Re: gprs connect cards

2003-09-12 Thread Tony Godshall
According to Alessandro Speranza,
> Hi guys.
> I'm writing to ask your opinion on the following.
> I've got no phone at home, and I'm thinking about an easy way to connect
> my laptop to the internet, at least to read email, when I stay working at
> home. My mobile is wap, but I have no cable, plus I have no serial port on
> my laptop (presario 700). On the other hand, the other day, I found out
> there's this sim card you can stick into a pcmcia connect card and use
> gprs protocol to connect to the internet. I'm not sure about the costs of
> connection, I'll find out, but for now, I will need some ideas on weather
> there's any chance of making the whole thinkg work with linux. Does any of
> you have any experience?
> If not, does any of you have any alternative idea?
> I guess the easiest thing would be buy a gprs mobile phone with usb cable
> and use that as a modem, but I've got the same problem: do you know if
> that works with Linux?
> Cheers
>   Alessandro

Mobile phone based:

I test drove a 2.5G phone from SprintPCS for a couple weeks.
They use 1xRTT I think, which and supports data rates up to
144kbps.  I expect this is the CDMA equivalent to GPRS,
which is the 3G extension to GSM, is it not?

The cable I purchaced was a USB cable and the phone turned
out to come in as a stanadard (AT command set) modem on 
/dev/ttyUSB0 (I think).  So setting up a pppd connection was
quite straightforward.  

Download performance was typically 100-120kbps, which was
not bad, but the latency was very poor (ping times were
around 1.5 sec).  So for interactive use it was painful.  An
ssh session was OK, but tightvnc-over-ssh was painful and
X-over-ssh was intolerable.

Wired options:

Are you saying that you have no phone line (actual wire) or 
that you don't want to have POTS service installed.  Recently 
I was told by my phone company (SBC, formerly PacBell) that I 
had to have a POTS line before I could install DSL, but when I 
ordered DSL from a competitor, they said that they could 
install it on "dry copper" too.

Other ideas:

If you are within view of someone with a better connection,
you might try negotiating a long distance 802.11b connection.  
See Bob X Cringely's column:

  "Reach Out and Touch Someone: How Bob and His Binoculars 
  Found More Bandwidth and Learned to Stop Worrying and 
  Love the Bond"
  http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010628.html

  ... and "I Network, Therefore I Am: Further Adventures in 
  the World of Bootleg 802.11b"
  http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010712.html

Enjoy.  He's a funny guy.

Tony



Re: gprs connect cards

2003-09-12 Thread Tony Godshall
According to Alessandro Speranza,
> Hi guys.
> I'm writing to ask your opinion on the following.
> I've got no phone at home, and I'm thinking about an easy way to connect
> my laptop to the internet, at least to read email, when I stay working at
> home. My mobile is wap, but I have no cable, plus I have no serial port on
> my laptop (presario 700). On the other hand, the other day, I found out
> there's this sim card you can stick into a pcmcia connect card and use
> gprs protocol to connect to the internet. I'm not sure about the costs of
> connection, I'll find out, but for now, I will need some ideas on weather
> there's any chance of making the whole thinkg work with linux. Does any of
> you have any experience?
> If not, does any of you have any alternative idea?
> I guess the easiest thing would be buy a gprs mobile phone with usb cable
> and use that as a modem, but I've got the same problem: do you know if
> that works with Linux?
> Cheers
>   Alessandro

Mobile phone based:

I test drove a 2.5G phone from SprintPCS for a couple weeks.
They use 1xRTT I think, which and supports data rates up to
144kbps.  I expect this is the CDMA equivalent to GPRS,
which is the 3G extension to GSM, is it not?

The cable I purchaced was a USB cable and the phone turned
out to come in as a stanadard (AT command set) modem on 
/dev/ttyUSB0 (I think).  So setting up a pppd connection was
quite straightforward.  

Download performance was typically 100-120kbps, which was
not bad, but the latency was very poor (ping times were
around 1.5 sec).  So for interactive use it was painful.  An
ssh session was OK, but tightvnc-over-ssh was painful and
X-over-ssh was intolerable.

Wired options:

Are you saying that you have no phone line (actual wire) or 
that you don't want to have POTS service installed.  Recently 
I was told by my phone company (SBC, formerly PacBell) that I 
had to have a POTS line before I could install DSL, but when I 
ordered DSL from a competitor, they said that they could 
install it on "dry copper" too.

Other ideas:

If you are within view of someone with a better connection,
you might try negotiating a long distance 802.11b connection.  
See Bob X Cringely's column:

  "Reach Out and Touch Someone: How Bob and His Binoculars 
  Found More Bandwidth and Learned to Stop Worrying and 
  Love the Bond"
  http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010628.html

  ... and "I Network, Therefore I Am: Further Adventures in 
  the World of Bootleg 802.11b"
  http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010712.html

Enjoy.  He's a funny guy.

Tony


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Re: gprs connect cards

2003-09-12 Thread Thien-Thi Nguyen
Alessandro Speranza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

   I guess the easiest thing would be buy a gprs mobile phone with
   usb cable and use that as a modem, but I've got the same
   problem: do you know if that works with Linux?

this worked fine for me last month in bonasola (near la spezia),
using a sony vaio pcg-r505tl running linux 2.4.21-pre7, through a
siemens gs55 and wind (15euro/month unlimited access package).  i
append the simple script /root/bin/GPRS below to show which kernel
modules were needed; munge to taste.

the data rate was slow but usable.  the cost of the cable was
outrageous (50 euro!), but i suppose worth it in the end.  much
more economical than the pcmcia cards that do the same thing for
data but have no support for voice.

ciao,
thi

___
#!/bin/sh

case "$1" in
start)
set -x
modprobe pl2303
modprobe usb-uhci
/root/bin/firewall-setup
pon gprs-wind
tail -f /var/log/syslog
# additional logging is now done via /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/favinet-log
exit 0
;;
stop)
set -x
poff gprs-wind
# do not kill the firewall at this time
#/root/bin/firewall-kill
exit 0
;;
*)
echo Usage: GPRS '[start | stop]'
exit 1
;;
esac

# GPRS ends here



Re: gprs connect cards

2003-09-12 Thread Werner Heuser
On Fri, Sep 12, 2003 at 11:47:26AM +0200, Alessandro Speranza wrote:
...

You may find a survey of GRPS PCMCIA or CF cards and their Linux
status at http://tuxmobil.org/pcmcia_linux.html 
Almost all cards should work.

> I guess the easiest thing would be buy a gprs mobile phone with usb cable
> and use that as a modem, but I've got the same problem: do you know if
> that works with Linux?

A survey of connectivity methods between Linux boxes and
a mobile phone (IrDA, BlueTooth, ..) is at
http://tuxmobil.org/phones_linux_mobile_con.html 
there are also links to some GPRS-HOWTOs.

Werner

-- 
|=| Werner Heuser = Berliner Str. 122 = D-13187 Berlin = Germany
|=|  T. 0049 - (0)30 - 349 53 86
|=| http://TuxMobil.orgUniX on Mobile Systems: HOWTOs,Software
|*| This is no time for phony rhetoric -- Lou Reed



Re: gprs connect cards

2003-09-12 Thread Thien-Thi Nguyen
Alessandro Speranza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

   I guess the easiest thing would be buy a gprs mobile phone with
   usb cable and use that as a modem, but I've got the same
   problem: do you know if that works with Linux?

this worked fine for me last month in bonasola (near la spezia),
using a sony vaio pcg-r505tl running linux 2.4.21-pre7, through a
siemens gs55 and wind (15euro/month unlimited access package).  i
append the simple script /root/bin/GPRS below to show which kernel
modules were needed; munge to taste.

the data rate was slow but usable.  the cost of the cable was
outrageous (50 euro!), but i suppose worth it in the end.  much
more economical than the pcmcia cards that do the same thing for
data but have no support for voice.

ciao,
thi

___
#!/bin/sh

case "$1" in
start)
set -x
modprobe pl2303
modprobe usb-uhci
/root/bin/firewall-setup
pon gprs-wind
tail -f /var/log/syslog
# additional logging is now done via /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/favinet-log
exit 0
;;
stop)
set -x
poff gprs-wind
# do not kill the firewall at this time
#/root/bin/firewall-kill
exit 0
;;
*)
echo Usage: GPRS '[start | stop]'
exit 1
;;
esac

# GPRS ends here


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Re: gprs connect cards

2003-09-12 Thread Werner Heuser
On Fri, Sep 12, 2003 at 11:47:26AM +0200, Alessandro Speranza wrote:
...

You may find a survey of GRPS PCMCIA or CF cards and their Linux
status at http://tuxmobil.org/pcmcia_linux.html 
Almost all cards should work.

> I guess the easiest thing would be buy a gprs mobile phone with usb cable
> and use that as a modem, but I've got the same problem: do you know if
> that works with Linux?

A survey of connectivity methods between Linux boxes and
a mobile phone (IrDA, BlueTooth, ..) is at
http://tuxmobil.org/phones_linux_mobile_con.html 
there are also links to some GPRS-HOWTOs.

Werner

-- 
|=| Werner Heuser = Berliner Str. 122 = D-13187 Berlin = Germany
|=|  T. 0049 - (0)30 - 349 53 86
|=| http://TuxMobil.orgUniX on Mobile Systems: HOWTOs,Software
|*| This is no time for phony rhetoric -- Lou Reed


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