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Show HN: Lag – Know Before You Go

lag.app

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Re: Show HN: Lag – Know Before You Go

#11

Post by thruflo22 »

I moved recently from the UK, where my home and office both had fiber, to live in a tiny picturesque village in the Istrian hills in Croatia.

Initially, my 4g router was getting a signal strength of -110 to -120db, corresponding to two bars and zoom video not working. Spent €90 on an outdoor aerial. Plugged it into the router. Signal now averages -85, four to five bars on the router, zero issues with video calls.

My point being: there’s more than one way to skin a cat and you can often improve your mobile signal if you want to.

Re: Show HN: Lag – Know Before You Go

#13

Post by BjoernKW »

square_usual wrote: post #3

That's a snazzy looking app, but why iOS only, and why iOS 14 only?

As for iOS-only I’d assume lack of resources.

Developing and maintaining an app on multiple platforms (and keeping the code bases in sync) is no small undertaking (hence the existence of write-once / hybrid app frameworks such as Ionic).

Regarding iOS 14 my guess is SwiftUI.

Re: Show HN: Lag – Know Before You Go

#14

Post by griko »

Love the app! Straightforward with no extra stuff here and there. I’d like to share some suggestions after using it for a while:

- adding an option to partially omit or edit the address would be great since not every part of the world shows the exact address accurately

- inform what datas are stored (i did wonder why they show the latitude and longitude, because privacy reasons)

- add prompts for isp/carrier provider, subscription/plan type, and other granular details so people know what to pick or expect

- minor improvements on the user interaction, like autofocusing on the input so users can instantly type, or tap an entry to view more details

Overall, looking forward to share the app to my fellow iOS 14 users!

Re: Show HN: Lag – Know Before You Go

#15

Post by biztos »

I like this idea, but I see two potential problems:

1. It might route too many people to where the network is fast, thus making the network not fast anymore and wasting a lot of people's time as they "go."

2. It might also route a bunch of "digital nomads" to my local art café where they will hog the tables, like Waze did with commuter traffic to my residential street.

How do you avoid those two problems? Or at least the first one, which is a problem for your target users?

Re: Show HN: Lag – Know Before You Go

#16

Post by renewiltord »

biztos wrote: post #15

I like this idea, but I see two potential problems: 1. It might route too many people to where the network is fast, thus making the network not fast anymore and wasting a lot of people's time as they "go." 2. It might also route a bunch of "digital nomads" to my local art café where they will hog the tables, like Waze did with commuter traffic to my residential street. How do you avoid those two problems? Or at least…

Make your internet slow at #2. Presumably you don't want an army of people all on the Internet at your art cafe anyway.

As for #1, there are physical capacity limits you are likely to first exhaust. Only so many people will fit.

Re: Show HN: Lag – Know Before You Go

#17

Post by biztos »

renewiltord wrote: post #16
biztos wrote: post #15

I like this idea, but I see two potential problems: 1. It might route too many people to where the network is fast, thus making the network not fast anymore and wasting a lot of people's time as they "go." 2. It might also route a bunch of "digital nomads" to my local art café where they will hog the tables, like Waze did with commuter traffic to my residential street. How do you avoid those two problems? Or at least…

Make your internet slow at #2. Presumably you don't want an army of people all on the Internet at your art cafe anyway. As for #1, there are physical capacity limits you are likely to first exhaust. Only so many people will fit.

Actually two of my cafés have a "no computers in the evening" rule, one also has a "no computers on the terrace" rule. Now that I think about it more, with fast mobile data I don't think network speed is going to be much of a factor for places like that.

For #1, if you have ten people all on Zoom meetings at the same time, isn't that going to kill your fast-for-a-café bandwidth?

Re: Show HN: Lag – Know Before You Go

#18

Post by sails »

thruflo22 wrote: post #11

I moved recently from the UK, where my home and office both had fiber, to live in a tiny picturesque village in the Istrian hills in Croatia. Initially, my 4g router was getting a signal strength of -110 to -120db, corresponding to two bars and zoom video not working. Spent €90 on an outdoor aerial. Plugged it into the router. Signal now averages -85, four to five bars on the router, zero issues with video calls. My…

Would appreciate a link to your researched aerial and router. I'm sitting in the country with my phone in a metal kitchen bowl (DIY aerial) for maximum signal, and think I could benefit from some technology!

Re: Show HN: Lag – Know Before You Go

#19

Post by zegerius »

thruflo22 wrote: post #11

I moved recently from the UK, where my home and office both had fiber, to live in a tiny picturesque village in the Istrian hills in Croatia. Initially, my 4g router was getting a signal strength of -110 to -120db, corresponding to two bars and zoom video not working. Spent €90 on an outdoor aerial. Plugged it into the router. Signal now averages -85, four to five bars on the router, zero issues with video calls. My…

Exactly! I purchased a 4G router[1] with an external antenna to ensure a sufficiently good connection for four people on a small Croatian island. After three months, I am positive that most people would be perfectly fine (or even better off) with just a 4G antenna on their roof. Our speeds were around 50-120/10-20Mbps with a 60-100ms latency to Zoom's closest server, depending on the weather.

1. Teltonika RUTX11: https://teltonika-networks.com/product/rutx11/

Re: Show HN: Lag – Know Before You Go

#20

Post by zegerius »

sails wrote: post #18
thruflo22 wrote: post #11

I moved recently from the UK, where my home and office both had fiber, to live in a tiny picturesque village in the Istrian hills in Croatia. Initially, my 4g router was getting a signal strength of -110 to -120db, corresponding to two bars and zoom video not working. Spent €90 on an outdoor aerial. Plugged it into the router. Signal now averages -85, four to five bars on the router, zero issues with video calls. My…

Would appreciate a link to your researched aerial and router. I'm sitting in the country with my phone in a metal kitchen bowl (DIY aerial) for maximum signal, and think I could benefit from some technology!

Take a look at the Teltonika RUTX11[1] with a MIMO LTE antenna from Poynting[2]. Not cheap, but certainly got good results with it. I used Cellmapper[3] to check where the closest tower was.

I have heard that the Huawei ones that accept external antennas are also decent, be it with a much smaller featureset.

[1] https://teltonika-networks.com/product/rutx11/ [2] https://poynting.tech/antenna-category/antennas/urban-rural-... [3] https://www.cellmapper.net/map

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