Murder M for dial “ ” Murder Maybe M for M for “ ” dial dial “ ” [ Product Analysis ] ayb M e WHEN CHOOSING A METHOD OF MOBILE DATA M ACCESS, FIRST KNOW YOUR USERS. THEN CHECK OUT OUR ROUNDUP OF SMARTPHONES AND for WWAN PC CARDS TO HELP ENSURE A GOOD FIT BY PETER RYSAVY AND DAVE MOLTA We had to cram a lot into this article—the devices and platforms we’re evaluating could fill an entire issue. IT pros wading through piles of “marketecture” from carriers looking to pro- vide wireless data access—for a price—can likely relate. In “Dial M for Maybe” (page 31), we discuss whether mobile users can really enjoy ubiquitous access to enterprise applications and data. Our take: More so than last year, but still less than we’d like. To find out what today’s wireless data net- works can—and cannot—do, we evaluated perform- ance of a trio of PC Card modems from Cingular Wireless, Sprint/Nextel and Verizon Wireless on EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution), CDMA2000 1XRTT and EV-DO (Evolution-Data Only) networks. We also evaluated the latest crop of smart- phones—from Nokia (Nokia 9300 designed for GPRS/EDGE networks), Sprint (Treo 650 running “ 1XRTT), T-Mobile (RIM BlackBerry 7290 running ” www.nwc.com I 10.27.2005 I NETWORK COMPUTING 41 dial GPRS) and Verizon (Samsung i730 running EV-DO, they are becoming indispensable tools. And in some 1XRTT and Wi-Fi)—to determine their strengths and cases, they can be used as wireless modems for lap- weaknesses in wireless data accessibility. In the case of tops, getting the best of both worlds. However, no T-Mobile, Research In Motion supplied the device smartphone is perfect. Each excels in different areas, directly with a T-Mobile account. We could not get our many are more consumer-focused than enterprise IT hands on a Windows Mobile 5 device, but we examine would like, and choosing among them can be an ago- upcoming enhancements in “Preview: Windows nizing process. Integrating smartphones into your Mobile 5,” page 51. enterprise network also can be a complex undertak- ing, with significant security and management impli- PCs vs. Phones cations. Companies concerned with being able to In our reader poll for this article, we asked which cellu- secure and centrally manage mobile devices will still lar data services offer the greatest value for mobile find laptops a better choice. employees. PC Card cellular modems that provide wire- E-mail remains the undisputed king of mobile less service for notebook users got only 40 percent of applications, followed closely by calendar and con- the vote, while smartphones with integrated data serv- tact synchronization. Indeed, 60 percent of respon- ices received 60 percent. dents to our poll said they expect smartphones to be There’s reason for this smartphone dominance: used for multiple data applications within two years. These phones are quite capable, with computing and We expect many of these hot application areas for networking capabilities exceeding those of early PCs. smartphones to be more vertical—think salesforce With fast connectivity from just about anywhere, automation, couriers, real estate and instant messag- HOW WE TESTED WAN PC CARDS AND SMARTPHONES WAN PC Cards ducted FTP transfers of a 1.67-MB several locations, including a rural We took three WWAN (wireless Word document, both upstream and site in Idaho, a Los Angeles suburb, WAN) cards for a test drive around downstream. and an urban area, Los Angeles the Syracuse, N.Y., metropolitan To evaluate latency, we per- International Airport. W formed ping tests on three different For our browser tests, we meas- area, home to our Syracuse Univer- sity Real-World Labs®. With a popu- Web sites, which included a server in ured download times for a variety of lation of 732,000 people, Syracuse our lab, Yahoo and Google. Because Web pages, including www.nytimes. is the 59th largest metropolitan the initial ping requires the radio to com, www.cnn.com and www.rysavy. area in the United States—second- shift from dormant to active mode, com. The CNN home page was partic- tier when it comes to cellular data a process that takes about a second, ularly demanding, at over 200 KBs services, though Verizon did add we performed 11 pings and averaged with some 100 separate objects, and Syracuse to its list of EV-DO-capa- the results of the last 10. presented our worst-case scenarios ble metro areas this year. Our pri- To provide a sense of perform- of how these devices would handle mary goal was to evaluate these ance on a media-rich Web site, we broadband-oriented Web sites. systems for throughput, latency and arranged to access an unloaded test To evaluate keyboards, we meas- overall user experience. version of the www.suathletics.com ured how long it took to type a long We installed each card in an iden- Web site, which contains 701 KB of sentence. We used these keyboards tically configured Toshiba Satellite content on its home page. Using a long enough to get familiar with each notebook computer equipped with a stopwatch, we measured the of them. In reality, people will adapt 1200-MHz Celeron processor and amount of time it took to load the to whatever keyboard they use and 256 MB of RAM running Windows entire page, clearing the browser become more proficient over time. XP Professional. We also loaded the cache between visits. We also dis- client connection utilities provided abled Web acceleration clients, All NETWORK COMPUTING product by the wireless operators. where provided, though we did find reviews are conducted by current or To control for location variations, that these clients significantly former IT professionals in our Real- we performed all of our tests in improve performance for typical World Labs® or partner labs, accord- seven different locations around the Web activities. ing to our own test criteria. Vendor Syracuse metro area, including Syra- involvement is limited to assistance cuse University, the airport, down- Smartphones in configuration and troubleshooting. town and in major suburbs where Our testing measured throughput NETWORK COMPUTING schedules businesses exist. We performed mul- involved with accessing a specific reviews based solely on our editorial tiple iterations of each test at each Web test page, www.dslreports.com/ judgment of reader needs, and we location and averaged our results. mspeed, that provides a steady conduct tests and publish results To evaluate throughput, we con- 200-KB download size. We tested in without vendor influence. 42 NETWORK COMPUTING I 10.27.2005 I www.nwc.com ing. Many current mobile applications are enabled by DO ranged from a low of 88 Kbps to a high of 360 Kbps. vendors that started in wireless e-mail gateways and The same goes for the 9300, with a low of 51 Kbps are now expanding to support other types of applica- and a high of 187 Kbps. This is not surprising given tions (see “BlackBerrys and Treos and iPAQs, Oh that both EV-DO and EDGE adapt their modulation My!,” our recent review of mobile messaging gate- and error coding based on the quality of the radio sig- ways, at ID# 1614f2). nal. Network loading moment by moment is another huge factor. As for throughput with the phone as a SMARTPHONES modem (available for the Nokia 9300 and Treo 650), To get an overview of smartphone adoption for busi- we noted speeds similar to the download test on the ness applications, we spoke with Cingular and Veri- device itself. zon. Both stressed that they offer a variety of smart- phones and said they seek to nurture the ecosystem Limitations to Consider for each platform type through developer support and One consideration in using any phone as a modem with close partnerships with wireless middleware vendors Bluetooth is whether the technology might be a limit- and by providing technical assistance to customers in ing factor. In researching this question with the Blue- defining their mobile deployment strategies. We’re tooth Special Interest Group, we learned that the Blue- sure, but we’d also note that carriers are in a position tooth link should have no problem supporting speeds to pressure device manufacturers and discourage cer- up to 500 Kbps and should not be a bottleneck for any tain developments, so it pays to keep an eye on how of the devices we tested. well your carrier supports new technologies, such as We did a long series of browser tests, measuring Bluetooth DUN (Dial-Up Networking), richer integra- download times for busy Web pages such as www. tion of Wi-Fi and dual-mode VoWi-Fi (voice over Wi- cnn.com and www.nytimes.com. We also tried simpler Fi) capabilities. We’re happy to see increased adoption Web pages, like www.rysavy.com. We found considerable of these advances. variability from test to test due to variations in cellular We define smartphones as both devices in a phone network throughput. Predictably, the faster the form factor that run operating systems like Symbian throughput capabilities of the device, the less time it or Windows Mobile and devices that look and feel took to render Web pages. However, even with EV-DO more like PDAs. Some in the industry separate these on the i730, the CNN page took an average of a minute into distinct camps, but there’s suffi- cient blurring between the two— especially with units like the Nokia 9300 that looks like a phone when closed and a PDA when open—that we think it’s time to group them into a single category.