- Public/local Wi-Fi available in the venue
- 3G/UMTS through SIM card
During one lunch I was at Hayal Kahvesi with friends:
Being in need of updating some files on Dropbox, I had the UH572 UltrabookTM with me.
After getting the Wi-Fi hotspot password from the waiter, I could connect to Dropbox. When I felt that the connection was not that good, I had this idea of a test.
I decided to compare the connectivity performance of both options using http://speedtest.net/
Wi-Fi Internet Connection Test
Hayal Kahvesi is providing a good network connectivity service where at the time, I was one of the two users – so bandwith was available. After the test below are the results:
- Test server responds to pings in 56ms
- Download speed: 4.7 Mbps
- Upload speed: 0.64 Mbps
The download speed is quite good (given the general standards in Wi-Fi service around Ankara), but the upload speed is awful and that is a general problem with ISPs. Actually that slow upload is a problem especially if one needs to do video chat/conferencing.
3G/UMTS Internet Connection Test
The SIM card I have installed is from one of the major cellular networks in Turkey where that specific service provider is not known to provide the fastest 3G connection. Test results are:
- Test server responds to pings in 63ms (slower than Wi-Fi)
- Download speed: 5.48 Mbps (16.6% faster than Wi-Fi)
- Upload speed: 2.57 Mbps (301.6% !!!! times faster than Wi-Fi)
Conclusion
It is probably not right to compare the service providers in this test or the connection technologies as they are kind of apples and oranges, but this example tells me that having a 3G/UMTS SIM slow available with a laptop computer is crucial not only for being able to connect, but also for higher performance options.