CELL PHONE INTERNET ACCESS
CELL PHONE INTERNET ACCESS This is designed to explain the basic approach to using your cell phone with your computer to connect to the internet. It is not intended to be an in depth coverage of t...
Forum Discussion
As I've recently changed my work environment and can now telecommute, we started the process of prepping for RV travel. One essential item was Internet access. I simply had to have it for my job.
I liked the speed of the satellite systems, and the new auto-pointing ones looked to be useful while in transit (I needed to be online while on the road), but the price was high, and I wasn't sure how the large latency would affect VPN connections to the office.
The other option was cellular modem. The prices were more reasonable, though the speeds were more modest. HOwever, they offered more portability.
It appears Sprint has a few lower cost plans, but we already had our regular phone with Verizon, so I opted for Verizon 1xRTT/1xEV-DO service. I selected a Kyocera KPC650 card, as it has a movable antenna and a jack for an external antenna. As well, online tests showed it had the best signal reception.
I installed the CD for the service on my XP box, and was running.
That's where folks on here probably stop. All is well.
However, I had some additional requirements. I wanted to ensure my wife (who has her own laptop) could access the Internet at the same time I accessed it (at night, I check on personal email and such, and she researches for the next day's or week's activities, checks the weather, etc.
Someone in here previously mentioned the Kyocera KR-1 router, which supports this function. You dump your card into the router box, and it bridges the cellular traffic to Wifi, so anyone within Wifi range can use the connection. That was a good, but pricey options. So I rolled my own.
I secured a small embedded PC from eBay (about 4"x5"x2") that runs on 12 volts DC and has two PCMCIA ports. I stuck the KPC650 into one slot, and got a bargain Prism-II based Wifi PCMCIA card for the other slot.
Then, I dumped Metrix Linux 0.9 on a CompactFlash card and put it on the PC (the PC has a CF slot in addition to the PCMCIA slots). After getting the machine to boot, and some tweaking, the system sets up a remote "WiFi hot spot" around our RV.
Specifically:
On boot, the system reads the OS from the CF card, and boots into Linux
It then dials the Verizon network
It finally configures the cheap WiFi card as an access point.
The box also has the option of using s dynamic DNS system like Dyndns.com to give it a DNS name, and it runs a small web server. I don't have it configured at present, but if you plug a GPS box into the USB ports or the RS232, it will put a Google map of where the box is located (assuming you are close to the box) on the web site, and folks can visit the web page and see where you are.
In any event, it runs all the time, redialing the connection when it goes down for any reason. Our laptops then connect to the Internet with normal WiFi cards. If the current location has a better WiFi connection, our PCs will bring up a note about the new access, and we can switch to the faster connection until it disappears, at which time we fall back to the slower Verizon service.
Although not a planned feature, when we are using the router, friends in nearby campers can enjoy some Internet access.
If I need to be more mobile, I simply shut off the router, pull the air card, and pop it into my laptop. The router OS is designed to not require a "shutdown" like a Windows PC. Just cut power, no ill effects.
One can always crave more speed, but it allows me to telecommute from anywhere (well, almost anywhere), and we've gotten a lot of use out of it outside of work (checking weather, finding campgrounds, searching for local RV dealers, etc.)
Jim
I liked the speed of the satellite systems, and the new auto-pointing ones looked to be useful while in transit (I needed to be online while on the road), but the price was high, and I wasn't sure how the large latency would affect VPN connections to the office.
The other option was cellular modem. The prices were more reasonable, though the speeds were more modest. HOwever, they offered more portability.
It appears Sprint has a few lower cost plans, but we already had our regular phone with Verizon, so I opted for Verizon 1xRTT/1xEV-DO service. I selected a Kyocera KPC650 card, as it has a movable antenna and a jack for an external antenna. As well, online tests showed it had the best signal reception.
I installed the CD for the service on my XP box, and was running.
That's where folks on here probably stop. All is well.
However, I had some additional requirements. I wanted to ensure my wife (who has her own laptop) could access the Internet at the same time I accessed it (at night, I check on personal email and such, and she researches for the next day's or week's activities, checks the weather, etc.
Someone in here previously mentioned the Kyocera KR-1 router, which supports this function. You dump your card into the router box, and it bridges the cellular traffic to Wifi, so anyone within Wifi range can use the connection. That was a good, but pricey options. So I rolled my own.
I secured a small embedded PC from eBay (about 4"x5"x2") that runs on 12 volts DC and has two PCMCIA ports. I stuck the KPC650 into one slot, and got a bargain Prism-II based Wifi PCMCIA card for the other slot.
Then, I dumped Metrix Linux 0.9 on a CompactFlash card and put it on the PC (the PC has a CF slot in addition to the PCMCIA slots). After getting the machine to boot, and some tweaking, the system sets up a remote "WiFi hot spot" around our RV.
Specifically:
On boot, the system reads the OS from the CF card, and boots into Linux
It then dials the Verizon network
It finally configures the cheap WiFi card as an access point.
The box also has the option of using s dynamic DNS system like Dyndns.com to give it a DNS name, and it runs a small web server. I don't have it configured at present, but if you plug a GPS box into the USB ports or the RS232, it will put a Google map of where the box is located (assuming you are close to the box) on the web site, and folks can visit the web page and see where you are.
In any event, it runs all the time, redialing the connection when it goes down for any reason. Our laptops then connect to the Internet with normal WiFi cards. If the current location has a better WiFi connection, our PCs will bring up a note about the new access, and we can switch to the faster connection until it disappears, at which time we fall back to the slower Verizon service.
Although not a planned feature, when we are using the router, friends in nearby campers can enjoy some Internet access.
If I need to be more mobile, I simply shut off the router, pull the air card, and pop it into my laptop. The router OS is designed to not require a "shutdown" like a Windows PC. Just cut power, no ill effects.
One can always crave more speed, but it allows me to telecommute from anywhere (well, almost anywhere), and we've gotten a lot of use out of it outside of work (checking weather, finding campgrounds, searching for local RV dealers, etc.)
Jim
