Clearwire

About

Clearwire is a wireless broadband internet service provider in North America and Europe.

Links

Reference

• official sites: clearwire.com clear.com -- different, but not sure about the purpose of each
• Wikipedia

Technical

• Clearwire Blocked Ports Survey: this seems to indicate that Clearwire blocks a number of incoming ports, but this is tentatively contradicted by my own experience (see 2013-01-19 notes below). Perhaps they have different policies in different towns? Also, this undated article seems to be from 2010; they may have changed their port-management policies since then.

Notes

Some free wi-fi hotspots (e.g. Wheels (Durham, NC)) are apparently powered by Clearwire, so visiting one of them with a laptop may be a good way to test Clearwire's service.

2013-01-19

Due to an internet outage expected to last all weekend, I finally got set up with Clearwire as an emergency backup, Some preliminary notes:

• receiving email ok (port 25)
• receiving web requests (port 80) but can't access web services at our public IP; have to use etc/hosts to redirect them internally
• able to connect to outside server using ssh/sftp
• the Durham, NC retail location (given only as an address on West Club Boulevard) is, in fact, a kiosk inside Northgate Mall.
• with a signal strength of 2-3 lights, download bandwith was 4+ mbps in one test and ~1.5 in another; upload speed was consistently just under 0.5 mbps. A third test (different applet) gave ~3.5 down and 0.75 up, and a fourth gave 1.65 and 0.68.
• the modem control panel implies a limit of 10 users (presumably enforced by the modem's DHCP server, but that can be bypassed)

--Woozle (talk) 18:19, 19 January 2013 (EST)