Tesing the broadband wireless connection

Yesterday I've subscribed to a broadband wireless connection. This means that you just insert a card
in your laptop and you're online. I decided to try this service because I spend two hours a day riding a bus.

I had two major concerns:
1. What will be the speed of the connection
2. Will connection be stable without any interruptions.

I type this blog sitting in the bus that moves with the speed of 70 miles per hour.
I'm listening to a streaming internet radio and browsing the internet.
Internet radio works fine.

Then I tried to watch the streaming Flash videos and they were choppy. At this point I'm not sure if
 this is an issue with the streaming servers or this internet connection is chocking up.

As to regular Web browsing, it works at least as good as my home cable connection,
 but the service was disconnected once and it took me less than a minute to reconnect.

Sure enough, the speed of connection depends on proximity to major metropolitan areas
(this is were the wireless provider build the most of their relay stations.

Here's the speed connection test results I ran using an independent speed test provider while being 45 miles away from the New York City:

Speed: 326.6 kilobits per second
Communications 326.6 kilobits per second
Storage 39.9 kilobytes per second
1MB file download: 25.7 seconds
Subjective rating: Not bad
Date & time Monday, December 19, 7:13AM
Connection type Wireless: 3G
Region New Jersey
Data size 1024KB


Avg. speed: 0.31 Mbits/sec
T-1 speed: max. 1.54 Mbits/sec


And this test I ran right across the river from NYC:


462.3 kilobits per second
Communications 462.3 kilobits per second
Storage 56.4 kilobytes per second
1MB file download 18.1 seconds
Subjective rating Not bad
Date & time Monday, December 19, 8:21AM*
Test type IDT4 Free
Connection type Wireless: 3G
Region New Jersey
Data size 1024KB

My provider's statistics tool shows me the following data (it also fluctuates as my bus moves):

Max transmit rate (Kbps): from 40 to 55
Max receive rate  (KBS):  from 300 to 750

Oops,  the bus is entering the tunnel that goes under the Hudson River... Believe it or not, I'm still Googling!

This test I ran  inSpringfield,   MA

All this feels great, but  if I'll keep this service, I'll lose these couple of hours a day when I was disconnected from the net. Is this a good thing? I really do not know.

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