Mobile Broadband under LINUX

[ralph]

I was surprised to find out how easy it is to establish a
broadband internet connection using the Three Data Modem
under LINUX. Despite the fact that Three denies support
for Linux the hardware operates fine on Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu,
Mandriva and Gentoo Linux systems.

A detailed information sheet can be found at:
http://kerry-linux.ie/broadband/three-datamodem.pdf

And the software used to get the connection started is here:
http://kerry-linux.ie/broadband/three.tar

I hope this makes life easier for many of us living in remote
areas and those being on the move from time to time.

Regards

RON

 

[nevf]

Thanks ralph for registering to post that. Them instructions/links are going to come in handy soon. (i sell the o2 and 3 Modems)

Which particular modem was it that you got it working on? Just wondering, as we sell two of them in particular - the E220 and the E169

On O2, we sell the E220 and E170. Would I be right to say that your solution will work across them all?

 

[ralph]

On O2, we sell the E220 and E170. Would I be right to say that your solution will work across them all?

Well, I don't know. The Three DataModem I use is a ZTE MF622.
The tricky part is always to get the hardware recognized by the kernel.
Once you have the device file /dev/ttyUSB0 the rest is plain sailing.

In the start script the following line is responsible for making the device known to the kernel:

modprobe usbserial vendor=0x19d2 product=0x0001

Obviously the vendor and product info has to be changed for different modems.

Can anyone using the E220 and E170 please provide this info? (The command lsusb -v should give you some hints)

 

[conor]

I have used the O2 E220 modem under Mandriva One 2009, Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10.

With Mandriva 2009 I remember that it did require a bit of time to get the thing to work. But it was nothing to complicated...

With both Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10 it was really a matter of plug-and-play! They both have built in support for the modem.

Those distros that don't have support at the moment will probarbly have built in support in the future anyway!