networks provides access to mobile devices with forward link air interface speeds of up to 2.4 Mbit/s with Rev. 0 and up to 3.1 Mbit/s with Rev. A.

TIA-856 Rev. A

Revision A of EV-DO makes several additions to the protocol while keeping it completely backwards compatible with Revision 0.

These changes included the introduction of several new forward link data rates that increase the maximum burst rate from 2.45 Mbit/s to 3.1 Mbit/s.

However with Rev B

TIA-856 Rev. B

EV-DO Rev. B is a multi-carrier evolution of the Rev. A specification. It maintains the capabilities of EV-DO Rev. A, and provides the following enhancements:

* Higher rates per carrier (up to 4.9 Mbit/s on the downlink per carrier). Typical deployments are expected to include 2 or 3 carriers for a peak rate of 14.7 Mbit/s.

So if this new card that ChalongBoy has (the EC226) is a genuine Rev B card AND the network has been upgraded to Rev B then this is possible and big news.. However all the online info just says its another Rev A card and his claims of a 3.62 Mbit download seem impossible..

So if anyone has the new EC226 hardware please do a international speedtest www.speedtest.net

I would pick one up for a backup if they are going that fast.

[nikster]

Google sez the Huawei EC226 is EVDO Rev.A. End of story, nothing to see here, move along.

Maybe he saw that speed in the Windows task manager, next to his 54Mbit WiFi connection.

[nikster]

speed tests for those who really love them - CAT CDMA. EV-DO Rev. A with CMOTECH CCU 680 (aka Franklin CDU 680) modem.

Edited May 10, 2009 by nikster

[LivinLOS]

Exactly as expected..

Just comical to see someone flat out claiming a speedtest.net speed of 3.62 Mb/s on hardware the manufacturer says tops out at 3.1 and on a system where people get about 1/3rd of that..

Thanks for the test results tho.

[nikster]

Update: CAT service blamed some network switchover in northern Thailand for the problem, and told me they would "reset my modem" (apparently over the air).

Problem remains the same as before though. If anything it's worse here in Chiang Mai.

Edited May 15, 2009 by nikster

[nikster]

I am still having interruptions too and losing faith a little bit that CAT is ever going to fix this. TiT.

[yoon01]

I am still having interruptions too and losing faith a little bit that CAT is ever going to fix this. TiT.

Hey Nikster, I am on the other side of the mountain in Pangmapha (Soppong). I do get the same interruptions and on top of that, I sometimes get disconnected from the internet while I am still connected to CAT. iow, at the network center (Windows vista) it says local only.. This started recently, about a week ago. Do you get the same?

[nikster]

I am still having interruptions too and losing faith a little bit that CAT is ever going to fix this. TiT.

Hey Nikster, I am on the other side of the mountain in Pangmapha (Soppong). I do get the same interruptions and on top of that, I sometimes get disconnected from the internet while I am still connected to CAT. iow, at the network center (Windows vista) it says local only.. This started recently, about a week ago. Do you get the same?

Not sure it's the same issue, might very well be.

I got a new TOT DSL line and a new CAT DSL line as a "solution" to this problem. The worst part for me was that it kept interrupting my VPN after about 20 minutes or so which made it very hard to get any work done. VPN reconnect didn't work either, I had to first disconnect the CDMA modem, then reconnect, then reconnect VPN. Very annoying - it's just not acceptable for a professional connection.

Meanwhile the CAT guy recommended I should use a download manager... I didn't even bother describing the VPN problem to them because I know it'd all be greek to them.

I guess time for a quick summary:

Mini interruptions affecting the following services I use:

- Downloads time out

- VPN disconnects

- Skype disconnects

The latter mean also that CAT CDMA/Skype is out for conference calls, and even for private calls it's bad.

Edited May 22, 2009 by nikster

[yoon01]

I am still having interruptions too and losing faith a little bit that CAT is ever going to fix this. TiT.

Hey Nikster, I am on the other side of the mountain in Pangmapha (Soppong). I do get the same interruptions and on top of that, I sometimes get disconnected from the internet while I am still connected to CAT. iow, at the network center (Windows vista) it says local only.. This started recently, about a week ago. Do you get the same?

Not sure it's the same issue, might very well be.

I got a new TOT DSL line and a new CAT DSL line as a "solution" to this problem. The worst part for me was that it kept interrupting my VPN after about 20 minutes or so which made it very hard to get any work done. VPN reconnect didn't work either, I had to first disconnect the CDMA modem, then reconnect, then reconnect VPN. Very annoying - it's just not acceptable for a professional connection.

Meanwhile the CAT guy recommended I should use a download manager... I didn't even bother describing the VPN problem to them because I know it'd all be greek to them.

I guess time for a quick summary:

Mini interruptions affecting the following services I use:

- Downloads time out

- VPN disconnects

- Skype disconnects

The latter mean also that CAT CDMA/Skype is out for conference calls, and even for private calls it's bad.

Yeah, Skype does get cut off once in a while. But for personal use it is not so much of a problem. The last few days it is difficult to connect to CAT through CDMA. No landlines available here, so this is my best option.

[khongniam]

I use VoIP via www.sipgate.de or sipgate.at or sipgate.co.ukcall to europe only 0,01 €or a flat rate for 8 € and call how much you want to europeor flat ISDN for 10 € call how much you want + Fax how much you want to europe.have your own real german or uastria or english phone number for free

[meelousee]

CAT CDMA used to work great for a pretty long time, but for the last 2 weeks or so I keep getting mini interruptions. These are so short that you wouldn't neccessarily notice them - except if you download.

Symptoms: Download a larger file. Goes very fast, until about 10MB or 20MB or 40MB, then it stops completely.

I wonder if I am the only one seeing this - if not then it would have to do either with my modem, or the local tower.

I am, for example, unable to download the VMWare Fusion update. I bought the software, so I want to download it from the official site. But the package is 180MB and their servers have a security feature which doesn't allow one to continue a download. Once the connection breaks off, you have to start over again. I tried about 20 times, but never got more than 40MB...

Anyone else noticed this?

You might want to use a download manager so that when the connection breaks you dont have to start over. Firefox has a builtin that works ok.

Some of the problems these days are the carriers are sharing themselves into a corner.

An example when I first moved to Hua Take my download speed was fantastic. Of 250 homes there were only 20 or 30 occupied now that they are all full I get stupid speeds from ADSL at .26MBs when it used to be 2.5 all day. Night time and early mornings are still ok.

Please bring me a fiber optic cable someone

Check out your speed at: http://www.speedtest.net/ they have a local server running in BKK at swampypom

[meelousee]

speed tests for those who really love them - CAT CDMA. EV-DO Rev. A with CMOTECH CCU 680 (aka Franklin CDU 680) modem.

Was this your actual results? Or was it from the website?

[nikster]

speed tests for those who really love them - CAT CDMA. EV-DO Rev. A with CMOTECH CCU 680 (aka Franklin CDU 680) modem.

Was this your actual results? Or was it from the website?

Actual results - not sure what you mean by website. I just tested the speed while on the CAT CDMA connection. It's pretty fast.

And yes I am aware of download managers - but it doesn't solve the skype or VPN problems. VPN is annoying, an interruption of work for 3, 4 minutes that's very distracting. Skype is unacceptable - I am on conference calls sometimes, and they last hours, I can't really drop out every 10 minutes. That would just make the whole idea of working remotely seem like a bad one. I now mainly use my DSL lines.

[chiang mai]

I'm a long time user of CAT CDMA and their EVDO aircard product and find it's a performance really variable. I also suffer stalled downloads but as with others in this post find that Download Manager helps huge amounts. The biggest problem I have currently is the length of "wake up" time when logging in and the host tries to resolve names. My workaround for this is to install Google Chrome, preset the load of eight different web sites and then walk away for five minutes until I get free flow. The alternative of responding to "web site not found" is very frustrating.

[ThaiLife]

Just done a speed test , not too bad, I do use a download mamager, but even this stops

during downloads now, and does not re start as normal. To night the connection has frozen several times, and the only way to re start it is to disconnect , and re connect the connection. If I was getting very bad connection speeds as well as the freezing I could understand it a bit better, but to get for me reasonable speed results , and then freezing , I am at a loss what to think / do .

[nikster]

.. but to get for me reasonable speed results , and then freezing , I am at a loss what to think / do .

Either go to CAT and complain, try to make a nice reproducible test case for them. Or do what I did, give up. TIT.

[ThaiLife]

.. but to get for me reasonable speed results , and then freezing , I am at a loss what to think / do .

Either go to CAT and complain, try to make a nice reproducible test case for them. Or do what I did, give up. TIT.

I though about putting my netbook in the car , going and park in the CAT office car park, then check out how the connection is behaving, if its freezing there , then take the net book into the office manager and ask them to take a look .

[HDRIDER]

Hi

Good idea, let us know how it goes, please