[ILUG] mobile internet in dublin

[jez]

On Tue, Jan 23, 2007 at 04:44:35PM +0000, Gareth 'bigbro' Eason wrote:
> 
> 	I have a Vodafone 3G PCMCIA card from work which I use while 
> 	travelling about the country, from trains, etc. It works fine under Linux 
> (Ubuntu Edgy) using wvdial.
> 

Yep, the Vodafone Connect cards work quite well. 

When I started to use the service it seemed to be pretty sluggish. In
particular it appeared to be spending most of it's time hung on DNS
lookups. I found that I get a much better service if I maintain a
constant flow of traffic accross the link. So, whenever I bring up 
the connection, I ssh into an online machine and then just ping
localhost. This keeps a constant flow of TCP traffic accross my Vodafone
link, which in turn leads to a more responsive service. 

I'll post my configuration files below in case you need them, but if
wvdial works for you, then great! 

To use the following configuration, do:

    pppd call vodafone

And to kill the connection, do:

    skill pppd


## /etc/resolv.conf
# Vodafone DNS Servers
nameserver 213.233.128.19
nameserver 213.233.128.1
# Eircom DNS Servers - for when Vodafone's aren't performing
# nameserver 159.134.237.6
# nameserver 159.134.248.17


## /etc/ppp/peers/vodafone
/dev/ttyUSB0 921600 crtscts 
connect '/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/ppp/chat/vodafone'
idle 7200
lock
noauth
defaultroute
noipdefault
usepeerdns
user Vodafone
password Vodafone
novj
nobsdcomp
debug


## /etc/ppp/chat/vodafone
ABORT BUSY 
ABORT 'NO CARRIER'
ABORT ERROR
REPORT CONNECT
TIMEOUT 120
"" "AT&F"
OK "ATE1" 
TIMEOUT 60
OK "ATD*99#"