On 2/5/12 1:06 AM, Odhiambo Washington wrote:
I am thinking of going over to Safaricom to tide us over.
Huawei E1820 (I have tested this and worked with PC-BSD). It's a
bit more costly though, costing like KES 9,999
Huawei E160 costs KES 2,000 and I have a feeling it will work.
I'll try it today at some point and let you know. It can save you
some few thousands KES.
So, take this matter closer to the solution for the benefit of Mehma
Sarja & others..
Thanks! Washington for making time and putting in the effort.
I have taken time to run tests to find a solution for Mehma's problem.
I had a choice between the very expensive Huawei E1820
(5.76Mbps/21Mbps) and the relatively cheaper Huawei E160
(2Mbps/3.6Mbps). The reason for running a test against the E160 was
two-fold: To see if it actually works, and as such make Mehma save a
few thousands when he finally decides which modem to go for, seeing as
E1820 costs approximately US$ 111 while the E160 costs US$ 22:-)
One of our team members has an E160 modem with Safaricom. We have not,
but will try it out soon.
In both cases I was able to successfully use the same settings with
pfSense 2.0.1 (amd64). Here is the output of `ifconfig` when the modem
was connected (and I scp-ed this output to another Unix box using the
same connection):
http://62.8.64.102/~wash/ifconfig.txt
<http://62.8.64.102/%7Ewash/ifconfig.txt>
The procedure involved running HyperTerminal (this I did on my Windows
8 PC) and disabling the virtual CD-ROM on both devices.
The AT command string is AT^U2DIAG=0 (to disable, and =10 to re-enable)
I discovered that pfSense (I was running on the LiveCD mode) already
had umodem and u3g modules loaded.
Sorry, I did not check if they were compiled into the kernel or loaded
as modules.
And here is my ppp.conf - the exact one I used with the
Safaricom-branded Huawei modem(s).
u3g:
set device /dev/cuaU0.0
Going through the GUI on PfSense, we see interfaces /dev/cuaU0.0 and
/dev/cuaU0.2 with the EC122 modem, and I am guessing that depends upon
which usb port the thing is plugged into.
set server /var/run/3g-internet "" 0177
set speed 921600
set timeout 0
set authname saf
set authkey data
set dial "ABORT BUSY TIMEOUT 2 \
\"\" \
AT OK-AT-OK \
AT+CFUN=1 OK-AT-OK \
AT+CMEE=2 OK-AT-OK \
AT+CSQ OK \
AT+CGDCONT=1,\\\"IP\\\",\\\"safaricom\\\" OK \
ATD*99# CONNECT"
We put in #777
set crtscts on
disable vjcomp
disable acfcomp
disable deflate
disable deflate24
disable pred1
disable protocomp
disable mppe
disable ipv6cp
disable lqr
disable echo
#nat enable yes
enable dns
resolv writable
set dns 8.8.8.8
set ifaddr 10.1.0.2/0 <http://10.1.0.2/0> 10.1.0.1/0
<http://10.1.0.1/0> 255.255.255.255 0.0.0.0
add default HISADDR # See ppp.link*
This was my first time ever using pfSense in a dialup mode, so I wrote
my ppp.conf by hand. Of course I did find where this is apparently
done using the webUI (under Interface Assignments) but clicking the
option for editing ppp.conf and saving it did not seem to modify my
ppp.conf. Is this perhaps because I was running LiveCD?
Is pfSense editor able to generate a complete ppp.conf like the one
above and write it? That's the only question I had left on my mind.
I believe this will help Mehma in his endeavors.
One of the servers we have there is an Ubuntu box and the EC122 specs
say that it supports Linux kernel 2.6x and above. There is also a howto
for that particular model here:
http://citycellmodemtroubleshoot.blogspot.com/2011/03/installation-of-ec122-modem-in-ubuntu.html
So, we seem to have options.
Mehma
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