Jamie's Random Musings
Various thoughts and adventures, including but not limited to Linux, Windows XP and Widows Vista, and assorted bits of hardware new and old.
Wednesday 17 September 2008, 2:39 PM
Ubuntu Mobile Broadband
As I said yesterday, on 8.04 the AirCard works with wvdial just fine, once the config file has been filled in appropriately. I tested it on the Speakeasy Speed Test and it reported 2+ Mbps download and 256 Kbps upload. As far as I can tell, however, it does not work with the Network Manager on 8.04. It looks like it might be possible to configure it as a Point-to-Point network connection, but I could not figure out any way to get that working.
On 8.10 Alpha 5, things got really interesting. First, of course, it still works just fine with wvdial, using the same configuration as on 8.04 - no surprise. But then I noticed that it looks like they are doing a lot of work on the Network Manager for 8.10, and there is a new tab for "Mobile Broadband" connection. Of course, I haven't learned my lesson about Ubuntu (and Linux in general) yet, although I have said it here myself many times already - don't overcomplicate things! I tried entering various parts of the configuration info in the Mobile Broadband device, and it wouldn't connect. I finally gave up and decided to wait to see if it is any better in the next Alpha, Beta or the final release. I continued using it with wvdial, until once when I was looking at the Network Manager again, and I idly clicked ont he Mobile Broadband connection, fully expecting it to say "Disconnected" - especially since I had done NOTHING to try to configure it. To my utter surprise, it connected! Hmmmm.
Further investigation shows that the problem is with initialization. When the card is first inserted after Ubuntu starts up, it will not connect through the Network Manager / Mobile Broadband device until the card has been initialized, for example by running the wvdial script once. After that has been done, you can then connect and disconnect through Network Manager as much as you like, and it works just great!
As I said, this is for me personally extremely good news, because it means I won't have to shut down Ubuntu and boot Windows to get Internet access during my commute.
jw 17/9/2008
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Thanks for the out-in-the-field beta testing :) My friend has a 3 mobile broadband contract, and a Huawei E169G USB 3G dongle. I found this blog which details the vodafone drivers, and which also refers to an "out of the box" solution called Salutis Connect.
Trouble is, I live out in the sticks at the moment so I haven't had an opportunity to test it!!
I use one of the white Huawei 3G dongles with my Linux EEE PC, and it is nothing short of superb. Very easy to setup as well. It's very important to get the correct one as the other one from 3 doesn't work at all well with Linux.
