Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 06:35:52 -0500 From: Christopher Masto <chris@netmonger.net> To: Robert Watson <robert+freebsd@cyrus.watson.org> Cc: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Re: CDPD modems -- Novatel Ministrel, et al. Message-ID: <19991124063552.A28067@netmonger.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.991123225819.39682A-100000@fledge.watson.org>; from Robert Watson on Tue, Nov 23, 1999 at 11:02:12PM -0500 References: <19991122160323.A6008@netmonger.net> <Pine.BSF.3.96.991123225819.39682A-100000@fledge.watson.org>
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On Tue, Nov 23, 1999 at 11:02:12PM -0500, Robert Watson wrote: > > Unfortunately, Go America STILL has not sent mine. I am quite pissed, > > since I ordered it in September. Now I will miss out on my first major > > opportunity to use it, while traveling for Thanskgiving. > > Go America looked great until I saw the footnote on the "Go.Unlimited > Plan" -- fixed rate, except: "All plans are subject to a 6 month or 1 year > contract. An early cancellation fee applies, see Terms and Conditions. An > additional $0.10/kilobyte fee will be assessed for usage generated by > non-GoAmerica provided software. " -- I assume FreeBSD doesn't count as > GoAmerica-provided software? Someone told me about this, that supposedly they used a proprietary proxy thing, so I called them and asked about it. The person I spoke to said that is no longer correct; at one time they had a plan that used a proxy (and still do, but it's being phased out). We actually had a nice chat about FreeBSD, and he insisted that there were no additional fees or surcharges with the unlimited plan. I could have been given wrong information, but in any case, you may want to call them and ask the same questions. My concern at the moment is whether I will EVER receive the card. They told me three weeks ago that it would ship in two weeks and that someone would call me when it did ship. Still nothing. > BAM appears to have a fixed rate CDPD in my area, although it looks like > the Mobitex/BSWD coverage is better (slower though). I guess I still > haven't found the ideal wireless solution, although I'm really leaning > towards the Ministrel/Merlin product + BAM fixed rate CDPD--I'm a little > concerned by the "low" coverage level around Amherst, MA and South Hadley, > MA, and wish I had some information to let me know what kind of quality I > can expect! There's some information on the net about building a cable to connect the Novatel Minstrel (snap-on CDPD for PalmPilots) to a serial port. I have a friend with one of these (the same lucky bastard who managed to get a Merlin a few weeks ago), and I've had the opportunity to play with it with FreeBSD. It worked on the way back from Boston to New York, until almost exactly the moment we entered Connecticut. I've also used it in Valley Forge, PA, where coverage seemed quite good. All in all, CDPD is very slow and often involves annoying packet loss and moving around the room, fiddling with the antenna, etc. while hoping your telnet doesn't time out. I couldn't imagine trying to browse the web with it. I expect my main use will be something like IRC from the laundromat and to get my e-mail if I happen to go to a city where it works. > I'd also like to hear positive confirmation on what is required to > configure a CDPD device under FreeBSD -- i.e., "it is on sio0 and you can > use slip as follows..." -- CDPD seems to involve network ids and I'm not > sure how you feed that to FreeBSD. With the Novatel products, it seems to be important to disable VJ header compression or the PPP handshake fails. Other than that, I found that (with the Minstrel anyway) it was mainly a matter of getting the right AT commands (I think it's AT\APPP or something) and discovering that user PPP didn't work, but pppd did. That was all with the Minstrel. My only experience with the Merlin was about 15 seconds. Just enough to see if it was usable under current with the new pccard stuff, which it was. It was responding to AT commands, but I wasn't in a spot where CDPD worked, so I can only assume that the PPP does work the same as their other products. For further encouragement, see the Macintosh setup instructions on Novatel's web site (it's basically just setting up PPP). I think the real trick will be finding out how they get all the status information that is supposedly available from the Windows software that comes with it. I highly doubt that they break into the serial stream and keep jumping between PPP and command mode, so there are probably other registers on the card. My experience with CDPD suggests that it would be helpful to have a signal strength meter to aid in wandering around the room, hanging from the ceiling, etc. while trying to get a connection. -- Christopher Masto Senior Network Monkey NetMonger Communications chris@netmonger.net info@netmonger.net http://www.netmonger.net Free yourself, free your machine, free the daemon -- http://www.freebsd.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message
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