[Miscellaneous questions & answers]

[Elf1nDrak3]

Mr. vodacom3g

Can you tell me what the various upload speeds are for the various datacards.
Everywhere I can find the download speed should be, at peak times, 1.4mbps.
But nowhere can I find what the repective upload speeds should be.
Help.
Thanks.

 

[vodacom3g]

Mr. vodacom3g

Can you tell me what the various upload speeds are for the various datacards.
Everywhere I can find the download speed should be, at peak times, 1.4mbps.
But nowhere can I find what the repective upload speeds should be.
Help.
Thanks.

Dear Mr. Elf1nDrak3

If you have a HSDPA card your maximum download/upload speed is 1800/384Kb/s. For a 'normal' 3G device (i.e. non-HSDPA) it will be 384/64Kb/s.

So you should see practical upload speeds of around 300 - 350 Kb/s. The network tends to be less utilised in the upload direction, so you'll often see close to 384Kb/s.

I hope this answers your question.

Yours truly

Mr. Vodacom3G

 

[Elf1nDrak3]

Thanks!, Did you ever try to setup an IP Camera using one of the 3G routers before?
On normal ADSL (with the appropriate port forwarding) you'll see the camera video quite good, but as soon as you try to setup the same camera using a 3G router (with the appropriate port forwarding) you only see the page layout but no video throughput.
The camera uses standard MPEG4 video.
Ever had such an experiance before?

Again thanks for the upload speeds, they will really help!

 

[vodacom3g]

Thanks!, Did you ever try to setup an IP Camera using one of the 3G routers before?
On normal ADSL (with the appropriate port forwarding) you'll see the camera video quite good, but as soon as you try to setup the same camera using a 3G router (with the appropriate port forwarding) you only see the page layout but no video throughput.
The camera uses standard MPEG4 video.
Ever had such an experiance before?

Again thanks for the upload speeds, they will really help!

Yes, at 384 most cameras stream fine. I've done it many times and know a number of people who do it this way.

How are you making the incoming connection to the camera? Are you using the unrestricted apn?

 

[Elf1nDrak3]

Well, I do not know what unrestricted apn is, but I'll tell you how I normally do it.
I used various D-Link IP Cameras normally connected to an ADSL router. All the cameras have a normal http interface that you can connect to to either change some settings, view the video or pan, tilt and zoom if neccesary.
There is another method to connect to them using the standard software supplied by D-Link on the camera's CD.

Too be honest the normal ports I use are normal port 80, and then 5002-5004 for audio and video. Normally the camera should take at the most 25kbps for both audio and video.
On the 3G router however it seems that the connect I get might be too slow for the camera to fully function.

What I'll do later today is to try and test what my upload speed is using 'sommer' Telkom's ADSL speeds test site.
Do you agree?

 

[vodacom3g]

Well, I do not know what unrestricted apn is, but I'll tell you how I normally do it.
I used various D-Link IP Cameras normally connected to an ADSL router. All the cameras have a normal http interface that you can connect to to either change some settings, view the video or pan, tilt and zoom if neccesary.
There is another method to connect to them using the standard software supplied by D-Link on the camera's CD.

Too be honest the normal ports I use are normal port 80, and then 5002-5004 for audio and video. Normally the camera should take at the most 25kbps for both audio and video.
On the 3G router however it seems that the connect I get might be too slow for the camera to fully function.

What I'll do later today is to try and test what my upload speed is using 'sommer' Telkom's ADSL speeds test site.
Do you agree?

I suspect you're not connecting to the camera in the first place (but I'm not sure how you see the web page...??) as the incoming ports will be blocked on any other apn.

Unless the camera opens the connection to the client (unlikely).

Best would be to rather use the unrestricted apn. PM me the datacard cell number and I'll get it sorted for you.

 

[vodacom3g]

I can maybe mention, we switched from D-Link cameras to Axis cameras. Found them to be more stable and richer in functionality. I also had quite a horrible experience with D-Link's support in SA. To the point that I gave up on them. I even escalated right to their top management and still got the finger.

All subsequent camera installations are now done with Axis and these work extremely well. They run an open Linux kernel so you can do some cool stuff with them.

For example, the Vodacom weather, traffic and beach cams are all Axis cameras that interface directly into the VantagePro weather stations. So we get the weather conditions and a video stream directly from the Axis camera without the need for any external PC. Quite cool.