Defending EDGE ?

Author	All Replies
bmn ? ? ? Premium,ExMod 2003-06 join:2001-03-15 hiatus 1 edit	Defending EDGE ? Q: The device has been largely praised, but there have been exceptions, including some complaints about the speed of AT&T's EDGE network. It was Apple's choice to use EDGE. Do you feel like you take the hit on that, as opposed to Apple? A: Take a hit on the EDGE network? First of all, EDGE network is the only national, wireless broadband network available. If you want ubiquitous coverage across the nation, EDGE is the only opportunity you have. Wow, this guy starts his response with a half truth... Good one there Randall. Let's totally forget about EVDO and selectively present the facts. There is not a 3G network that is yet ubiquitously employed across the nation. And neither is EDGE... Sorry Randall, but your largest network in America actually doesn't cover some places and neither does EDGE. Second of all, EDGE is, for things like emails and transporting photos and that type of thing, it's a very good experience. Yeah Randall, if you have really, REALLY low expectations and no concept of quality. Waiting upwards of 1 second, sometimes even more (three to five), for the network to acknowledge your request with full signal strength is not a "very good experience." Of course, I'm betting you never synced your phone with Activesync or used IMAP across EDGE either Randall ? That certainly isn't a "very good experience" when it fails half the time because of EDGE. Both actually work just fine on my Sprint phone and both are much faster. And he's got to be kidding me when he says that transporting pictures across EDGE is a good experience. Pictures require more bandwidth that web browsing and web browsing on EDGE is painful. For Web surfing, if somebody wants to be a power Web surfer, there are 20,000, 30,000 Wi-Fi hotspots around the country, plus many people in their home have Wi-Fi hotspots. So, in other words, our network sucks and you need to use Wifi to see that "very good experience". Randall, at least be honest... Just goes to show that corporate types are just as full of shit as politicians and are to be trusted likewise... Not at all. -- Prove it... Save the Internet Time (NTP) service, use the pool.
	to forum · permalink · 2007-08-01 13:06:45 ·
wierdo join:2001-02-16 Tulsa, OK Reviews: ·Cox HSI ·T-Mobile US	EDGE is far better than you make it out to be. 3G is, of course, a much better experience, but EDGE is light years ahead of GPRS and is quite a bit better than 1xRTT when you have a good signal. My only problem with EDGE is SSH. MMSing works fine, emails work fine, everything works fine except the most interactive of traffic. They do need very much to work on a more aggressive 3G rollout, though. They are expanding, but the pace seems glacial. They've had the T1s installed at one site I'm familiar with for a couple of months now, but there's no sign of progress on getting the new radios installed. Your complaint about bandwidth indicates that you really don't know how the EDGE network works and whether or not sending a picture across it would be reasonable. After the upgrades, I get 180Kbps on the EDGE network pretty regularly, and 200Kbps isn't uncommon, as it used to be. (Previously 120Kbps was my usual speed, with bursts up to 180, now my bursts are right up to 200-230Kbps with both my laptop and my E62) EDGE has more bandwidth than anything with its broad deployment. Where it sucks is latency. 500-600ms (typical, when the connection isn't asleep) is just too much. It doesn't matter one whit for sending one single picture, though, as only one round trip need be made to start the transfer. Web browsing seems awful for you because your device doesn't make enough concurrent connections to overcome the awful latency. EDGE is sort of like satellite, only better. It works fine if you have your browser set to download 4 or 5 things at once, but if it only downloads one or two things at a time it takes forever because of all the sequential round trips you have to wait on for all the images and whatnot to be loaded.
	to forum · permalink · 2007-08-01 14:57:32 ·
bmn ? ? ? Premium,ExMod 2003-06 join:2001-03-15 hiatus	said by wierdo: EDGE is far better than you make it out to be. 3G is, of course, a much better experience, but EDGE is light years ahead of GPRS and is quite a bit better than 1xRTT when you have a good signal. I will conceded that EDGE definitely is a much better experience that GPRS ever was, however, I am by no means giving it short shrift. EDGE is not "far better" than I've made it out to be by any stretch. My only problem with EDGE is SSH. MMSing works fine, emails work fine, everything works fine except the most interactive of traffic. Well, I hate to tell you, but EDGE has done nothing but fall flat for using Activesync to an Exchange server and using IMAP. My sync sessions to the Exchange server constantly fail when I'm using my EDGE connected devices. Same problem with IMAP. Downloading messages, though, is faster than dialup, but nothing to write home about. Your complaint about bandwidth indicates that you really don't know how the EDGE network works and whether or not sending a picture across it would be reasonable. Try sending or receiving large image files across EDGE at less than or around 100kbps. Not a very enjoyable experience. Sorry, I know well enough how the system works. After the upgrades, I get 180Kbps on the EDGE network pretty regularly, and 200Kbps isn't uncommon, as it used to be. (Previously 120Kbps was my usual speed, with bursts up to 180, now my bursts are right up to 200-230Kbps with both my laptop and my E62) And I regularly get between 3-700kbps, with bursts to 1Mbps on my EVDO devices with lower latency... Sorry if I'm not as impressed as I used to be. EDGE has more bandwidth than anything with its broad deployment. Bandwidth is not related to deployment. Where it sucks is latency. 500-600ms (typical, when the connection isn't asleep) is just too much. It doesn't matter one whit for sending one single picture, though, as only one round trip need be made to start the transfer. No, but it does matter when you are making several connections to a server to download mail headers and messages. Web browsing seems awful for you because your device doesn't make enough concurrent connections to overcome the awful latency. EDGE is sort of like satellite, only better. It works fine if you have your browser set to download 4 or 5 things at once, but if it only downloads one or two things at a time it takes forever because of all the sequential round trips you have to wait on for all the images and whatnot to be loaded. That's only part of the problem. Latency affecting session setup times contributes equally, if not moreso, to the problem of EDGE performing poorly, than the low number of sessions. Your statement that more sessions would instantly solve the problem shows that you know little of TCP/IP. -- Prove it... Save the Internet Time (NTP) service, use the pool.
	to forum · permalink · 2007-08-01 16:59:30 ·
en102 Canadian, eh? join:2001-01-26 Valencia, CA	I have used EDGE for 'some' traffic (tethered), and it wasn't horrible. I would NEVER want to try and use it for an SSH / tunneling session though. I have had up to 1Mbps tethered on UMTS/HSDPA through my Samsung zx-20, and used it for SSH, and it was very good. Typical ping was ~230ms (w/o load). I've never got past ~140kbps on EDGE (class 10 on Samsung zx-20), and just won't use it I personlly think AT&T missed the boat on selling a true 3G iPhone. -- Canada = Hollywood North
	to forum · permalink · 2007-08-01 21:21:20 ·

wierdo join:2001-02-16 Tulsa, OK Reviews: ·Cox HSI ·T-Mobile US	reply to bmn said by bmn: That's only part of the problem. Latency affecting session setup times contributes equally, if not moreso, to the problem of EDGE performing poorly, than the low number of sessions. Your statement that more sessions would instantly solve the problem shows that you know little of TCP/IP. Except that concurrency reduces the apparent effect of latency. Also, I don't know what's wrong with Outlook/Exchange, but I use IMAP all the time on EDGE with my laptop. Would I rather have 3G? Definitely. Is it as bad as you're making it out to be? No. I'd sure like it to be faster, but waiting less than a second for a small message to download when you click on it isn't bad.
	to forum · permalink · 2007-08-03 23:25:25 ·

AT&T CEO Walks a Foot in Your Shoes > Defending EDGE ?