[Wolves] Mobile Broadband

Alex Willmer alex at moreati.org.uk
Sun Jan 6 18:45:50 GMT 2008


On Sun, 2008-01-06 at 15:23 +0000, Adam Sweet wrote:
> Mobile broadband, right, there's more than one way to do it. Can
> someone
> either explain or point me at a link which explains the different ways
> to connect to the net using GPRS, GSM, 3g cards and whatnot. Is 3g the
> same as GSM?

Just a quick overview:

GSM is the standard for every mobile phone in Europe.
GSM has come in multiple generations.
Second generation telephony (2G) is classic GSM - voice and texting.
GPRS is packet data shoe horned in GSM, aka 2.5G. Upto 230 kbit down.
Third generation telephony (3G) is UMTS, voice & data unified.
3G alone can maybe achieve 1- Mbit down, power consumption is high.
HSDPA is packet data optimised enhancment to 3G, aka 3.5G. Upto 7 Mbit
down.

3G is a generation of GSM. Strictly GSM is the standards body, which the
standard got named after.

I have read of Linux users getting the usb modems to work with Linux, I
believe the modem emulates a classical dialup modem. As Peter said,
there are routers that can use 3G as the uplink.

If you wish to use your mobile phone as the modem then there are two
possibilities. Either the phone emulates a dialup modem, or over
bluetooth, the phone can serve as a 'PAN gateway' - routing and serving
dhcp over a private Personal Area Network.

On T-Mobile Web 'n' Walk you're restricted by TOS to web browsing on the
device. To use it as a modem you're meant purchase Web 'n Walk plus.
T-Mobile run a transparent proxy that recompresses JPEGS and fiddles
with the HTML.

Alex




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