Help IRC Trouble

[Pryomancer]

My friends and I like to go on IRC during our boring lectures at university, using our phones.
One of them has a Desire as well, using AndChat, the same IRC client I use.

However, his IRC works fine. Mine decides it won't update for a few minutes at a time. So I'm pretty much out of the conversation, then it updates all at once and I have a flood of messages. It's not really practical.

My theory is that it's related to my network. I can't connect to the university's wifi because of the authentication they have set up to log in. I have to use mobile data.
I'm on T-Mobile (I'm in the UK), and my friend is on Orange.

Recently Orange and T-Mobile merged their networks, but I don't think that's the problem.

Any ideas? Does anyone with a Desire on T-Mobile have the same problem?
It works fine when I'm connected to my home wifi. IRC is hardly a network hog.

 

[Zero]

Hi, I'm the author of AndChat

It does sound like a problem caused by a weak data connection. You could try comparing the signal level your friend has to what you have (look for phone info activity in AnyCut).

Although T-Mobile & Orange merged, you have to enable roaming to take full advantage of the merger (Source)

 

[Pryomancer]

Thanks for your response, I didn't expect to have the developer posting.

I have done all the steps required to activate the roaming, and it does work.

Is this a problem with IRC? By which I mean, does AndChat, or the irc server, detect the weak connection and stop the messages, or is it definitely a problem with the mobile network? Is there a way, if it's not too much trouble, to get AndChat to refresh, or something? How much does the average single line irc message take up, a hundred bytes or so? I'm getting this problem even on HSDPA and 3G, so surely a weak connection wouldn't be an issue? Is T-Mobile throttling data from/to IRC?

Thank you in advance if you or anyone else can answer any of these questions.

 

[Zero]

Is this a problem with IRC? By which I mean, does AndChat, or the irc server, detect the weak connection and stop the messages, or is it definitely a problem with the mobile network?

AndChat doesn't do any sort of weak connection detection. But it does do some stuff to detect when a connection is broken (e.g. switching from 3g to wifi) and some other stuff to detect connection status.

Is there a way, if it's not too much trouble, to get AndChat to refresh, or something? How much does the average single line irc message take up, a hundred bytes or so? I'm getting this problem even on HSDPA and 3G, so surely a weak connection wouldn't be an issue? Is T-Mobile throttling data from/to IRC?

AndChat can't do a refresh, it can only read from the socket, which needs a stable connection to get fresh data. Although irc messages don't take up much, if you have a poor connection, the increased the latency means you just end up receiving the messages late. I've occasionally had the same problem when I've been on 3g/gprs connections, I doubt t-mobile is throttling, it's probably just a poor connection.

 

[Pryomancer]

Thanks again for the post. It's strange though, I don't really experience huge latency when web surfing and on other apps that need internet access. Like I said in my other post, an IRC message must be a very small packet? Even a weak connection should be ample to get the message through.