Wireless Broadband
Friday, 22. August 2008, 23:39:00
Recently I decided to purchase a Dell 5520 wireless broadband card for my laptop. A touch under AUD$200 on ebay, including shipping. Not the cheapest I've heard of, but much cheaper than some I've seen.
The main reason was that a couple of times I'd been doing a business presentation, and it would have been really, really nice to get on to the net and show a demo of a live site. Due to security restrictions there is too much software setup to use client computers.
After the first time I worked on enabling Internet access through my mobile phone and Bluetooth. That worked, but my phone is GRPS only (actually, it supports EDGE, but my telco doesn't). GPRS was far too slow. Something faster was needed. I've used USB and ExpressCard 3G modems on client laptops, but I knew my laptop (a Dell Inspiron 1520) supported an internal card and had a dedicated SIM slot and internal antennas too. The only question was: which card? A search through the Australian broadband forum Whirlpool provided the answer: the previously mentioned Dell 5520, which is a rebadged Novatel Wireless Expedite EU860D.
Having purchased it, it was a simple matter of finding the correct driver on Dell's support site. In my case I had bought an AT&T modem from the US, so the Cingular drivers were required. Then I configured a new profile with my telco's APN, stuck in my SIM card, and with a minimum of fuss I was online! While the card in theory supports speeds up to 7.2Mbps, my telco only supports up to 3.6Mbps. In practice I got less than that: about 650kbps. That's still faster than an awful lot of wired broadband connections around here. It's also hard to beat the portability of wireless, not to mention no protruding antennas or other devices hanging off my laptop.
The next hurdle is access costs. Here in Australia, wireless broadband in particular is hideously expensive. I've also found the costs are rather arbitrary. For example, to access the Internet via my mobile phone account, the general data cost is 0.3c/kB. On the other hand, if I signed up for a $30/mth dedicated wireless broadband account, it's only 0.015c/kB. What I don't understand is the 20x difference in data prices for the same service?
Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that, with varying charging rates, included data, data charge caps, minimum monthly spends, etc. What it works out to, though, is that if I stick with my existing mobile phone account (i.e. do not spend the extra for a dedicated wireless broadband account), then so long as I keep my monthly traffic to 11.7MB or less, the data charges are less than the $30/mth I would otherwise have to spend. That will be easy as my laptop is almost always around the home/office where I have always-on Wifi Internet access. The wireless broadband is really for those rare emergencies where I simply must get on the net when 'out and about'!
The last piece in the jigsaw was getting access to my office network via a VPN. This turned out to be easier than expected to set up. In short, I needed a Windows PC on my office network to act as the VPN Server, then I created the VPN Client connection on my laptop. With a tiny amount of authentication tweaking it was working - I could surf to servers on my office network. However, Windows network shares were inaccessible. I worked around that by creating an lmhosts file and listing the two office file servers, but I can't help thinking there should be a better way.
Now I feel like a real road-warrior!
The main reason was that a couple of times I'd been doing a business presentation, and it would have been really, really nice to get on to the net and show a demo of a live site. Due to security restrictions there is too much software setup to use client computers.
After the first time I worked on enabling Internet access through my mobile phone and Bluetooth. That worked, but my phone is GRPS only (actually, it supports EDGE, but my telco doesn't). GPRS was far too slow. Something faster was needed. I've used USB and ExpressCard 3G modems on client laptops, but I knew my laptop (a Dell Inspiron 1520) supported an internal card and had a dedicated SIM slot and internal antennas too. The only question was: which card? A search through the Australian broadband forum Whirlpool provided the answer: the previously mentioned Dell 5520, which is a rebadged Novatel Wireless Expedite EU860D.
Having purchased it, it was a simple matter of finding the correct driver on Dell's support site. In my case I had bought an AT&T modem from the US, so the Cingular drivers were required. Then I configured a new profile with my telco's APN, stuck in my SIM card, and with a minimum of fuss I was online! While the card in theory supports speeds up to 7.2Mbps, my telco only supports up to 3.6Mbps. In practice I got less than that: about 650kbps. That's still faster than an awful lot of wired broadband connections around here. It's also hard to beat the portability of wireless, not to mention no protruding antennas or other devices hanging off my laptop.
The next hurdle is access costs. Here in Australia, wireless broadband in particular is hideously expensive. I've also found the costs are rather arbitrary. For example, to access the Internet via my mobile phone account, the general data cost is 0.3c/kB. On the other hand, if I signed up for a $30/mth dedicated wireless broadband account, it's only 0.015c/kB. What I don't understand is the 20x difference in data prices for the same service?
Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that, with varying charging rates, included data, data charge caps, minimum monthly spends, etc. What it works out to, though, is that if I stick with my existing mobile phone account (i.e. do not spend the extra for a dedicated wireless broadband account), then so long as I keep my monthly traffic to 11.7MB or less, the data charges are less than the $30/mth I would otherwise have to spend. That will be easy as my laptop is almost always around the home/office where I have always-on Wifi Internet access. The wireless broadband is really for those rare emergencies where I simply must get on the net when 'out and about'!
The last piece in the jigsaw was getting access to my office network via a VPN. This turned out to be easier than expected to set up. In short, I needed a Windows PC on my office network to act as the VPN Server, then I created the VPN Client connection on my laptop. With a tiny amount of authentication tweaking it was working - I could surf to servers on my office network. However, Windows network shares were inaccessible. I worked around that by creating an lmhosts file and listing the two office file servers, but I can't help thinking there should be a better way.
Now I feel like a real road-warrior!
WIDGETIZE