Pandora Wi-Fi On 350kilobytes/s

[EvilDragon]

What's clearly described? That it's achieving a transfer rate of 950KB/s. 7.6Mbit sustained should allow you to stream even HD video files faster than real time. It's quite comparable to other wireless devices, especially the N900 according to some reviews, and that's with the power management turned on, and we don't even know what his setup was like. For all we know he could have a half dozen neighbours all vying for the same wifi channel.
I take issue with your definitive statement that these anecdotes are enough to establish that there's a problem that needs to be fixed. Not only because I consider 950KB/s to be far more than acceptable, but also because it lacks any sort of serious scientific investigation. It needs to be tested in different conditions and compared against other similar devices on the same network. If it'll make you feel better, when I get mine I will run such tests, though I consider them futile.

Again, the wifi is supposed to give at least 3MB/s. Wifi != 'the internets'. Someone wants to transfer files locally for example. The wifi is one pipe into the device from outer world that atm is very thin. I'm suprised how much speculation there is about people's individual internet connections and 'forum decor' and no straight answer.

Eh? The iPhone manages a max of 1.2 MB/s whereas the N900 is between 500kB/s and 900kB/s (depending on what you do). Yep, we tested that.
Also, the small stick I tried at the time where the Pandora WiFi was not fixed didn't go higher than 1.2MB/s, too.

Are those devices all broken?

 

[Gusarapo]

Using WiFi with my laptop I never got 350KB/s -> 7,5Mb/s

I guess, my laptop is broken as well.

 

[elwing]

Are those devices all broken?

hum, the iphone is broken by design.. hum sorry, I think it's defective not broken...

 

[cz_jc]

Eh? The iPhone manages a max of 1.2 MB/s whereas the N900 is between 500kB/s and 900kB/s (depending on what you do). Yep, we tested that.
Also, the small stick I tried at the time where the Pandora WiFi was not fixed didn't go higher than 1.2MB/s, too.

Are those devices all broken?

Hi, thanks for your reply. Looks like you used a bad stick, the one in Touchbook gives a lot better performance (according to this: http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/wiki/index.php/Wifi it's rt3070 based). I hope the USB host in pandora itself isn't limited this way. And you can't really compare the pandora to an iphone or the N900, those are primarily phones, really. I'd expect Pandora to be a performance beast and be at least better than my old Neo Freerunner. I didn't know the lousy performance my Freerunner does is normal (nothing else about it is normal). OK so do I understand correctly you consider wifi fixed and in peak performance ?

 

[cz_jc]

Using WiFi with my laptop I never got 350KB/s -> 7,5Mb/s

I guess, my laptop is broken as well.

Apparently so, mine does 12MB/s quite normally (ath5k). Well, looks like for once, I was incredibly lucky for a wifi card.

 

[mali]

And you can't really compare the pandora to an iphone or the N900,

You are mistaken. It's the same tech inside.

 

[cz_jc]

And you can't really compare the pandora to an iphone or the N900,

You are mistaken. It's the same tech inside.

Fair enough. Touchbook is even more similar. I don't see N900 without a GSM inside and marketed as : '..a mixture between a PC and a gaming console..'

 

[mali]

Fair enough. Touchbook is even more similar.

It's not. It uses an USB Wifi stick.

 

[cz_jc]

Fair enough. Touchbook is even more similar.

It's not. It uses an USB Wifi stick.

My point. Maybe pandora should've used USB-based chipset too. I gueseed the people knew what they were doing and it indeed was going to be what it is marketed as: a powerhorse.
EDIT: sorry for double posting

 

[mali]

My point. Maybe pandora should've used USB-based chipset too.

I'm happy they didn't. Wifi is a big power waster anyway, so going with the most power efficient solution makes sense.

I gueseed the people knew what they were doing and it indeed was going to be what it is marketed as: a powerhorse.

They knew what they were doing and the result is a powerhorse(/house).

 

[cz_jc]

My point. Maybe pandora should've used USB-based chipset too.

I'm happy they didn't. Wifi is a big power waster anyway, so going with the most power efficient solution makes sense.

I gueseed the people knew what they were doing and it indeed was going to be what it is marketed as: a powerhorse.

They knew what they were doing and the result is a powerhorse(/house).

A powerhorse with 54mbit wifi clamped to 900KB/s (a 13% of theoretical maximum bandwith).
EDIT: also, USB wifi doesn't consume anything when shut down if properly disconnected. And USB bluetooth HCI in Freerunner sinks about 20mA (3V) AFAIK. nothing compared to display backlight

 

[notaz]

BTW. found out that the N900 does more with power management disabled: http://forums.internettablettalk.com/showthread.php?t=50860 .

More of what? The speeds quoted there are actually lower (they are talking kilobits).

And you can't really compare the pandora to an iphone or the N900,

N900 has exactly the same hardware from wifi point of view, why do you expect pandora to work different? Because N900 has GSM module? It's just what this wifi chip can do. You want us to trow away all those wifi chips that are bought for pandoras (thousands of them), redesign the board to have some power hungry router-class chip, that will cut battery time 4 times and give those 3MB/s you dream of?

Edit: I meant 3MB/s

 

[mali]

A powerhorse with 54mbit wifi clamped to 900KB/s (a 13% of theoretical maximum bandwith).

Exactly.

EDIT: also, USB wifi doesn't consume anything when shut down if properly disconnected. And USB bluetooth HCI in Freerunner sinks about 20mA (3V) AFAIK. nothing compared to display backlight

And to complete this thought, the Pandora has got a full sized USB port, so you can add an USB stick and get the performance you need/want. Everyone is happy

 

[cz_jc]

And to complete this thought, the Pandora has got a full sized USB port, so you can add an USB stick and get the performance you need/want. Everyone is happy

Except my pocket maybe.

 

[notaz]

A powerhorse with 54mbit wifi clamped to 900KB/s (a 13% of theoretical maximum bandwith).

54mbit is just a marketing name, it can't transfer even half of that of network data.

 

[mali]

Except my pocket maybe.

Technology is advancing and the sticks are really tiny and cheap, nowadays.

 

[cz_jc]

Except my pocket maybe.

Technology is advancing and the sticks are really tiny and cheap, nowadays.

Guess you're right.

 

[paddy]

this is all well and good ,but i can only get around 60/110kbs max at all times on my pandora and thats my new pandora unit ,the one before that was exactly the same ,so to me there is some issue with wifi for sure ,mabe the driver/firmware is not good enough yet or mabe this fix was more of a hack to get it working at a reasonable speed for launch.


I would like other pandora owners to test their wifi out and post what speed they get ,i many owners already have quite a few issues with actuly connecting to their network ,i didn't have that problem but i would like to know what speed people are getting becase it sounds like the wifi on the pandora is very picky about what router/connection it likes ,and what would be the reason for this ?

i am on a 10mb line ,never had a problem with any device connecting to it ,pc/laptop/psp/ps3/xbox360/wii ,multiple desktop computers and quite a few laptops like mabe 100+ laptops and 2?? odd desktop pc computers as i do pc/latop home repairs and most of the time those systems connect and download from my network ,yet the one and only pandora does connect ,but drops connection from time to time and gets only 110kbs on a very good day.

can someone explain this to me ,also when the hell are we getting proper graphics driver hardware support for opengl
forgive me if i am wrong but were we not promised this in the next kernal update which would be the next pandora update ? if we already have it then why can't i install anything that is opengl related like an opengl screensaver ,and i notice SteveM has to remove opengl from his emulator ports ,does this have anything to do with the lack of hardware support ? im not shouting but i am asking ,so forgive me if i am wrong on more than one count.

 

[EvilDragon]

We have proper 3D support since months for the Pandora - and that is OpenGL ES (as was always announced), not OpenGL.
Don't confuse those two. I doubt there will ever be proper OpenGL, maybe some wrappers, but the 3D Chip doesn't support OpenGL, only OpenGL ES for a start...

Also, how did you do the speed tests? There are multiple ways of testing speed and they will all lead to different results.

Maybe your WiFi signal is a bit weak where you try to use the Pandora? A desktop PC, XBox360, Wii, etc. are WAY bigger and therefore have bigger and better antennas. You can't do that on such a small device, therefore, the signal strength will ALWAYS be a bit weaker.

 

[EvilDragon]

Okay, some more infos about 802.11g-Networks.
Can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11g

802.11g was the third modulation standard for Wireless LAN. It works in the 2.4 GHz band (like 802.11b) but operates at a maximum raw data rate of 54 Mbit/s, or about 19 Mbit/s net throughput

So 19MBit/s is the maximum throughput you can get.
19MBit / s is a maximum of 2,375 MB/s

Remember: That is the maximum net throughput, it only happens under best conditions. Any protocols, etc. will slow it down (since they also need bandwidth), also, distance to the router, noise, CPU speed of the devices etc. also does slow it down.
With a max of 1,2 MB / s on the iPhone and 900 kB / s so far on the Pandora, we're not too bad, eh?

The WiFi chip we use is especially designed for embedded devices which run on battery, this also decreases speed.

Using a chip that runs way faster also eats battery way faster - so you would be down to approx. 4 hours of battery usage with WiFi!