[113596] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Looking for AT&T / Verizon / Sprint WWAN service impressions - on
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alexander Harrowell)
Thu Apr 16 05:49:07 2009
From: Alexander Harrowell <a.harrowell@gmail.com>
To: "Crooks, Sam" <Sam.Crooks@experian.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:46:31 +0100
Cc: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
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On Thursday 16 April 2009 03:08:52 Eddie wrote:
> > Also interested in similar information on impressions of similar EMEA
> > WWAN service providers, particularly Vodaphone and T-Mobile, if anyone
> > has experiences with these.
>
I regularly use 3UK (Hutchison)'s data service. =A310 gets you 15GB of xfer=
a=20
month, but you need to either sign a contract or else pay =A350 for the=20
hardware, which as with most UMTS operators is a Huawei E220 USB dongle.
That particular device currently supports radio air interfaces from GSM up =
to=20
HSPA 7.2Mbit/s. There is support for the E220 in current Linux kernels.=20
However, 3UK (and most of the other operators) ship it with a Windows clien=
t=20
program installed on the USB device that autoruns when you connect it to a=
=20
computer. This provides a "pretty" interface to it. Unfortunately, it also=
=20
means that unless you activate the device at once, under Linux it gets=20
detected as a USB mass storage device not a tty. You can get around this if=
=20
you connect it before booting; I think there is a modprobe or similar=20
operation that has to happen, so there is almost certainly a command-line=20
workaround.
If it is working correctly you should be able to see three new ttys in=20
/dev/USB. You can then use whatever program you like to dial up, or just ru=
n=20
wvdial. In my experience 3UK works reasonably well; they advertise maximum=
=20
speeds of 3.6Mbit/s downlink, but I've seen higher in practice. The uplink=
=20
seems to max out at 600-700Kbit/s, which is considerably better than my DSL=
=20
line. IPs are dynamic, and things like Skype pass through without trouble. =
I=20
have successfully SSHd into a linux box both from a PC over the modem and=20
using PuTTY from a Nokia E71.
Warnings: 3UK's DNS could be better, when I am using their service from a P=
C I=20
usually set up OpenDNS. On the move, you may encounter problems with the st=
ep-
down between UMTS and GPRS; 3 gets its backup GPRS national roaming from=20
Orange and you can easily lose a connection between the two.
T-Mobile UK was the first UK operator to provide open slather Internet serv=
ice;=20
they offer a higher level of "unlimited" for a price, which includes not=20
blocking VoIP and a static IP. Otherwise expect similar to 3, as they are=20
beginning to share their radio access networks.
Vodafone probably has more coverage than anyone else, but their Internet=20
service may not be to your taste. When they started doing pure 'net, they h=
ad=20
a restriction on Web pages over 200KB and pushed everything else through a=
=20
Novarra box to compress it, which broke a lot of things; I once got a heade=
r=20
in my blog server logs that mentioned an XMS, a Novarra, a squid proxy and=
=20
something from 724 Networks.
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