Anyone know how mobile broadband dongles work?

Theres a fair old bit of South Cambs and North Essex thats at a fair old altitude and that suffers from poor 2G coverage, voice and data, let alone anything else.

Its more to do with the number of likely subs and the costs of base station implementation. If you live near a main road or have a motorway passing nearby then you'll more likely to be much better covered;)..

If it doesn't it will be very odd.

Yes. Did they not provide any form of documentation?

Are you actually using wvdial and kppp? There are numerous scripts floating around the web for configuring various USB dongles, most of them seem to require wvdial/kppp/perl.

There are some AT codes that might help you diagnose what the stuff is going on.

AT+COPS? - Should show you the network provider that you're connected to.

AT+COPS=? - Should show you all the available network providers.

AT+CSQ - Should show you signal quality information.

AT&V - Should list all the supported AT commands.

What I suspect you need to do is to provide your PIN, you didn't mention if you do this or not but AFAIK most network providers required a PIN before permitting access to the network.

You should see something like this if things are working:

CONNECT

--> Carrier detected. Starting PPP immediately.

--> Starting pppd at

--> pid of pppd: nnnn

--> Using interface ppp0

--> pppd: Connect: ppp0 /dev/ttyUSB0

--> pppd: CHAP authentication succeeded

--> local IP address xx.xx.xx.xx

--> remote IP address xx.xx.xx.xx.xx

--> primary DNS address xx.xx.xx.xx

--> secondary DNS address xx.xx.xx.xx

Usually the easiest route with these things is to find someone who has done it successfully with that dongle/network.

Setting up ppp and wvdial is a pain at the best of times, it's even worse when you have to struggle with a network provider failing to give you all the information that you need. I found Orange tech support to be really helpful when setting up 3G/Edge via my mobile phone. I found Vodafone to be complete s**te when trying to set up the 3G dongle.

In article , Tim Ward scribeth thus

The Vodafone dongle I've got does fall back to GPRS which does give Internet connectivity, but it does it a lot out in the sticks.

Mind you the throughput in general isn't that wonderful even when it is running full 3G

Here where I live some 800 metres from a Voda base station, a proper roof mounted one;(, not one of they little pole mounted jobbies, the reception downstairs often falls over to GPRS rates...

Not as good as its puffed up to be;(..

In message , at 23:10:59 on Thu, 16 Apr 2009, Brian Morrison remarked:

They allow it if you are out of range of a 3G cell.

This is about 3-supplied dongles.

It's the reason I've always supposed. Has the danger that it puts people off using them at all.

In message , at 22:30:32 on Thu, 16 Apr

To avoid conflation with other subthreads - this was using a Virgin phone. The 3-dongle was completely inert.

In message , at 23:16:26 on Thu, 16 Apr

I'm surprised by that. I get good throughput on my 3-dongle when in an area covered by 3G - even if it's only "1-bar". At home I get a full "5-bars" and the base can't be closer than 800 metres.

But not if you just want to force 2G, which was what I was trying to point out.

It can, but then they have a lot of spare capacity and hence attractive pricing, you just need to do some research and go into using it with your eyes open.

It's very load dependent though, the data rate per lobe is similar to the maximum rate so as soon as multiple people use it the rate collapses, I can get 7.2MB in Kings Cross station in the afternoon, barely a connection during rush hour.

Ah yes,

Well I only need to run a couple of apps.

Custom sales entry and credit card validator to e.g. paypal.

Worst case page on the sales screen is about 16k bytes.

Sure we could adblock paypal and get that down too.

In message , at 23:32:47 on Thu, 16 Apr 2009, Brian Morrison remarked:

Indeed, that's where I came in.

Yes, I'm afraid to say I do stay with them because of the price - although usual mobile phone industry "confusion pricing" reigns, with different plans leap-frogging one another all the time.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Tim Ward" saying something like:

The Vodafone UI certainly does that. I've been using 3G or GPRS as the signal varies locally according to weather and foliage, for years. It doesn't often need to drop to GPRS, but sometimes I've found it advantageous to lock it on to GPRS if the weather's particularly claggy and it wants to go 3G hunting.

Not that was kept by the owner. Its one of those modems that is also=20 mass storage, so when you 'plug in in yer pc' it installs its own=20 software or summat.

The latest linux kernel recognises it and after 20 seconds tells it to=20 stop pretending to be a flash drive and act like a modem.

I have used wvdial gnome-ppp and pppd bare.

Thats worth a crack.

This has a sim card in it.

That's as far as I get. Twice. Two chap authentications.

That's what never happens. Plus it shouls set default route.

Have done. Copied the exact.

Yeah. We phoned them (three) up 'use the same name and password you log=20 in to your computer with'

In fact, thios is what is recommended.

Wvdial shows this..

wvdial

--> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.60

--> Cannot get information for serial port.

--> Initializing modem.

--> Sending: ATZ ATZ OK

--> Sending: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=3D0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=3D0 ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=3D0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=3D0 OK

--> Sending: ATZ ATZ OK

--> Sending: ATE0V1&D2&C1S0=3D0+IFC=3D2,2 ATE0V1&D2&C1S0=3D0+IFC=3D2,2 OK

--> Sending: AT+CGDCONT=3D1,"IP","three.co.uk"; OK

--> Modem initialized.

--> Sending: ATDT*99#

--> Waiting for carrier. CONNECT

--> Carrier detected. Starting PPP immediately.

--> Starting pppd at Fri Apr 17 07:59:40 2009

--> Pid of pppd: 27911

--> pppd: [08]=EF=BF=BD=EF=BF=BD[08]X=EF=BF=BD=EF=BF=BD[08]x=EF=BF=BD=EF=BF= =BD[08]=EF=BF=BD=EF=BF=BD=EF=BF=BD[08]

--> Using interface ppp0

--> pppd: [08]=EF=BF=BD=EF=BF=BD[08]X=EF=BF=BD=EF=BF=BD[08]x=EF=BF=BD=EF=BF= =BD[08]=EF=BF=BD=EF=BF=BD=EF=BF=BD[08] =2E.and then just that, endlessly till it hangs up.

In my day and creaky memory of analogue modems ATZ is a reset to (preprogrammed) defaults. Why send an ATZ when in the middle of trying to set various settings? Try taking out those ATZ's apart from the first one so your init becomes:

In article , Grimly Curmudgeon scribeth thus

That has a much larger effect than many realise especially at 1800 and

Much the same with microwave and wi-fi units set them to what you need rather than what they think they can do...

In article , Roland Perry scribeth thus

Is that "3" the firm or 3G in general?..

I was puzzled why my 3G phone would switch back and forth between 3G and GSM modes (for voice or data), even in a strong signal area. I found an explanation of "cell breathing" which said it was a network response to congestion.

Sounds like GPRS would be the one for that but then again there're taking an ever increasing load which will reduce the throughput unless the networks are -really- increasing capacity..

In article , Duncan Wood scribeth thus

Good for you, never seen that around here (Trumpington)..

Which makes me wonder if they'll really have the capacity to cope with those sort of loads..