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iTRAK™ Network Choices
The iTRAK™ GPS device has been designed to operate on public packet data networks, such as those operated by every cellular phone carrier. Please refer to our article on packet data networks for an overview of this technology and the networks available. Packet Data Networks currently supported include iDEN, GPRS, CDMA 1X and CDPD.
Choosing an appropriate network is covered in depth in the above referred-to article. Please also feel free to contact us by phone or email for assistance in determining your best network strategy.
Choosing a Data Airtime Package
The flexibility of the iTRAK™ series of tracking solutions allows location reporting to be tailored to the needs of each user by using any programmable combination of time, distance, stops and start parameters to determine when a location report should be made. For example, each unit could be programmed to report its location every mile, plus each stop longer than two minutes, as well as each start.
Determining the required data plan for a fleet is a matter of striking a balance between maximizing the desired location accuracy and minimizing the data costs. Fortunately, the price of wireless data airtime has become very reasonable with the proliferation of these new modern networks. In addition, the iTRAK™ GPS devices are highly efficient in their use of data capacity.
Most cellular network carriers offer several different data airtime bundles, based on the total amount of allowed data to be transmitted. To determine the approximate amount of data required, the table below can be helpful:
| 1. |
Determine whether you would like position reports based on time or distance. For example, would you like to know where your vehicles or people are every mile or every 5 minutes? Lets assume for this example that you want to know where the vehicles are every km. |
| 2. |
Calculate the expected number of reports per day based on the average distance your vehicles travel daily. For example, lets say your vehicles average 100 km per day. With reporting every km, this would equal 100 reports per day. In the time example above, reporting every 5 minutes would equal 12 reports per hour. On a 12 hour day, that would be 144 reports. |
| 3. |
Add on 20% to these calculations to account for stop and start reports. In the distance calculation above, this would now equal 120 reports per day. In the time calculation method, this would equal 172 reports. |
| 4. |
Multiply this by the number of days per month that the vehicle will be driving or the person will be working. In this example, we'll use 20 days. That would equal 2400 reports for the distance based calculation and 3440 on the time based calculation. |
| 5. |
Now multiply this number by the factor in the chart below, which approximates the number of bytes a single position report uses, depending on the network. You will notice that some networks use less data than others. This is primarily because some networks assign static I/P addresses to the mobiles, while others use dynamic I/P's. The static I/P based networks use less data because they require less network overhead. Generally, the dynamic I/P based carriers know this and make up for it with larger monthly data allotments, so it is not usually an important factor in the decision process. |
| 6. |
The distance based example would require approximately 240K of data on an IDEN or CDPD network and 720k on a GPRS or CDMA 1X network. The time based example would require 344k of data on an iDEN or CDPD network and just over 1 MB on a dynamic I/P based network. |
| 7. |
Add an additional 25% contingency margin, to account for peak periods. In these examples, you would require a 1 MB plan on static I/P based networks and 1.25 MB on dynamic I/P based networks. Remember, these are general rules of thumb, but they are based on experience. |
Data Multiplier Chart
| Protocol |
iDEN |
CDPD |
GPRS |
CDMA 1X |
| Multiplier |
100 |
100 |
300 |
300 |
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