Taking questions about 3G networks

3G technology has given 60% of the Brazilian population access to the Internet, which seldom reaches an extremely better speed than dial-up connection at certain times. The same technology, called HSDPA, at technical levels, supports the transmission of files at up to 24 Mbps. But then, what happens that this 3G network is so slow?

What has been happening is that in Brazil, today we only have 2 backbones, and they are responsible for transmitting everything that is accessed on the internet, even if it is your neighbor's computer via P2P, you need these packages to pass through these backbones. This is because the internet, is a network where everything that is accessed, passes through Miami in the USA, not exactly the files, but rather, the requests for the URLs are sent, that is, when you type www.google.com. br in the address bar, the internet does not know what this is, and this is translated into an IP address. When ordering, note that it takes a few seconds for the page to start loading, this is basically because packages are being sent outside of Brazil.

We have 2 backbones, one belonging to Telefonica, which barely wants to give information about its functionality and how it is maintained, and the other from Intelig, which has a dedicated 17 Gbps connection, with huge mainframes with transparent proxy applications, to store the most accessed, mainly images and photos, videos, among others, serving a small number of corporate customers, through ADSL or optical fiber, the majority of which are in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Internet providers need to be connected to one of these two backbones, so that they can serve multiple customers, since the speed of the internet influences the name of the company itself.

Well, explaining better how it works then, back to 3G. 3G networks have transmission capacities much higher than the speeds currently offered, and really, depending on your broadband modem, it can reach your device to communicate with the nearest ERB (Radio Base Station) at this speed, but the data link that travels the data is the same as that currently used for voice traffic.

That is, if more and more people buy cell phones and make calls or receive calls, their 3G internet speed will be reduced a little more, due to higher data traffic.

Many people, quickly searching Google, teach crazy things to put antenna to get the 3G signal better, the worst thing is that they don't know, the 3G network has the ability to run smoothly and smoothly even at the lowest signal level, due to its encryption and its security, traveling not sounds, but switched packets, that is, several packets of information are sent in a single switched packet of information. You can see this by sending a very small file anywhere, or downloading a very small file, it reaches milliseconds, its speed reaches 100 Mbps, but this is only for extremely small files, less than 60 Kbytes.

At dawn time, several 3G networks behave in different ways, that is, they are extremely faster than at peak times.

Currently, I did a test with my 3G network at 2 am, 3 am, 4 am, 5 am and 6 am, and the best time was 4 am, where speed by speedtest.net proved in several servers, an average of 600 kbps (in a contracted plan with a speed of 250 kbps).

The signal level is not complete, it is weak, but it is not critical, but we see that it exceeds the contracted speed by almost 3 times, and this proves that also, operators do not have perfect speed control for their customers, and that network supports this speed, when no one is using it.

At the time of day, we have people talking on the cell phone, people calling even call centers, 0800 numbers or collect calls, this is the most common, and these are ways that influence data traffic too, in addition to: let's assume that an ERB has a dedicated internet (1 Mbps costs an average of R $ 1200.00 here in Brazil) providing practically 100 cellular clients for Wap or Html access to their computers. The speed of 1 Mbps will be divided exactly for each of the 100 clients. If 99 or 98 customers stop using, 1 or 2 people will have access between 512 kbps and 1 Mbps respectively. This is a mathematical logic, that is, if the same 100 are on calls or on the internet, the average consumption of each one will be a mere 11 kbps, which for voice, this is more than enough, but for data,it is 4 times slower than dial-up internet.

How to improve 3G? Simple, just improving the dedicated link to the ERBs, increasing security, and installing transparent proxy applications to store heavier and more accessed content. That simple.

But until you think about it, the Internet has already come out via PLC (Power Line Communicator (Data communication via electricity).