SLMC

DjaiSkjellerup · Joined: 03 Oct 2007 Posts: 471

I am generally restricted to doing gigs at the weekend because I travel away from home with work during the week. The accommodation I stay in has broadband internet available so I can go online but with other people around I am not able to play a gig without disturbing people. What I do at my shows does not lend itself to singing quietly or meekly so it is out of the question for me to be reserved in my performance!

I recently however have been offered detached accommodation which could mean I am far enough away from people so I dont distrub them (it's a shed at the end of the garden lol). The only problem now is that there is no wired internet connection and I am out of range of the accommodation's wireless router.

This has led me to consider the broadband service from 3 which is available in the UK. You can read about it here:

http://www.three.co.uk/Mobile_Broadband

I would never usually consider using a wireless connection when streaming as I feel it is not worth the risk of drop outs when a wired connection is so easily available for me at home. Despite that though I have streamed using my wireless router at home and it has actually worked without any problems so despite my natural reservations my trials of doing this has actually proved it viable.

So wishful thing and a desire to do mid week gigs has led me to take this one step further and try and find out if I could stream using this mobile broadband solution from 3. I could contact 3's customer support and ask of course but they are likely to ask me what data upload transfer rates are required to stream audio and I don't really know the answer. Here is a page from the 3 website regarding speed of their network:

http://www.three.co.uk/Mobile_Broadband/Coverage_and_speed

So please can any of you help me by offering a sensible opinion on whether this would work and if not then any options you can think of? What would be really helpful would be if I knew what data upload transfer rate is required to stream audio....does anyone know this?

Question

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Gath Gothly · Joined: 01 Mar 2009 Posts: 51 Location: Arkansas

Yay! I get to bust out my geekhood! I knew being a professional computer nerd would come in handy someday!

Download speeds for *using* SL on that card - no sweat.

But... streaming of course, depends on upstream bandwidth and the bitrate you choose to stream at. Keep in mind that when you stream, you need to focus on your upstream bandwidth. I don't see anything listed on that page about the upstream.

To give ya some rough ideas...
8kbps = is *probably* what SL Voice uses. (I imagine they use gsm - anyone know offhand?). Very crappy and totally sub-par for playing.
64kpbs = is what many musicians use on SL that are worried about bandwidth. I'd shoot for at least this speed if you want any quality. This is the same bitrate as U-Law that is used for high quality VoIP Phone service.
128kbps = is what most people (should) use and gives decent enough quality for jammin' on SL (if all listening have good quality bandwidth).

Let's talk average broadband speeds for a minute to compare...

You average cheapo entry-level DSL service may offer 768kbps down, and 128kbps up. Streaming with that kind of service is pretty tight, as you can see. Of course SecondLife itself and general TCP overhead takes up some of that bandwidth. Want to consider streaming at 64k if your upstream isn't at least 256kbps. And I wouldn't consider streaming at all if you can't push at least 128kbps up.

Generally, and this is totally non-technical - not doing the math, I would go by the P=Plenty rule of thumb. Stream at no more than half your available upstream.

I actually happen to have a cacti graph showing my bandwidth usage while playing a gig last night from my house.

As you can see, last night I played from 20:00 to 21:05 (thin blue line is upstream), I was pushing a max of 240kbps upstream while playing a gig. I was streaming at 128kbps, and had two computers both logged into SL (my wife and I). So you could figure... I took up 128k of that, the other 110k or so was spread between my wife and I... so one machine streaming at 128k while on SL might require about 180kbps up.

Which means at 64k streaming, plus tcp overhead and SL overhead, you'd be using 116k up. on a 128kbps connection, 80% of that is 102 available. So in all reality, you'd have some packet loss and cruddy quality streaming at 64k on a 128k line.

So... you can just barely stream, with quality loss, at 64k on a 128k uplink. And on a 256k uplink, you can stream at 128k, again... a little tight, but quality will be good enough.

Second life has throttling in the client, which helps on slow connections. You'd want to do the math to figure what you throttle SL at. Remember when you see "3mbps down", remember you'll only see 80 percent of that at best. TCP overhead and whatnot. That's just download speed though.

Now, I've used Second life on a 300kbps down EVDO card in a moving train quite a few times. It wasn't very useful nor stable. I couldn't play music, usually had to disable particles and deal with crashes... but this was also quite some time ago when SL wasn't all that stable anyway. Point being... no way I could stream. That connection didn't have crap for upstream... think I'd see about 56k or so.

Now, let's address this idea of mobile broadband for streaming...
Ug. No. I would not do it if I have a choice.

Here's the issues. Signal strength is going make a HUGE difference on your speeds. Think of your home wireless. Granted - right next to your wifi access point, you might grab 54mpbs, but the further away you get, the less signal you get, the slower you go. Same with cellular broadband. There's no guarantee that inside a building you'll get any decent quality at all. Hell, that could be a dead spot for all you know - or the tower you register to might not have the same speeds available, it might be overloaded...

Point is... you may end up very disappointed. Cellular broadband is not very reliable.

Could you do it? Yes. As long as signal is good, upstream is high enough, the provider is reliable enough, and the tower is not being over-utilized. Would you experience a LOT more quality loss? Ohhhh yes.

I have no idea what your cellular provider's upstream bandwidth is, but you would most certainly want to find out.
You could "supposedly" just barely stream at 64k if your provider gives you at least 128k up. However, with TCP overhead, I'll warn you now that it'll sound crappy. Bad crappy. Quality will be piss-poor at anything lower than 64k If they give you 256k up, I'd STILL stream at only 64k to give a lot of room for the many TCP retries cellular broadband is notorious for.

Ok... other options...
My only other suggestion is a cantenna. If you are close enough to a wifi access point... a cantenna just might help. You can pick 'em up online fairly cheap.
http://www.cantenna.com/
They aren't going to work miracles, get you signal miles away... but it will give you a noticeable boost if you're just out of range.

I'm not a total network guru here. I'm no CCIE, but I know enough about networking to get stuff setup at work. I'm also no expert by any means at streaming.
I suggest if you want to sit down and go through the bitrate math, chat it up with Edward Lowell with the Stream Team. He's the networking/streaming expert by far on SL.

Now... super-duper long-winded reply aside...
Find out what your upstream bandwidth is on that cellular connection first. That's what matters.

Norris Shepherd · Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 3:19 pm Post subject:

How far away is the shed from the router?

With Cat 5e ethernet cabling, you can run up to 100 m safely (that's like .um.. (google)..) 328 feet). If it's further than that, there are even repeaters you can get to extend further.

You could make a cable that long with about 25$ worth of cable, and maybe another 20$ for the RJ 45 connections at either end. (Canadian $)

Would be one more pain in the butt step to get set up, and you probably wouldn't want to leave the cable out in the rain or anything... but as an occasional/temporary solution i would guess you'd be ok.

DjaiSkjellerup · Joined: 03 Oct 2007 Posts: 471

Gath...you are immense. Thank you for such a detailed reply and in terms I could understand. Armed with what you told me I contacted 3's technical support and they said they guaranteed a minimum upload speed of 64kbps and no upper limit! Of course I have ignored the no upper limit nonsense and working at 64kbps it is clear that this is not viable. You helped me to write off that option so thanks!

Norris...if my dreams of a musical shed are to become reality then I think I will need to get a long cable like you described. Although it's a long way from the router it is still inside the distances you said. I will need to negotiate with my landlord to achieve this but at least I now know this is my only realistic option.

Maybe I'll rename my debut album to "Songs From The Shed"... Very Happy

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RayW · Joined: 05 Sep 2007 Posts: 953 Location: Twin Cities, MN

Norris Shepherd · Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 6:32 pm Post subject:

Hope it works Djai. There is probably 'outdoor' grade ethernet cable as well... i've just never checked for it. Of if you wanted to (and were allowed to) get really ambitious, you could run it through a small plastic pipe and bury the plastic pipe underground.

I'm with you Ray.. wireless drives me nuts. I even keep it disabled on my router because i find it slows the network down even if no one is actually connected via wireless.

Gath Gothly · Joined: 01 Mar 2009 Posts: 51 Location: Arkansas

Closest you can get to "outside grade" that I would know of is Plenum rated instead of PVC.

Plenum is really rated for fire-proofing situations, and is much more expensive than PVC. You can also get shielded cat6, which helps a bit.

Ya, generally the norm is 300 feet. After that, you get a lot of loss.

Back to broadband... Ya - 64 kbps won't cut it at all. That's TCP overhead + SL traffic. Won't even be close to what you need to stream. You'd have a tough time running voice chat over that speed according to my hasty math above.

Back to a wireless option... there was a very hackish trick I did once upon a time... it actually worked fairly well.

Basically, dish-to-dish, using self-constructed hasty parabolic dishes.

I used the windsurfer parabolic antenna template...
http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html
12 dbi gain potentially

You print that sucker off, trim it out, cover with aluminium foil or something, and mount it in your wifi access point's antenna. To get maximum range, I bought a linksys wireless bridge to receive, with a 14 dbi gain antenna on it. I put a windsurfer template on it too.
I never tested the limits of the range, but it worked amazingly well. The signal increase was very noticeable. Especially in the dish-to-dish setup, once I got them lined up right, I got amazing signal between two points that couldn't reach at all with their normal omnidirectional antennas.

It's a pretty cost-effective way of extending wifi range. Although very hack-ish.

Anyway, yes... running a cable is the easiest route for sure.

There is also another longshot option... if the electricity is on the same circuit, you can purchase these little units that allow you to use an electrical circuit for Ethernet. I dunno if they make those for the UK or not though... I just saw some for sale at a Fry's in Texas. Kind of spiffy.

Fyrm Fouroux · Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 11:18 pm Post subject:

Djai,
I just have two things to say...
Firstly, I believe that the very excellent children's author Roald Dahl wrote all his books with a sharpened pencil, on paper, in a shed.

Secondly, someone recently gave me a lovely little book as a present:
Rob Beattie (2005) 101 things to do in a shed. (Ebury Press).

As for Gath's talk of parabolic antenae, I once turned my voice mic away from me to point into a wok, mounted on a mic stand, and sang into that. It was kind of interesting. Added a bit of atmospheric depth. Be that as it may...

Djai... everybody is talking about it... Shed is the new Garage Wink

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Tommy CUlt · Joined: 06 Sep 2007 Posts: 199

Here is my technical reply.....

I have a mobile broadband thingy from 3 Mobile. I use for work when I go onsite -or out of office. I cant log into SL with it. Well..I can, but once I am logged in I cant move. I understand the figures for speed they quote are all 'best case' situations but in practice it just seems snail slow. I have played music using this on yahoo using same broadcaster etc etc with no issues at all (using the Yahoo call/voice)

Now, I have no clue if what you get from 3 in the UK is alot faster than what we get in Aust (i know our net speeds are very poor) but my experience was not good with SL.

I just have a laptop and I am all wireless. Wireless to the router and wireless to the ISP. I have never had issues at all. As far as distance, I can connect to the router from my car outside - around 25 meters.
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Bourque Rau · Joined: 03 Feb 2008 Posts: 114 Location: south carolina

Gath makes my head hurt Sad

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