[Gllug] ssh over GPRS -- slow and hangs alot or am I doing something wrong?

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 06:43:08PM +0100, Richard Jones wrote:
> 
> I've started to use ssh over a GPRS connection to manage our servers
> while on the road, and to be honest it's crappy.  Very slow to
> connect.  Huge latency.  Often hangs for no apparent reason.  This
> morning I had to carry out one urgent, but very trivial command line
> job, and it took a good 15 minutes to complete, all caused by the
> general slowness/hanginess.
> 
> It's also bloody expensive, although Merjis will reimburse me for
> that.
> 
> So I guess a lot of people in this group must also use some form of
> connection over GPRS to manage servers while they're on the road.  Is
> this a general problem with GPRS or just my connection (I'm using
> Orange)?  Is there some other service I can use -- I've got a 3G
> phone, but I'm not really sure what that means, or whether or not my
> data connection happens "over 3G".  Could it be that I'm using
> Bluetooth between the laptop and the phone, ie. not a problem with
> GPRS at all?  Above all, are there cheaper services available?

I assume you have compression turned on in your SSH config already.
I've used GPRS to SSH to remote servers - there is certainly some
latency - perhaps 1/2 -> 1 second, but its certainly OK to use for
reading email with mutt, or running GAIM for IRC/AIM. Shell sessions
are mildly tedious with the 1/2 second response delay but doable for
reasonably simple tasks.

Aside from that its normally been fairly quick to connect - certainly
alot better than a ful modem dialup time, and reasonably reliable although
every now & then there is a spate of unreliablity - so I'd say problems
are most likely your service provider, rather than the fact you use
bluetooth to connect to GPRS.

However, GPRS != 3G - its really 2.5 G, still operating over regular
GSM network protocols. If you were using true 3G your performance ought
to be an order of magnitude better, so perhaps your phone data connection
sttings are not correct ? 

Regards,
Dan.
-- 
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|=-   berrange at redhat.com  -  Daniel Berrange  -  dan at berrange.com    -=|
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