TR Forums

Hey gerbils,

So I've been having issues with my ISP, comcrap, where I'm getting intermittent Internet outages. I've had a technician out several times and they're telling me that we just have a poor signal due to old or bad wiring to our house. Unfortunately I rent my house and the owner won't pay to upgrade the cables. I've looked in to getting DSL but that's not available in my area. The weird thing is that we had some warm weather last week and we had no Internet outrage during that time. Then it got cold and rainy and now the Internet drops every hour or so. It will come back on if I reset the modem, but as soon as there's any activity it goes back down.

I contacted my wireless provider and they say I can add tethering to my iPhone but doing so would cancel my unlimited data...which I'm not willing to give up. Another option is getting a 4g lte hotspot but it requires a 2 year commitment and it's limited to 5gb of data. If I do go for the Internet hotspot, do you think 4g lte has enough bandwidth for gaming? BF3 is what I'm playing now (when my Internet is actually working!) and I will be playing D3.

Let me know if you guys have any suggestions, thanks.

4G LTE has plenty of bandwidth for gaming. The next thing you want to check is latency. If the ping times are bad on 4G LTE, then it's not good for gaming. And it does look like it would work great for gaming, according to this.....
http://www.dovado.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=74&Itemid=4

Gaming really doesn't use that much bandwidth, latency is a much bigger concern. You'll want to do some research (that article makes it look promising).

Tell me about it... the options for broadband service in many areas still suck. I'm currently on a Megapath DSL line; they assimilated Covad and Speakeasy (who had been my ISP going way back) about a year ago, and things went downhill fast after the merger. I went through hell last fall when the line got flaky and it took them a MONTH to figure out what the problem was.

Believe it or not, I'm seriously considering moving TO Comcrap, just because they appear to be the only other vendor who will sell me the kind of service I want (static IPs, no caps, etc.) at a price that isn't completely outrageous.

Megapath keeps bugging me to sign a new long-term contract (offering a discount in return). No frikkin' way; I'm staying month-to-month with those clowns because if they pull another stunt like last fall I'm gone.

I would seriously look hard before using a 4g as your main home connection. Even if the latency is good, the 5 gig limit is not. Gaming itself doesn't use a lot of bandwidth, but any downloads, Netflix/streaming, game patches/updates, or heavy surfing will go through that limit very quickly. Your typical landline internet has 150-250 gigs/month - this is the carriers way of "encouraging" people to not use wireless so much.