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Understanding operational 5G: a first measurement study

blog.acolyer.org

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Re: Understanding operational 5G: a first measurement study

#21

Post by treis »

the-dude wrote: post #18
tzs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For wired internet, I suspect that a lot of people are paying for much faster connections than they actually need. As you note, e-mail, streaming video, playing online games, and browsing generally don't need a lot of speed. Latency and packet loss are far more important. 25 Mbit/s is fine for streaming one 4K UHD video with surround sound. It is mainly just large downloads where speed matters. Downloading a new game…

Do you live with a family? I have seen complaints about WFH situations with children attending remote classes at the same time.

Zoom says a group call at 1080p will take 3Mbps. The GPs connection should, theoretically, be able to handle 30ish simultaneous calls.

Connection issues at home is probably a Wifi issue. They might have a poor signal to the router. Devices on the same channel will interfere with each other. As will the neighbors' network. And these days there are a lot of networks out there that interfere with each other.

The other option is that the shared line back to the ISP can't handle the traffic. That's something that definitely can be happening due to covid. Traffic patterns are quite different and it's possible that things are getting saturated. But it's probably the wifi.

Re: Understanding operational 5G: a first measurement study

#22

Post by tzs »

the-dude wrote: post #18
tzs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For wired internet, I suspect that a lot of people are paying for much faster connections than they actually need. As you note, e-mail, streaming video, playing online games, and browsing generally don't need a lot of speed. Latency and packet loss are far more important. 25 Mbit/s is fine for streaming one 4K UHD video with surround sound. It is mainly just large downloads where speed matters. Downloading a new game…

Do you live with a family? I have seen complaints about WFH situations with children attending remote classes at the same time.

My comments were per person. If you have 4 people in the house and they might want to each stream different 4K UHD movies at the same time, for example, you'd need 100 Mbit/s.

For video conferencing you should have about 3 Mbit/s upload for a group conference. That's where you will probably hit lower speed plan limits if you have multiple separate people doing group conferences, or one person doing a group video conference while 2 or 3 others are doing big downloads or streaming 4K video.

A lot of residential internet services seem to set upload speed to not much more than is necessary for the ACKs needed when someone is downloading at the maximum download speed, and so someone doing an upload focused activity can have a big impact on other users in the household.

Re: Understanding operational 5G: a first measurement study

#23

Post by vosper »

deostroll wrote: post #20

I hail from Kerala, India. I read the first section and stopped. There is no new feature here. 5G boasts to bring better bandwidth. But is that really useful? Perhaps you can stream, movies and web meetings, faster. We can do this today, albeit a little slow. The problem I face today, at present, is a fluctuating carrier signal. I get mostly 1-2 signal bars. The data signal changes from H to H+. (Since I have set it…

The solution to this might one day be Starlink and Wifi calling?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink

Re: Understanding operational 5G: a first measurement study

#24

Post by throw0101a »

deostroll wrote: post #20

I hail from Kerala, India. I read the first section and stopped. There is no new feature here. 5G boasts to bring better bandwidth. But is that really useful? Perhaps you can stream, movies and web meetings, faster. We can do this today, albeit a little slow. The problem I face today, at present, is a fluctuating carrier signal. I get mostly 1-2 signal bars. The data signal changes from H to H+. (Since I have set it…

> Perhaps you can stream, movies and web meetings, faster. We can do this today, albeit a little slow.

An argument can be made for this being a better use of spectrum.

For a 500M file:

* if you download it at 10M/s, it will take 50s to receive, where you are using radio spectrum;

* if you download it at 50M/s, it will take 10s to receive.

By downloading it faster you can stop using radio spectrum sooner, which allows other people to use it. And other people's greater download speeds allows your phone to send/receive traffic sooner as well.

Operating a radio also uses up a lot of battery, so the sooner your device can reduce power, the longer your battery will last.

Re: Understanding operational 5G: a first measurement study

#26

Post by jiggawatts »

blakesterz wrote: post #2

Interesting study... I found this to be really surprising: "In a web browsing test, 5G only reduced page loading times (PLT) by about 5% compared to 4G. This is because most of the time goes into rendering, i.e., is compute-bound. Even if we just compare download times, 5G only shows a 20.68% improvement over 4G."

Keep in mind that 5G will be available in the new iPhone 12, which will have a faster CPU than most laptops.

That'll be first generation i-Device with 5G support. There will likely be 2 or 3 generations before the next-G.

An iPhone 15 will definitely benefit from higher bandwidth.

Re: Understanding operational 5G: a first measurement study

#27

Post by harpratap »

deostroll wrote: post #20

I hail from Kerala, India. I read the first section and stopped. There is no new feature here. 5G boasts to bring better bandwidth. But is that really useful? Perhaps you can stream, movies and web meetings, faster. We can do this today, albeit a little slow. The problem I face today, at present, is a fluctuating carrier signal. I get mostly 1-2 signal bars. The data signal changes from H to H+. (Since I have set it…

5G is substantially cheaper. Your carrier can send you femtocells for free and you can populate your surroundings with these femto cells and get really good connection everywhere. Think of it like WiFi service provided by your carrier. Of course this would also mean your ISP and carriers will now merge

Re: Understanding operational 5G: a first measurement study

#28

Post by m463 »

kiliancs wrote: post #17
hatch_q wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5G is not being pushed for benefit of consumers. It's meant for IoT devices (toys, appliances, bikes, cars, toothbrushes, ...) What average joe will see from 5G are cheaper devices and more targeted advertising.

Cheaper devices why?

postsales tracking and telemetry costs.

machines can talk to each other. If your tv won't do telemetry, maybe you neighbor's device can relay your telemetry for you?

Re: Understanding operational 5G: a first measurement study

#29

Post by hatch_q »

kiliancs wrote: post #17
hatch_q wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5G is not being pushed for benefit of consumers. It's meant for IoT devices (toys, appliances, bikes, cars, toothbrushes, ...) What average joe will see from 5G are cheaper devices and more targeted advertising.

Cheaper devices why?

Because vendors will sell the telemetry data. Smart TVs are also cheaper than "dumb" TVs because of that.

Re: Understanding operational 5G: a first measurement study

#30

Post by hrishios »

deostroll wrote: post #20

I hail from Kerala, India. I read the first section and stopped. There is no new feature here. 5G boasts to bring better bandwidth. But is that really useful? Perhaps you can stream, movies and web meetings, faster. We can do this today, albeit a little slow. The problem I face today, at present, is a fluctuating carrier signal. I get mostly 1-2 signal bars. The data signal changes from H to H+. (Since I have set it…

Great to see another Keralite on here!

5G will not make this better. The problem for your (our) part of the world is coverage, and that needs to be dealt with using more cell towers. A 5g transition will possibly compound this problem, by needing more towers for the same coverage area, and by making those towers and the infrastructure for data transport to them more expensive.

IMHO 5G is a great idea for cities, ideally mini building-as-a-city size projects, where you can provide coverage to a lot of people really fast. But for penetrating and providing reliable coverage for wider areas, 5g isn't the right thing. Hopefully the next iteration works towards that.

It's also been interesting to see Kerala change over the last decade - I see things change as snapshots everytime I'm there, so I feel it more keenly. Speeds are a lot faster when they're available, but tower-to-tower and carrier-to-carrier handover is still a massive problem. Part of it's hardware, with the signal just not reaching you. The other part is still software, where some towers just won't let you go, or refuse to upgrade you. I've sat next to people who were getting 4g on the same carrier, same phone, while I was getting 3g and had to restart.

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