[Gllug] Internet connection through mobile phone

[Robert McKay]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 4:09 PM, felix swart <felix.swart at googlemail.com>wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I have moved into a flat which is not connected to the local exchange and
> am loathe to hand over roughly £120 to BT for the connection. Does anyone
> have experience with mobile internet used for a home connection; no
> streaming or downloading distro images, just general surfing.
>

I'm basically in exactly the same situation - moved into a flat with no BT
landline and balked at the install fee. I am currently using a T-Mobile 3g
broadband stick on PAYG £15 for 30 days of internet access. No contract.
This gives you 5GB of download per 30 days.. after you use that up, they
restrict your access so that you can only make http requests for non-media
files (eg:  .flv, .mp3 etc requests will not be permitted; yes it actually
looks at the filename of the GET request). Non HTTP protocols are also
banned after 5GB. Low throughput udp seems to be tolerated but destinations
become banned for a few seconds if the throughput exceeds some threshold.

Even with the first 5GB of transfer all your http requests are degraded by a
transparent proxy server which degrades the images and inserts javascript
into your web pages..

All this is extremely annoying, so basically I've setup openvpn, and using
it's tcp tunneling mechanism have rigged it up to go through proxy2ssh to my
bytemark vm which has an extra IP - so now I have a proper static IP on the
internet backhauled over http so it continues to work even after the 5GB has
been depleted.

It's all a bit inconvenient and does add a bit of latency (ping/mtr
cows.mckay.com to see) which makes it unsuitable for online gaming however
I'm still using it (it's been over 3 months now I think) and will probably
continue to do so through sheer stubbornness. I'm currently over my 5GB
limit for this month, but I can still stream youtube videos just fine..
although I'm probably in violation of whatever terms and conditions they
have I don't have a contract with them so I'm not particularly concerned.

Three mobile has a 15GB for £15/mo on an 18mo contract.. I'm somewhat
tempted to get that as it might be almost enough and it would allow for udp
tunneling instead of tcp which would probably be better. Three also gives
you a real public IP (dynamically assigned) and doesn't mess around with
compressing your images so I might even be tempted to do without tunneling
which would probably be even better. On the other hand, the T-Mobile PAYG
"unlimited" with restrictions (http only after 5GB) does give you unlimited
access (albeit in an inconvenient way) without a contract.

Another option might be the O2 iphone sims which offer unlimited access for
a year. You can buy these on ebay and reports are that they will work just
fine in an unlocked or o2 broadband dongle, but o2 may be banning them...

for example:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/O2-iPhone-3G-Pay-Go-Sim-Card-FREE-INTERNET-AND-WIFI_W0QQitemZ170410052174QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Mobile_Home_Phones_Sim_Cards_CV?hash=item27ad3b0a4e


> Related to that: Has anyone played with the Nokia N900? Any comments on its
> suitability as a mobile internet modem?
>

Can't say that I have..

I'm using my broadband dongle in a Dovado UMR which is a small router with a
usb socket for plugging in broadband dongles. It gives you ethernet and wifi
presentation which is sortof nice although Linux seems to have good support
for most usb broadband dongles (you will likely need to mess around with the
usb_modeswitch utility to get it into 'modem' mode instead of micro-sd card
reader mode, if it has a build in card reader which many of them now do).

Most phones will work fine as modems over bluetooth but the usb broadband
dongles are so cheap I would probably still recommend just getting one if
you are planning to use it as a permanent solution.

One other option I'm considering is getting some kind of parabolic dish wifi
antenna and trying to hook into thecloud or the BTFON/BTOpenzone hotspot at
starbucks (this actually just about works without a special antenna but it
does drop out and there aren't currently any attractive price-plans for
permanent connections to openzone APs).


Rob.
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