I've been using Clear for about 1.5 years now, and love it. Coverage isn't perfect, but they've been rapidly adding towers. I generally can't maintain a steady data stream while driving around (there are enough gaps in the coverage that the connection always ends up timing out at some point), but I do get a good signal at my home, at work, and most other places I try to use it while stationary. Some of the new plans/devices allow you to fall back to 3G if 4G is unavailable, but I'm not paying for that option, so I don't know how well that works.
Their home router and mobile hotspot devices work fine with linux (you just plug a network cable into the router like a cable modem, or connect to the hotspot via 802.11 like any other access point), and the Intel WiMAX cards work in linux as well (though you can only get one of these if you buy a laptop with one built in, I bought a ThinkPad with one around the time I signed up for Clear ... and you currently have to compile the user-space components of the driver yourself to get it to work in linux, see http://www.linuxwimax.org/). None of the other USB/ExpessCard/whatever devices will work in linux. As for latency, it is pretty high, averaging around 100ms, but I've never found this to be a problem (although I don't play many games ... the most latency-sensitive apps I use are probably SSH and VNC, but SSH and VNC are plenty responsive even with the high latency). If you have poor signal and are transferring a lot of data, latency will go way up, sometimes as high as 10 seconds, as the transmitter and receiver have enormous buffers to ensure that bulk transfers are still possible and reasonably fast even if the signal is cutting in and out, but in most cases with any decent signal the latency will stay under 133ms even when transferring lots of data. Bandwidth currently varies between 2-8Mb down and .5-2Mb up depending on the signal strength, though I believe I heard somewhere that they were going to change the max rate to 6Mb down and 1Mb up at some point. I don't have a static IP, but my IP has only changed once since I got the service (and that was when they re-branded Xohm to Clear and changed their IP space). They also have an option where you can pay a little extra each month to get an actual static IP if you really can't take the risk that it might change. They do block common incoming ports (80/443/25/etc), so you'll need to use non-standard ports if you want to connect in, but that shouldn't be a problem unless you're trying to run a public service. -Paul On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 11:35:55PM -0500, Dustin J. Mitchell wrote: > On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 11:03 PM, Nick Cummings <[email protected]> wrote: > > There's also wireless broadband from Clear (Sprint's 4G service). I'm not > > sure about getting the devices to work with Linux, though. > > Ah! I've been trying to figure out (well, I haven't even put in the > effort to google it, so maybe "wondering") how Clear suddenly sprang > onto the scene with citywide 4G. That makes sense now. > > > I will say that (back when it was called XOhm) I talked to one of the guys > > at the kiosk once, and when I asked about the latency he gave me a blank > > stare. When I asked to use the laptop they had out, opened a command > > prompt, and ran ping he acted as though it were some sort of magic trick. I > > know that the sales people are not the same as the technical people, but > > this experience did not fill me with confidence. > > I had exactly the same experience - I was talking to a Clear > salesperson in another context, and when he mentioned his job I asked > about latency. He said he'd get back to me, and asked how to spell > latency.. and never got back to me. > > It's not an option for me at home because I need static IPs (I connect > to my home systems when working across the city). > > I'm curious what kind of latency you saw? > > Dustin > > -- > Open Source Storage Engineer > http://www.zmanda.com >
