Three One Plan and Teathering experiment

Hi all

I thought I might just share my experience trying to use Three as a land line BB replacement. It don't work.

I am trying it on a Sony Xperia SP, plugged in to an Asus RT-N66U with USB tethering. While it blows my o2 (Sky?) BB out the water in some online speed tests, it is just too flaky. Bear in mind the mast is line of sight some 200 mtrs away from my house. When listening to the Lounge (Pure radios) it works for a bit then chops up. Same for my Philips internet radio, it played Radio 2 for 30 minutes then started buffering, then just stopping. My SoundBridge did the same to ABC Perth, just stopping then starting again.
BBC Iplayer was an enigma, the iPlayer speed tests all passed (7700) but come live streaming all we had was stuttering, the message saying not enough bandwidth.
The Speedtest .net results were around 19-23mbps download and 3 mbps upload.

All I wanted to do was find middle ground so as to ditch Sky, get a speed increase and when 4G gets rolled out on Three, be closer to the speed of fibre.

Anyone else found similar problems like this?

Luckly I am on a one month rolling sim only deal so I can cancel when I want.

In reply to a post by Turrican:

Hi all

I thought I might just share my experience trying to use Three as a land line BB replacement. It don't work.

I am trying it on a Sony Xperia SP, plugged in to an Asus RT-N66U with USB tethering. While it blows my o2 (Sky?) BB out the water in some online speed tests, it is just too flaky. Bear in mind the mast is line of sight some 200 mtrs away from my house. When listening to the Lounge (Pure radios) it works for a bit then chops up. Same for my Philips internet radio, it played Radio 2 for 30 minutes then started buffering, then just stopping. My SoundBridge did the same to ABC Perth, just stopping then starting again.
BBC Iplayer was an enigma, the iPlayer speed tests all passed (7700) but come live streaming all we had was stuttering, the message saying not enough bandwidth.
The Speedtest .net results were around 19-23mbps download and 3 mbps upload.

All I wanted to do was find middle ground so as to ditch Sky, get a speed increase and when 4G gets rolled out on Three, be closer to the speed of fibre.

Anyone else found similar problems like this?

Luckly I am on a one month rolling sim only deal so I can cancel when I want.

when the gas board chopped into the main underground cable to my phone pole and cut half the streets BB/phone off i used my three one plan to tether to my PC for the 3 days it took to get the landlines fixed and it worked flawlessly with netflix general browsing and even world of warcraft game play even hosted a server on it for L4D2 and it had better latency than my m8's ADSL connection i was using wifi tethering direct from the phone to my PC and my mums pc connected but not permanently
maybe its something to do with sharing via a router have you tried using just wifi tethering direct from the phone?

Ash

Hi Ash

I have not tried WiFi tethering yet, but the router and USB I thought should have been rock solid. It's something I need to try though before condemning it I guess....good point Ash.
I need to then in that case, connect the WiFi tethering on the phone to an Access Point that then shares it's internet connection over the home WiFi and wired network.

In reply to a post by Turrican:

Hi Ash

I have not tried WiFi tethering yet, but the router and USB I thought should have been rock solid. It's something I need to try though before condemning it I guess....good point Ash.
I need to then in that case, connect the WiFi tethering on the phone to an Access Point that then shares it's internet connection over the home WiFi and wired network.

id of also thought it would of worked good too i use a dlink router and a dongle and it works fine but as you say it just rules things out

Ash

Edited by deleted (Sun 09-Jun-13 11:43:44)

I went on Holiday and the hotels wi-fi ground to a halt and I moved onto my phone tether.

All weekend I was watching TV off my slingbox, iplayer etc via wireless onto my netbook and no problems.

I used something like 100 gigabytes in 3 days.

The only gripe I have with my phone is that the wireless tether doesn't allow me to select the channel and I am wondering that if there is wireless interferrence pops up you have to compete with it or the tether drops the connection changes channel and start again.

I have had no problems with the USB tether when I needed to use it.

Well, it is not a viable solution sadly for me.

I have tried again on the Asus router after messing around with the QoS settings (should not have even had to do that) Still bad.

Tried WiFi hotspot, and speeds were terrible

Lastly tried direct USB tether to laptop and still poor speed, not enough for BBC HD streaming.

So, will have to wait 100 years for fibre in my area then.

Interesting that your Asus router tethered via USB at all.
I just had a quick go on my TP-Link MR3420 and although it was charging the Galaxy S2 there wasn't any Internet connection passed through.

Personally I have replaced my land line with 3G and it works well for me however I have the phone close to hand on my desk and restart the data connection or hotspot several times a day if the connection stalls. Supplying an Internet connection from a 3G/4G phone to a whole networked house is more of a challenge.

BTW, check this wild speedtest from yesterday using the S4 as a hotspot. I couldn't reproduce it again in order to record the screen. I've seen it in to 30s before but this was the first time in the 50s.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/2760880755.png

In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

I used my iphone as a modem for over a month doing 160GB down and 32GB up. Worked like a charm!

Can't wait for FREE 4G for 3! <-- EE customers vomit over that lol

I don't know why you're in such a rush, Three's DC-HSDPA (H+) network frequently returns faster speedtest results on my Samsung Galaxy S4 than EE's 4G (LTE) network does on OH's Xperia Z.

Trouble with Three isn't their network protocol - be it H+ or LTE - rather their "Traffic Sense" traffic management.

This monitors the connection and continues to slow you down if you're deemed to be a heavy user. I've been having to use Three as my only portal to the world for the last week or so and have found they throttle you on what appears to be a sliding scale if they pick up continuous use e.g. netflix or iplayer as opposed to web browsing.

This means Netflix / iPlayer will work admirably for half an hour or so, then slow down, then stop working altogether requiring you to reboot the phone and on the off-chance you might then get slightly more bandwidth for a brief while.

But unfortunately The One Plan - on DC-HSDPA or LTE - will be limited by Traffic Sense - to be totally unsuitable as a replacement for fixed line broadband - unless you are a light user and don't stream media. P2P? Haha. Forget it.

Edited by deleted (Mon 10-Jun-13 17:33:06)

Try one of those mi-fi things, I set a couple of people up with them for 24/7 broadband in a notspot

It's Three's traffic management policies, not the device

Edited by deleted (Mon 10-Jun-13 19:04:43)

In reply to a post by izools:

It's Three's traffic management policies, not the device

Data SIM's have different throttling to voice SIMs. Mostly because data SIM's aren't unlimited usage !!

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by izools:

It's Three's traffic management policies, not the device

Data SIM's have different throttling to voice SIMs. Mostly because data SIM's aren't unlimited usage !!

Ahh, I thought he was suggesting to use his one plan sim in a MiFi.

Over on the XDA forums people have reported being throttled on data plans, too, although it's very rare.

Edited by deleted (Mon 10-Jun-13 22:25:34)

In reply to a post by izools:

Over on the XDA forums people have reported being throttled on data plans, too, although it's very rare.

I think that probably occurs when cell sites are congested, or backhaul congested.

There was an article I think on the homepage of this site about T-mobile's "Full Monty" all-you-can-eat plan limiting downloads to 4megabit/sec, but their usage limited plans had speeds upto 20meg. I've seen 19meg on my iPhone 5 on SIM only T-Mobile.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by izools:

Over on the XDA forums people have reported being throttled on data plans, too, although it's very rare.

I think that probably occurs when cell sites are congested, or backhaul congested.

There was an article I think on the homepage of this site about T-mobile's "Full Monty" all-you-can-eat plan limiting downloads to 4megabit/sec, but their usage limited plans had speeds upto 20meg. I've seen 19meg on my iPhone 5 on SIM only T-Mobile.

Thing is if your uage is such that it falls under the radar when on a data plan, it'll fall under the radar on the AYCE one plan - people who stick to 15-20GB / Month or less don't fall foul of the traffic management.

I seem to now have a 2 Megabit cap in force 24/7 according to my speedtest results, just over 2 meg even with full H+ where I used to get 22...

I have been experimenting the past month with replacing my Sky ADSL connection with a Three dongle, so far I am impressed,

I have the same issue as above with being unable to watch items on iplayer, however I can download an episode of Top Gear in less then 5 minutes so I'm not that concerned,

Playing games seems to be ok, games of CSS and BF3 seem to run ok, if not better than Sky.

Speed test shows a nice stable ping to london between 40ms-45ms
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/2869633207

I ran TCP/IP Optimizer last night, it dropped roughly 5-10ms off my ping, however my speed dropped to 15Mb/s down.

Currently have i5 connected to my desktop, Shared,
Static down the IP of my LAN Connection
On my routers DHCP server, I pointed the Gateway to my IP.
-Now everyone at home has internet when I'm home and my phone is connected.


Is there anything Three can do like Sky's 'Gamer Profile'??

http://support.three.co.uk/mobiledocs/Support/Signal...

Traffic sense is not effective on 'heavy users' and runs from 15:00 - 00:00 everyday, and only effects P2P. Apparently.

I have unlimited T-mobile. It's usually limited to around 4 - 5 Mbps, sometimes I get 20Mbps but I assume that's only in areas where they for whatever reason do not limit.

I have streamed iPlayer HD, netflix HD etc no issues. I have used over 100gb when I was away from home for 3.5 weeks on it. Extremely happy with it. I too noticed 3 just couldn't handle streaming and also quite often lost signal all together. That said 3 gives faster speeds on speedtests and raw downloads etc.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

I have unlimited T-mobile. It's usually limited to around 4 - 5 Mbps, sometimes I get 20Mbps but I assume that's only in areas where they for whatever reason do not limit.

I know of two locations in my home town where I can get 15meg+ on my account, most other areas I get 4 to 7 meg. I have 1GB a month usage, as I don't see any need to stream video whilst I'm at work (where I don't have WiFi) on a phone. I'd probably need an unlimited tariff if I ever purchased a tablet

Trouble with Three isn't their network protocol - be it H+ or LTE - rather their "Traffic Sense" traffic management.

This monitors the connection and continues to slow you down if you're deemed to be a heavy user. I've been having to use Three as my only portal to the world for the last week or so and have found they throttle you on what appears to be a sliding scale if they pick up continuous use e.g. netflix or iplayer as opposed to web browsing.

This means Netflix / iPlayer will work admirably for half an hour or so, then slow down, then stop working altogether requiring you to reboot the phone and on the off-chance you might then get slightly more bandwidth for a brief while.

But unfortunately The One Plan - on DC-HSDPA or LTE - will be limited by Traffic Sense - to be totally unsuitable as a replacement for fixed line broadband - unless you are a light user and don't stream media. P2P? Haha. Forget it.

I'm intrigued to know where this "fact" comes from - I have 2 phones on 3 on the One Plan, BOTH I use extensively, and I frequently stream content such as Netflix, tvcatchup and my slingbox, on top of audio streaming, normal browsing and so on - I OFTEN do so for 2-3 hours at a time if for example I'm stuck in some hotel with the usual pathetic TV line up.

I've not seen any such issues, I use 50-200GB per handset per month without issue.

your on a legacy one plan sim which is not affected Traffic Sense is on contracts made after march this year my old one plan sim dose not have it but my new one dose (ive got 2 one due to end in December and a new one thats a month old)

The info on what/when they do it is here

Ps the 1TB limit is not actually a limit its what three think is the max anyone could actually do in a month based on average speeds and if you did do a TB they still would not care theyve said that on their FB page multiple times, And considering my average speed on three is 20meg 1TB would be more than easy enough to do (although i would not want to do this as there really is no point).

Ash

In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

The last bit is total [censored]! I've done 500GB a month for 3-4 months and never had a problem, - 3 even say 1000GB a month is the limit before they give a dam!

Don't forget it also matters how many customers are on the mast. If you by chance happen to live in an area with very few customers then Traffic Sense won't kick in.

Traffic sense is a quite new thing. You probably signed up before its introduction. Also as somebody else has said it doesn't affect all masts (but does affect the majority).

I don't know if Turrican has sorted out his problems with three one plan and tethering as its been a while since his first post but I was having the same problems and thought it was three blocking Iplayer but it turned out that there is something up with Usb tethering using the Asus RT-66U.

I am using a Sony Xperia SP phone as well and while Iplayer would stop and say there was not enough bandwidth alot and certain webpages would not load properly Wifi hotspot tethering and putting the N66U in repeater mode using the Merlin custom firmware works perfectly with everything working properly.

Hope this helps someone having the same problem.

the traffic sense is more based on Cell load and top 5% users

if the mast is under very high use the top 5% abusers get a speed cap, you see this more likely happen when you can only get 2-4mb speeds to even start off with, as the mast is under high load so the top high data users will get limited speeds (you may also get unreliable data/text/sms as well if you're stuck in between 2-3 masts but that is more a problem with 3G it self not just Threes network just they make it worse due to thinly spread out masts)

In reply to a post by win864:

I don't know if Turrican has sorted out his problems with three one plan and tethering as its been a while since his first post but I was having the same problems and thought it was three blocking Iplayer but it turned out that there is something up with Usb tethering using the Asus RT-66U.

I am using a Sony Xperia SP phone as well and while Iplayer would stop and say there was not enough bandwidth alot and certain webpages would not load properly Wifi hotspot tethering and putting the N66U in repeater mode using the Merlin custom firmware works perfectly with everything working properly.

Hope this helps someone having the same problem.

I had strange issues with the USB tethering on my Nexus 4 causing the laptop it was connected to be unresponsive.