[3GScottishUser]

Been trying to use my 3 USB dongle over the last couple of days when my company network was down and the experience has been less than impressive.

In 2 areas with almost full HSDPA coverage according to the software it was taking so long to load the BBC homepage that I gave up!! One has to wonder what is going on with 3 just now and just how many folks are affected with issues like this.

I only use their dongle occassionally and its now becoming less frequent as i cant be bothered spending the time to connect the thing and get nothing to look at.

Is this perhaps something to do with usage in some areas?

[Ben]

I wonder if it's the sucky DNS again...

Does it take an age for a page to start loading, but once it does it finishes quickly?

[Hands0n]

There was that other lad on here complaining about 3's HSDPA - we pointed him to use OpenDNS which helped, but as I recall he also adjusted the TCP/IP parameters for the connection - if I recall right he adjusted the MTU down to 1400 which seemed to improve throughput no end - the default is often MTU = 1500, but that may not be appropriate for 3's network and packets will fragment which can cause all manner of problems, particularly if fragments get lost or heavily delayed.

[3GScottishUser]

I will try adjusting some of the settings and see if that makes a difference.

Chatting to locals where I work it appears that there are quite a few of these 3 dongles out there in an area where some folks use mobile broadband as a primary Internet access service. Bearing in mind the capacity of cellsites, I just wonder if in some places 3 are reaching saturation point?

[Hands0n]

That's the problem with marketing this technology as "Mobile Broadband" when it is not comparable to the established definition of Broadband in this country. False expectations are set and the rest is completely evident!

On Sunday I was out and about doing a PC & Printer job for a friend. I needed to get the latest drivers from HP, a full 168MB of data. The best my (non-3) Mobile Broadband supplier could deliver was some 568Kbps with an estimated download time of 11 hours. If that is Broadband then I'm an Orang Utan's uncle! I had to visit another friend local to where I was and use his Sky broadband to get the file (7 mins download).

Mobile Broadband? Not even close!