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Joined: Jan 14, 2005 Posts: 19638 Location: Blackpool , Lancs
Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2011 5:44 pm Post subject:
The above screen shots highlight the issue very well, lets look at a trip you might be about to undertake from your current location to Nairn in the Highlands of Scotland.
Three possible routes:
A82 (Not a wise choice)
A9 (Probably the default quickest)
A90/ A96 (Via Aberdeen)
When you set off the device is blind to the incident on the A90 near Aberdeen, it's also blind to the incident on the A96 close to Nairn, if these were major crashes with a road closed for hours whats the on route divert going to be like in the depths of winter - Mike
I don't see this 100mile zone as too restrictive though. This is perhaps though to do with the type of journeys I drive as opposed to others on this forum.
Setting off on the route you describe which would definitely start with the M80 towards Stirling however I would be within 100mile range of Nairn by the time I reached Dunblane leaving plenty of time to navigate around an incident or even for that incident to have cleared by the time I arrive. _________________ TT GO 1005
I can see a closed road 93 miles away, although the 'tail' or end of the incident is 26 miles closer to me so within the 75 miles.
Others have reported on the TomTom forums closed roads and roadworks (the grey incidents with no delay data, I presume from data from the Highways Agency) over 75 miles away.
The only true test is at rush hour to see how far away the furthest actual traffic incident is as opposed to closed roads or roadworks with no delay data.
I don't see this 100mile zone as too restrictive though. This is perhaps though to do with the type of journeys I drive as opposed to others on this forum.
Setting off on the route you describe which would definitely start with the M80 towards Stirling however I would be within 100mile range of Nairn by the time I reached Dunblane leaving plenty of time to navigate around an incident or even for that incident to have cleared by the time I arrive.
In a way, quite right, as one size does not fit all. I hate to agree with you though as I want as much data as is relevant to me, ie my whole journey.
This is exactly why TT need to do something clever to reduce the load on the HD Traffic infrastructure so that data can be delivered for the whole of your journey. If you are only doing a 40 mile journey then you only need to download 50 miles of data etc. Surely this would help ease the burden as the majority of users at rush hour will be doing their daily commute of 20 miles or so. This would then enable TT to deliver a significantly further range to those who need it.
Unfortunately, I doubt that that is achievable in the short term as it is a significant change to how it works currently and would probably involve new Navcore for all LIVE devices, which is unlikely to happen as some of them are now EOL (although the XL LIVE is still current and hasn't had a Navcore update since late 2010).
Joined: Feb 27, 2006 Posts: 14902 Location: Keynsham
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 9:39 pm Post subject:
AndyVaughan wrote:
This is exactly why TT need to do something clever to reduce the load on the HD Traffic infrastructure so that data can be delivered for the whole of your journey.
Sorry, Andy, I don't buy this. It's the load, isn't it? Now, back last year (and recently for the couple of days they reinstated it) my device (and everybody else's) coped with the load. So it's TT's end, or the pipeline, which can't cope. So to a simple soul like me, it's merely a matter of TomTom arranging to have the pipeline capable of handling more load.
In the meantime, they've been introducing MORE load - more countries covered, more bells and whistles, Twitter, for goodness sake! _________________ Dennis
Well, that's interesting. I posted the following on the TomTom discussion forums, and it has disappeared. I wonder why?
I have realised why this is an issue. Well, I have my conspiracy theory. To be clear, TomTom HD is the best system available, way better than anything else available. And we have in the past had a nice long range (longer, I believe than the 160km talked about, proven in part by TomTom not denying it), nice reliability, and only the occasional hiccup. The only problem was closed roads, which traffic movement didn't spot, but which in England is now sourced. It's great, but why is it not back at a larger distance?
Okay, let's review the parts of this system:
1. Your TomTom Satnav. We know that it downloads a lot of data and then throws it away. It seems that there is a granularity of areas that the device handles. This is common in programs - you have a number and that determines which range to use. 1=60km, 2=90km, 3=120km, 4=160km, 5= 200km, 6=250km, etc. This saves having to send so much data, and is probably commonly used. For example, the POI distances you could search for got reduced some time back - probably a similar issue.
We know that the Satnav is told what range to work with, and that it can work fine with large ranges because it does.
2. The traffic feed. The traffic feed is the source data, from mobile phone movements and other sources. The system that generates these is of course complex, but we have seen video of their lovely management centre, and we can view the data on the web. Indeed, even when the mobile part is failing, the web version shows the data.
So we know that the feed itself is good, and able to handle the large ranges (because it doesn't care about the range in fact).
3. TomTom servers. Delivering the data to the devices is done via mobile data connections to the TomTom servers. It is probable that they have to do some small level of processing to return the correct results. Web servers are easy to implement though, and particularly with modern caching systems it is not hard to handle the volume of calls. In particular, it would be easy to partition according to source network, so that UK data goes only to one server, US to another, and so on. If the server was getting swamped, it wouldn't be too hard to add another, or a faster one, or more memory. Frankly, with such a nice management centre, I'd be very surprised if there was any sort of server issue.
We know that servers are not likely to be the issue, and if they are, they'd be relatively easy to fix.
4. The final part of the system is the data connection from mobile device to the internet. This part of the system is going to be the prime problem space for range related issues. After all, if twice as much data is to be sent then it is the place that is bandwidth restricted. And if many times as much traffic is occurring due to bad weather, then the amount of data being sent via the mobile network is going to get significantly bigger. But we also know that data is quite common nowadays, and you can buy hundreds of megabytes for not a lot per month.
It is here that my conspiracy theory kicks in. I think that TomTom did deals for a certain amount of data per day over their SIMs. The deal would have given them perhaps 100Gb per day maximum. Go over that, and it gets capped, and the data doesn't flow, or some other similar restriction. 100Gb limit? No problem! Except then the bad weather happens, and we've been selling devices, and oops, it starts to hit the limit. The experience of the users is that TomTom stops working. Not that it gets slow or similar, but has outages. So, speculating more, let's say that TomTom says to the mobile network "hey, we'd like to double our traffic please, here's double the money" and the network says "sure, double the traffic, but five times the price, it turns out your use is more costly". "Hmm, hey tech team, what can we do to keep our usage costs down?" And so they restrict it. They've established a price that they get lots of users, but that doesn't afford a larger data cost. Sure, some of us would pay more, but how would the market perceive a split level offering?
Did I miss any part of the system in my summarising? Am I too far fetched? Given the UK was one of the first systems live, their contract would have been new and into unknown territory. And it was early data days for mobile networks, so likely to be restricted beyond what would happen today. And the network may be holding TomTom to the contract unreasonably, or wanting to charge beyond comparatively reasonable. And TomTom probably don't want to tell us that it is this part that is holding them back. Or any part I suppose, but this one is less under their control, and involves a third party and money is the solution, money that they would rather not spend.
Travelling today, I had a look at the Google traffic info on my iPhone, and it is really quite good. Quite refined in detail and length of delay.
Anyone know which devices this information is available for as an add-on to navigation? I would presume Android devices, but for all, or some? And for the Google navigation only?
I do wonder if they licence the HD data, but don't attribute it - after all TomTom wouldn't want you to know that it is available "free"! But it is probably enough to navigate by anyway.
We know some of you are unhappy with the way TomTom HD Traffic is working, particularly in the UK, and that the answers we have provided are not what you want to hear. But we are not ignoring you. We follow community discussions closely and are often impressed with the knowledge and ideas that are presented in these threads. These are your concerns as we have understood them:
1) The current 120km range is sometimes not sufficient for long distance journeys, particularly in the UK.
2) The forty minute horizon on devices that connect to MyTomTom.
Since we first raised the concerns posted on this and other forums internally we expanded the range of TomTom HD Traffic from 80km to 120km, and then briefly to 160km. As you know, we were then forced to limit it to 120km again. Our traffic team is continuing to work on short, medium and long-term improvements to the service, and all options are being investigated. However, for obvious reasons, we are not able to reveal all the details surrounding the technical challenges we faced recently and the solutions that are being investigated and developed. And, unfortunately, despite our best efforts to expand the range we’re not able to offer an immediate solution. Many of you already understood that the increase to the 160km bounding box might have been temporary and could have been decreased with the approaching winter and increase in traffic incidents.
In the meantime, it is not practical for us to post new updates every day but do not mistake our perceived silence as avoiding or neglecting the issue. It has been raised at the highest levels, and is reviewed daily. We want to keep you as loyal customers, and we hope that you will, ultimately, be pleased with the TomTom HD Traffic service.
A bit late regarding the loyal customer bit - my TT is for sale and I have given up on them for now. Who knows, maybe in a year or two when they get their act together I might return. For now I need to gen up on converting the PGPSW POIs and speedcams to the correct format for a RNS-510. Anyone got any decent icon sets in 35x39 PNG format?
Just as an aside, my new in-dash unit uses Navteq mapping and near me it is significantly more up to date - a 2 year old roundabout is on maps that are now 6mth since release. I know others have commented otherwise, but I am a lot happier not having to moan about how poor TT are on a daily basis.
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