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Is it possible/practical to upload webcasts using mifi?

Posted: Fri May 10, 2013 11:13 am
by ulupoi
Anyone have experience trying to upload a webcast over mifi?

Our stake center is limited to a 0.6Mbps upload speed on DSL (no true Uverse available, cable service prohibitively expensive), so the video resolution is pretty bad. AT&T mifi supposedly has much faster upload speeds. Unfortunately, there is a 5Gb/month limit, but if it works really well, we might be willing to pay the overage fee a couple times a year. Well, maybe.

Has anyone tried this? Is the connection generally reliable enough for streaming stake conference (assuming that the signal is strong)?

Re: Is it possible/practical to upload webcasts using mifi?

Posted: Fri May 10, 2013 12:59 pm
by russellhltn
I thought the church had a deal with Sprint for meetinghouse connectivity that was for unlimited data.

Re: Is it possible/practical to upload webcasts using mifi?

Posted: Fri May 10, 2013 1:16 pm
by ulupoi
The Church has a deal with Sprint for unlimited, high-upload-speed, cell-network-delivered Internet connectivity?

Re: Is it possible/practical to upload webcasts using mifi?

Posted: Fri May 10, 2013 1:40 pm
by russellhltn
Some years back I understood they had a deal for use with meetinghouse internet where DSL or cable wasn't practical. I don't know about high-upload-speed.

Re: Is it possible/practical to upload webcasts using mifi?

Posted: Sun May 12, 2013 5:47 pm
by rogerscr
I would be quite concerned about upload consistency. Think of it as WiFi with huge range that you can't turn off. You would have to be concerned with all the members in the building AND everyone outside the building. Reporters do it for <5 min sound bites that they can re-do. I just can't see 2 hrs of continuous use going well.

Re: Is it possible/practical to upload webcasts using mifi?

Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 9:17 am
by johnshaw
The church does have a deal with Sprint....

The Webcast team discourages the use of the mifi for uploading a webcast. I only have .384 upload in my stake center and had successfully uploaded multiple webcasts. I'd rather to more, but can't at this point.**

I can also say that with our recent experience hosting a RootsTech conference, I brought in a mifi and put it in front of the firewall and powered the Internet that way for the conference. It was pretty nice, so for every day usage at the church, it might work well, just not the upload.

Biggest problem to me was the best signal was not available where the tech closet was... I had to move the firewall and mifi into the High Council room for the conference.

** the cradlepoint routers that do mifi as WAN (internet side of the router is wireless) supports a binding feature for the internet side. While I didn't try it out at the time, if you could bring in a personal mifi along with the 'church' mifi, you might be able to load balance the Internet side..... I don't know if this would mitigate the issue of uploading, but it would mitigate against the mifi going whacky.