Tag: coverage area

Figuring out the Hole for The USB Cricket Card? UM100C

Paul

So you bought and you see:

External Antenna

You probably wondering what that can be used for? Here’s what I know and from what I found out. That little can be used as an external Antenna. You could also use this to boost your signal and be able to use this for places that might not be getting a better speed upward and downward bandwidth. You see it all depends on where the Cell Towers are. Although this will likely help those who are either 1 to Almost Zero signal, it will not help those who are outside of the network. It might help and it might not, it depends on the location your at and the closest coverage area. If your on the edge of the coverage area and you buy this antenna it Should boost your signal and get you a better speed. I will not say it will help but in theory it could help. If you want to find out the other post that I have done on this subject please check my Cricket tag for more information.  Although it varies on person to person, and region to region this is going to be a variable that will always remain in the grey.   Only way to find out is to try it.

Using Skype with Cellular BroadBand Modems

Paul

If your like me you will want to make sure you have the best possible speed and connection with your broad band modem. Here are a few articles to better help with you get the best possible speed with a broad band modem like a Cricket modem:

Some other things to consider are:

These will start to make it better for you to use a modem and get the best possible speeds from the modem.  You have to realize what your coverage area is.  There are many factors in regards to your modem speed but that is something that you will have to figure out how to get better speeds.

How do you use Skype with your Cellular broad band modem?

Somethings to remembers with your broadband modem is you won’t have a good connection no matter how hard you try.   Most cellular carriers don’t want you to us it with VOIP(Voice of Internet Protocol).   So you will have to pay close attention to how you use the bandwidth and what you are doing while making a VOIP call.

The good thing about Skype is, it comes with some very useful tools to better watch your bandwidth and to help get the best possible connection.  You will want to make sure not to have it be a super-node, to do this you go to:

Tools then;Options

My settings for Skype with Cricket<

As you can see I checked off use port 80 and 443 as alternative incoming connections, I also like to see all the technical information and bandwidth usage per call.  I made sure to use Socks5 to prevent skype from becoming a super-node. I also have it set to not automatically start up when I load windows.  To do that all you have to do is go to the General tab and un-check start Skype when Windows start.   You can use any port you want as long as you use the same on the SOCKs5 setting also.   I just made the port up it can be 0 to 4 numbers long.   If you want to understand what ports are this little document will greatly help you figure out which ports are good to use.  Some other things to remember when you use Skype for long periods of time is if you need to call someone you should try not to use the internet to much for that takes bandwidth also.  It is better to have Skype use all the possible bandwidth you have available.

Cricket Broad Band Modem Extended Review 12/23/08

Paul

The UM100c is No Longer Available, Please check out the Cricket [intlink id=”3059″ type=”post”]A600 Modem Review[/intlink] Or the [intlink id=”4523″ type=”post”]UM185 Broadband modem[/intlink]. The UM185 modem might be a replacement to the UM100.

after the last fiasco of the troubles, I had with Cricket.  I wanted to talk about some of the performance of the Broad band that I experienced going from one City to another major City.   I thought I’d explain how well this went from one City to another.  While on the road we had to watch for sleet and ice conditions of the surrounding area.

I had the system going through the whole part of this travel and thought I’d share my impression of the speed and reliability of the service.  This is my expressions:

  • A few times I’ve had to activate the modem — During the trip I had to activate at least twice from once city to the other but that created no major problems and took relatively short time to activate.

  • Got comparative speeds all on highway —  This is due to distances and where the cellular towers are and how they respond to incoming and outgoing request.  Although there were many hills it seemed to keep about the same all through the drive.

  • Connected until I got out of Coverage area — This was due to us traveling outside of the coverage area and ended my use of the modem, but until that time it seemed to be very good at keeping me up to date on current weather conditions and other important information during the drive.

Update 12/26/2008

travel-highway1

As you can see, On my way home, I decided to run the test to show you how different it can be on parts of the highway.  These show you just how much of a difference you will experience on different areas of any given city.  You see it all comes down to Hills and Valleys and also the location the tower.  You will never be able to get the best speed possible while driving but you will of course be able to surf the web and check email.   I also was able to use Twitter with this to test that feature out.  It seemed to work well with Twitter web update with out much trouble.  Please see below to see how you can get this service for yourself.   If you like this service, please recommend my review to others so they can determine if this is available in there area.   Please remember this will only work if you are in the coverage area.   This was done on the way home once I got into the Cricket Service area and you can see what type of speeds I got.

travel-highway3To see my other review of this modem you can click here.  I had problems with speed until after I did the activation of the modem the first time around.   After I activated the modem, the speed really increased to what it should be.  When it comes to the reliability of the modem and the ease of use, I’d give it a 4 out of 5 stars due to the problems and understanding of the problems associated with a broad band modem.  I will for the time recommend this to friends and family because after the activation of the modem, I’ve had really good speeds and want to remind people that the modem is only as good as the source, so you must remember where the towers are to better help you get the speed you want.

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