Mobile Wi-Fi devices–why didn’t anyone tell me these things are so damn useful?

Being a collector of different handsets and tablets can mean restricting usage of them at home for connectivity. Getting a real sense of them on the move, at first suggests individual SIM cards for each device which is not preferred due to the cost and in some cases lock-in on some providers contracts.

4G (LTE) connectivity s also something I wanted to take an up close and personal look given EE’s first off the bat launch in late 2012. There pricing for SIM and Phone plans on their 4G network were completely uncompetitive and its reported take up is seen as moderate at best. It was only when I realised there was a more clever way to get on to 4G and use remove any spend across any individual handset or tablet SIMs, did I come across the solution – the Huawei E589 mobile broadband modem from EE.

It’s pretty standard fare as these devices in their 3G form have been around for some time.  What clicked was realising I could cancel all of my handset SIM deals (as I never use the phone, except for my iPhone) and could then get the benefit of a) 4G Wi-Fi spot speeds and b) sharing them across my devices anytime I needed to take them out with me.  Of course there are corporate uses when I’m in the airport or just travelling around the UK. And of course there are international versions of this device, which are great to get better roaming charges on data.

Using it for the last week has seen a big boost in using my iPhone 5, Lumia 920, iPad mini and the Surface RT when I using them on the train or in the office. Performance was snappy, given that the download speed test results ranged between 10-20mpbs when in and around Docklands area in London. Having one of these on hand is like being a walking Wi-Fi spot having access to 4G speeds (dependent on location given the rollout programme), regardless of the device you are using and its native capability.

Set up is quick once you’ve inserted the SIM. You can do the usual in terms of hiding your SSID and changing the supplied password and you’re good to go.  You can even toggle the Wi-Fi to save on battery.  At the moment, I get about up to 3-days charges toggling it when I need it.  There’s an iPhone app to check your usage and all the other basic admin things you would expect to do. Nice.

So £50 up front for the device, £21 per month for 5Gb of data – shared across up to 5 devices. I’ll never need to buy a cellular iPad ever again.

My first VoIP phone

Following attendance at the Unified Comms Expo in London back in March, I had a curiosity to look at VoIP (you'll need to sign up to playback the video) and see what I could play with in free time. I decided to start with a my own number with a desk handset + headphones from my home office.

Previously, I'd had frequent problems using the ClearOne wireless starphone on my main phone line at home. It was mainly issues the audio quality of the wireless exception. Call/audio quality was ok when the mute button was on, but when I left it off (I sit and talk on a lot of conference calls as part of my job), the call audio quality was terrible. Again, don't think it was the line as the DECT phone and other land-lines extensions were all good.  Possibly wireless interference.

I bought a Snom 300 and MM3 headset from my ISP. Fully featured and supports all the key codecs for VoIP and SIP. My ISP also provide SIP servers and the Snom was recommended and worked great in their environment. I had one VoIP number which was configured on the Snom 300 when it arrived. I simply plugged in the ethernet cable in which connected to the office switch and picked up a dynamic IP. The ISP customer broadband control pages allow you to configure inbound and outbound rules alongside general security of your VoIP line to ensure it does not fall into the wrong hands and run up a very large bill without you knowing. Easy.

Spec wise, their call servers use G711 within SIP/2.0 protocol for 64kps data for calls. Call plans for PSTN calls are competitive and given I had several calls to US and UK audio conference providers over a major incident spanning a weekend, and it worked a treat.

All in all, much better to hog my own office line at home, and leaving the analogue line free for the family. Cost wise, the ISP telephone call costs are itemised and its straightforward to claim business calls (not the line itself of course) on expenses. It's better than running a 2nd home phone line with BT (line rental and calls).

However, there were an few interesting things, I wanted to get sorted:

1. Inbound calls - when testing, I found I couldn't call into the VoIp number as it simply wouldn't respond  Why was that?
2. Mobility - wouldn't it be great to not be tied to the desk, but use softphone clients?
3. Security - should I be worried about eavesdropping on my calls over the net?

Inbound calls
Basically, I found this was due to standard NAT being enabled on my router (Billion 7800N). That is, it can't route back to an internal IP from the outside world. NAT is seen as traditionally evil and a cause of lot of broken VoIP/SIP set ups. I'm actually one of the lucky ones to have a router which supports Application Level Gateways (ALGs) for common port mapping functionality which is useful for SIP.  It was just a click of a radio button to turn it on the router admin pages. I'm told ALGs functionality on manufactuter routers for SIP can be flaky sometimes and vary in terms of their implementation to a standard. Luckily for me, I didn't need to do a whole bunch of firewall rules from my ISP to allow inbound calls on the VoIP side.

Mobility
I was recommended the Bria client on both iPad and iPhone. Works beautifully. Very quick to set up your VoIP number and SIP provider details. Even plays nicely over 3G. I now have some flexibility to get local cost business calls regardless of location (toll bypass anyone?). Take a look at Counterpath, they seem to have a whole range of VoIP/SIP software solutions.

Security
Beyond password as a basic security, I did consider encryption of the tunnel to the external SIP servers and encryption of actual voice data (not that I'm doing anything classed as sensitive or requiring to be that secure).  TLS and SRTP are the transport protocols here. I trusted my ISPs guidance that there was little chance of anyone intercepting the traffic between  me and their SIP servers, but I'll keep an eye on this one.

So all in all, a good investment. Set up cost was about £165 (Snom 300, Headset, Bria clients for iOS).  Recurring costs wise, the number is about £3 a month + calls on a transparent call plan. I haven't measured the ROI, but it makes more sense on the VoIP as opposed to the waste on line rental charges and all inclusive call plans with BT.  Of course, in terms of resilience, I may want to look at a back-up ISP I lose my broadband connection with the ISP. The Billions can accommodative an simultaneous ADSL connection at the same time as a fail over. Seem ominous I'll look at this at some stage, although again it need a 2nd phone line with all the fixed charges which come with that.

Plus it's more tech to babble about ;-)

The weakest link in the chain

The other thing of course, is having all of this bandwidth does make you think about things to do with it.  Such as online backups, high definition video calls with Skype or FaceTime, online gaming and as much streaming as there is worthwhile content. Worthwhile content will get better with time in the UK, without having to go over a VPN through using Boxee box or Hulu on a PC.

The problem is of course, expectation of performance.

Unless your content provider has a pretty extensive hosting provision in a data centre with big links to ISPs who have their own big links to the major networks and peering points for going cross-border,  you're always going to find the weakest link in the chain sets your real download speed.  So your large content provider download download is always going to be quick and dependent on your line, you may see 1-5mb/s download speeds (using my link as an example)  But more often that not, if your source has a small rack in a co-located data centre and pays meagrely for its traffic out to the net - don't be surprised that a 8meg file download can still take a minute or two.  Big in this case means better.

Of course, it's never this simple.  You also have to trust that your ISP does not run congested links in the first place.  Not always easy to detect, unless you have an ISP who is transparent on how they deliver services in the first place.  Hat tip my my AAISP again (and no, I'm not invested in them in any way).

Having the capacity on tap, is still sort of good though.  In the next year or so, I forsee a big jump in applications across mobiles and tablets which will make use of the larger pipes for high definition rich content.  We'll wonder how we ever lived without it.

How many megs?

I've been on the BT trials recently for their upping of the speed of their fibre service.  I'm with one of the top notch niche ISPs who got me on the trial.

My line was 34meg down and 8meg up before the trial and had been rock solid.  Standard type of FTTC.  was ample for me and the family given everyone is normally on line at  a the same time in the evening and at some part of the weekend.  The new BT trial was to test an up to 80meg service through a frequency expansion on the VDSL2 side.  A bit like going from 8meg ADSL1 to up to 24meg ADSL2+.

Anyway, after BT made the change, my BT modem initially sync'd at 64meg down.  It took a few queries with the ISP to see why my Billion router was still seeing 34meg down via speedtest.net.  Once I realised that I needed to remove some old QoS rules for limiting the bandwith hoggers in the house on the router (ie. children), my magic figure was:

How many megs?

Which was pretty neat.  I suspect the bandwidth increase from up to 40meg to 80 meg is dependent on the usual quality of line, distance from cabinet stuff. Upload increases from 10 to 20meg.  Average latency needs to be in the sub 20ms but get periods like above.  Apparently the existing up to BT Infinity 40meg service will be replaced by the the piloted 80meg one.

Amazing what you can do with copper these days (albeit with a bit of fibre on the chain).