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Date:      Thu, 27 May 2010 11:04:26 -0400
From:      Alejandro Imass <ait@p2ee.org>
To:        Jesse Smith <jessefrgsmith@yahoo.ca>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Getting a USB mobile modem working
Message-ID:  <AANLkTilqnsMY9HQGa69y-Gq0vqB4xWK_RKaLzdoat5-Z@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <1274964704.2463.6.camel@hp-laptop>
References:  <1274964704.2463.6.camel@hp-laptop>

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On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 8:51 AM, Jesse Smith <jessefrgsmith@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> Hello List,
>
> I've recently installed FreeBSD on my laptop and everything seems to be
> working except my Novatel mobile modem. It's a modem that plugs into a
> USB port and gives me network access off nearby mobile towers.
>
> My issue is, I hope, mostly one of ignorance. When I was running Linux
> on my laptop, I'd plug the modem in and Network Manager would detect it
> and automatically start a connection. Making the transition to FreeBSD
> I've found there isn't any automated process. So I have two questions:
>

Hey Jesse,

I don't have a precise answer for you but I can surely give some hints
since I've been using these modems in Linux _way_ before they
auto-mounted like today, so in FBSD you will likely have many of the
proiblems I had...

For one, many of these modes use the multi-device feature of USB, so
you should look into how FBSD handles multi-device USB and how to
choose from the different configurations available on the devce.
Generally there will be one or several TTYs and probably a flash drive
as well. For example some ZTE modems have 3 TTYs and one flash drive;
only one of the TTYs actually does the dialing to GSM network, the
other 2 are useless AFAIK.

So, once you firgure out how to choose which devices will be mounted
where, there must be support for the uart chip that the modem uses,
this is so the OS can mount the device as a simple TTY which you can
then send AT commands to. So the hardest part is to get the OS to
mount the TTY, and then I recommend the use of wvdial which will
greatly simplify the dialing process and the PPP, etc. etc. etc.

Hope thsi helps and post your results back here to see if I can help
you further...

Good luck,
Alejandro Imass




> 1. How can I find out if FreeBSD has the proper drivers/firmware to run
> the modem?
>
> 2. Assuming the modem is supported, how do I get it working?
>
> Thank you.
>
>
>
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