tensixtyone

Its been a while since I’ve done a good hack article. so again I’m back onto my favourite topic of 3G modems. Thanks to the generous promotions at 3dongles4free I’ve been able to pickup a new Three dongle for next to nothing. As I’ve already got my E160G I didn’t really need this to be on the Three network.

After a quick search around and a few suggestions from existing mailing lists I’ve found out that a hacked firmware exists and these cheap and cheerful dongles can be flashed to allow any SIM card to be used. This should be a simple job of updating the software and using the new SIM card.

First of all, grab the software pack from Rapidshare, due to the questionable nature of this copy of the firmware no one has been willing to host it on their own hosting, and I’ll keep to that idea. Extract the files from the RAR and you should have a firmware upgrade, and a installation folder for the connection software. As the existing Three connection software is very limited, the software package includes the Telstra version which allows you to define your own settings.

Before you attempt the software upgrade, you need to remove any existing Three software, install the Telstra version and remove your SIM card from the dongle, then simply plug it in and run the firmware upgrade. This process will take around 15-25 minutes and once it’s done it’ll give you a prompt. During the upgrade do not power off your PC or remove the dongle from the USB socket. This will brick your dongle rendering it completely useless.

Now, put in your non-Three SIM card and plug it back into your PC, the Telstra software should start-up and try detect the device, you need to configure the software for your provider’s APN settings, but the PDF document included with the software package will give you all the details you need.

Remember, I take no responsibility for people bricking their equipment, you have been warned.

So, in my last post I described how it was using the E160G with Debian. All in all it’s very good and i’ve not experienced any major issues, bar a few minor apt-get and NetworkManager issues. So, heres a quick rundown of how to get it on your machine.

So first, you need to get the hardware to work correctly under Debian. Plug in your E160G and check dmesg to see if the device recognises correctly. If you see ttyUSB0/ttyUSB1 appear you can skip this step.

First, you need to download USB_Modeswitch:

# wget http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/usb_modeswitch-0.9.4.tar.bz2
# tar jxvf usb_modeswitch-0.9.4.tar.bz2
# cd usb_modeswitch-0.9.4/
# ./compile.sh

Now you have the usb_modeswitch program, as this will be executed by udev it needs to be in a sensible location, personally i’d copy it to /usr/local/sbin/

# cp usb_modeswitch /usr/local/sbin/

Also, you need to grab the latest config file from the usb_modeswitch website and put it into /etc

# wget http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/usb_modeswitch.conf
# sudo mv usb_modeswitch.conf /etc/

Now, by default the config file comes with the section commented out, so edit the file and uncomment the section for the E220 (which is essentially the same device).

# sudo $EDITOR /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf

One last step, you need to add a small configuration file to udev to detect the E160G and run usb_modeswitch, put this file in you /etc/udev/rules.d/ folder:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="1003", SYSFS{idVendor}=="12d1",
  RUN+="/usr/local/sbin/usb_modeswitch"

Restart udev, and plug in your E160G…

sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart

and you should see something similar to:

[   16.085904] usb 5-3: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[   16.086033] usb 5-3: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB1

So, the device is detected and you have your USB ports, first a quick overview. The E160G shows two serial ports, one is a data port, the other is for control signals. NetworkManager only makes use of one of these ports but the Vodafone Connection Manager uses both. Now you have a choice, install Network Manager 0.7 to gain native GPRS/UMTS data support or use another package. I went for Network Manager, while it’s still in beta and i’ve had a few run-ins in the past with it I decided to give it a go.

So, it was a simple case of adding the 0.7 repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list, updating, then installing the needed packages.

# echo "deb http://debs.michaelbiebl.de/ unstable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
# apt-get update
# apt-get -t unstable install network-manager

You might need to remove any old Network Manager packages before you do this, as network-manager-openvpn collides with the new package.

Hopefully thats give you the overview you needed, and you should be up and running!

I went to the post office and got my hands on the Huawei E160G with my reduced contract, and so far I am very pleased with it. The modem itself is a large USB stick, very comparable in size to a cigarette lighter. What is interesting is that the electronics can now be packaged in such a small kit, why ain’t they producing mobile phones of this size?

My first step was to get it working on Windows, I plugged in the modem on my old Windows PC and followed the numerous (and strange) online prompts to setup the software. After a lot of beeping, detecting new hardware and other jiggery pokery, I was presented with the Three Modem Manager application. The modem manager is a simple too that enables you to run the “dialup” connection through the modem. I whipped open the setup manual which informed me that no other setup was required bar setting up the software. So I clicked “Connect”…

… and it failed?

According to the tool I had to check my settings to see if they’re correct. This is a fresh setup of the tool, why would I need to check the settings when Three’s own guide mentions theres no setup needed. After 10-15 minutes poking around in the settings menu I finally threw in the towel. Sod it, I wanted to run this thing on Linux anyway so why am I putting myself through the pain?

Linux is, well, the way it was supposed to happen. I plugged in the stick and straight away I had numerous devices available, the “CD-ROM drive” for the drivers, the MicroSD reader, and the “tty” ports for the actual GSM modem. At this time I could of gone the route of setting up Gnome PPP and related tools to dialout to the provider and start using my new fancy net connection, but I’d heard that Network Manager 0.7 had the features to use 3G/GPRS built in without any extra settings. I decided to investigate the new version of Network Manager.

After much digging around on the ‘tubes, I finally found a Debian repository containing a build of the lastest Network Manager SVN. A little apt pinning and installation later I had the new version of the tool install. I browsed the existing menu and found a new option: “Auto connection to 3G/GPRS” , I selected the option and it connected.

I have to have a little moment to reflect here, “Mobile Broadband” is a new fad at the moment for most telecoms providers worldwide, so you would expect the Linux software support to be a little sketchy and buggy, but as it turns out the Linux method is alot simplier and easier to use. I’m not sure if I was missing anything obvious in Windows, but isn’t this stuff just supposed to work?

So, signed on to 3G I decided to give it a run for it’s money. I’m running these tests at 1:08am so it maybe a little bias, as I doubt many people would be actually using the APs at this time. I seem to be getting a variable speed of about 1-2mbps, and 150kbps upstream, not bad at all for a mobile provider. The documentation mentions that you should expect up to 2.5mbps, not the 7.2mbps advertised on some sites, all in all Three do a good job of pre-warning you that the speed on the box is not always what you get.

So far I’m happy with it, I’ve had a few minor issues with the stick not registering on the network but I’m not sure if this was down to my settings or just a small outage. I’ll post a guide in the next few days on configuring Debian up for Network Manager 0.7 and setting it up to work with the E160G.

At first, when the likes of Three and Vodafone released their “Mobile Broadband” services I was a little skeptical that it’ll be worth the money. 3G data is notoriously rubbish in the UK, either services are capped back to GPRS speeds or are heavily firewalled to make a “walled garden” of approved content. The premise is as follows, Three are starting to reduce their monthly cost in a attempt to get the customers in to back their massive HSDPA expansion in the UK, along with sites like Quidco offering interesting discounts on contracts and special half-price deals, it looks even better…

So I bought in.

On Wednesday I bought Three’s 5GB/month offer package through Quidco, which came to £7.50/per month and £12.50 cashback. For me, the 5GB limit is perfect as I doubt i’ll ever use over that amount in a monthly period. A few people have pointed me to similar packages on T-Mobile, but you can see just from a quick look in that list that the actual price is quite high for what you get, the only bonuses of that package would be the free T-Mobile wifi access (which theres alot of access points for in the UK) and the AUP style limiting, in that if you go over your limit you don’t get charged, you only get kicked up to the higher package if your a constant abuser.

So what’s the catch? Overage. Three charge you £1/per MB in overage, so a extra GB would cost you £1024. In today’s modern telecoms world that is an insane price, which again many people have pointed out to me. If you have no intention of using up to the bandwidth limit, what’s the issue?

Well, I got a useful Royal Mail red slip through the post yesterday, so I have to head down and pickup the equipment. Hopefully by the end of today I can give it a test and write down some more thoughts on it.