German Computer Magazine measures 5.76 MBit/s in HSDPA Downlink

Edition 25/2008 of the C't, a renowned German computer magazine, contains a number of interesting articles around mobile Internet access. In one of them, 3G USB dongles have been tested and those capable of 7.2 MBit/s in downlink (HSDPA category 7/8) have reached a maximum speed of 5.76 MBit/s. Impressive, that's even higher than what I experienced myself. The test were performed on the Hanover exibition ground, where both T-Mobile and Vodafone have upgraded their 3G network and their base station backhaul to support these speeds. I assume the tests were done while no exhibition was in progress, i.e. no traffic in the cell and also no or only little traffic in other cells in the neighborhood, which means only little inter-cell interference. They also tested HSUPA and achieved uplink data rates of around 1.8 MBit/s. Again, very impressive for a live network setup.

Comments

[Bozhidar]

OK, I've seen stable 6.2 Mbps in Downlink with Iu-B and Iu-PS over Ethernet in a live network, but a test NodeB and close to the antenna. In the same time the Uplink maximum was 1.2 Mbps...

Is this a case of HSUPA network and devices, supporting higher rates than 1.8 Mbps in Uplink? If not, I don't believe more that 1.2-1.4 Mbps user data rate can be achieved... It's not possible IMHO as there is a lot of protocol overhead from the radio to the user data:-)

KR,
Bozhidar

[Matt]

Best I've personally seen in a live network is just over 5 Mbps. Sitting under the antennas of a public site with 8E1 transmission capacity at 6am in the morning using an E220 dongle. The only non-standard aspect was optimised TCP parameters for the higher latency connnection, a larger window size (RWIN) was used. If I remember correctly, RWIN was set to about 512k.
http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php

[mobilesociety]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the comment. Indeed, the E220 is a bit bulky but quite versatile :-)

Enhancing the TCP parameters is a good idea, especially for higher speeds. For those who don't want to do it with a program I've described how to do it manually:

http://tinyurl.com/2wgxma

Cheers,
Martin

[kp]

Mine has a 512kbps downlink.What should I do with this.
http://weblogzz.blogspot.com