Ultimate use for the internal whip?

I am starting a new thread, because this is different than all the other antenna questions. If it becomes useful, it will make it easier to find, if not, it can sink to the bottom of the list...

In a nutshell? How about onboard, completely built-in broadband EVDO ? Broadband (or at least kind of high-speed)) wireless internet, via a cell phone carrier. No dangly wires, no fragile USB devices ("oops, I broke that expensive gadget), all internal.

I was researching this pretty hard about a year ago, I haven't kept up. I live in a rural area, too far for DSL, no cable, and the satellite solutions are inadequate for my needs (plus sat is expensive). There are several possibilities, when I was checking it out, Sprint was the best one by far. The older 800-pound gorilla in that field was I think Verizon. The worst part about that, was that they would terminate your service, and charge you $75 if you used more than 5 gig a month! What was extra phony about this, was that the plan was sold as an "unlimited access". To be fair, most cellphone providers are thinking about you using it only on a phone, to be checking email, look up something on Google, etc. They aren't expecting people to be downloading The Matrix, or whatever. Regardless, they should call it a "5 gig a month plan".

At the same time, Sprint is unleashing it's big pipes for EVDO, and is/was truly unlimited. When I was researching it, I found several users who said they routinely use 20 or 30 gig a month! That's more like it. I was planning to share the connect on my home network, but there is a 30 foot hill between me and the Sprint tower (which is only 2.08 miles away). I have some tower on the ground, but can't afford to put it up right now, blah blah. Getting the service through Sprint usually requires a year contract, but there are some Sprint resellers that will literally let you do it month at a time, with no long-term contract. The people that were wanting to use EVDO for home use liked that, because sometimes it could be a hassle to get working properly, and if it didn't, they didn't want to be stuck. It costs about $50 a month, from either Sprint or the resellers. I would actually save money, if I could dump both my ISP and landline.

There are several differences between this and real broadband. Since it's original use on a cellphone is 'bursty' in nature, it will time out after a few minutes. Typical use is to download a web page, and spend awhile reading it. It's not "on all the time" like traditional broadband. People got around this for home use by setting up a simple program to ping yahoo.com (or whatever) every few minutes. There are a few other networking quirks, like VOIP (Voice Over IP) doesn't work well, because it requires a QOS (quality of service) settings in the networking, that Sprint typically doesn't do for this. But what the hell, it's a cellphone service, use a cellphone to talk....

There are several EVDO (stands for Evolutionary Data-Only) hardware devices. A similar technology is HSPDA, but I didn't investigate that very much. EVDO has an x2 version, which is a gig downstream! A Pantech card (something-500? I forget) is PCMCIA, widely supported, and often free with a new signup. In my case, I was investigating Linux compatibility as well. There are several PCMCIA cards. There are some USB devices as well. The USB devices could be useful for home, but more fragile for portable/mobile use. What was really interesting, was that somebody took one of them apart, and all it was inside was a miniPCI card, with some minimal circuitry to use USB.

Hmm, now it's getting interesting! I wonder if that miniPCI card would fit into one of the CF-28 slots, work properly, and hook to the internal whip? If not that, many have homebrewed external antennae here. There are several different frequencies that various cellphone technologies use, it can't all be lumped into "a cell antenna" without serious loss of performance.

An excellent source of info, is http://www.evdoinfo.com/content/view/37/61/ There are several sister sites, including an active forum. It's all run under the auspices of a vendor that is selling stuff, 3gstore.com

Thoughts? You could do some cool stuff with this. Couple it with wifi and a decent antenna, and you could be a mobile/portable wifi hotspot.

 

A friend and I have been investigating EVDO (digital cellphone modem) access via Alltel.

We found this procedure linked our cellphone as a modem http://bibleseven.com/tr-cellmonet.html
and were looking into Linux and networking the cellphone modem connection.

With Alltel (I am unfamiliar with other providers) the cellphone will accept voice calls during a
data connection. If one wants to dial-out it pauses the connection.

There are some interesting mixed values to using ones cellphone vs a dedicated card. The
card is internal in your design and that makes good sense as it is safer there and there are no
external cables; however, it is an added cost (purchase and monthly fee) that is locked into one
laptop whereas using my cellphone allows me to connect it to any computer and I believe that
the monthly fee is smaller).

The dedicated card is optimized for data and likely to provide better throughput.

I am fascinated to see where this leads and what data Forum members can add about
different providers.

Thanks! doc

 

Verizon has an AirCard by Sierra Wireless that would fit into the hidden pcmcia slot, I guess you could connect the Whip antenna to such a card but would the antenna work with EVDO? What is the frequency of the EVDO network?

 

I use Motorola Phone Tools to connect with my V3i via bluetooth if I am somewhere I can't get broadband. It works very well though it is slow. Not quite as slow as dial up... But close. It works very well and I can always get through.

 

They make internal cards (with seperate antenna) for CDMA, EVDO, & EDGE. They are options on 29's & 18's on up. The whole RIM antenna & ass. parts were used on a cell network, can't remember which one right now. I have modded all of my 28's to use a Sprint broadband card in the internal slot. The newest card they have out (& a few others)(Sprint) have external antenna jacks, & one even comes with an external antenna. I fully believe in paying for what I want, so if I want internet access, I'll pay for it, & I'll have it whenever I choose. I have been using the Sprint service since they came out with it. So yes, you can get an internal card. The RIM antenna was a cell antenna, but how well it would work with other cards? Sounds like trial & error to me!

 

Rockstarbus, how do you like the Sprint service? Do you have the Rev2, or x2 or whatever the newer software release was? What kind of bandwidth do you get? I know there are several PCMCIA cards with little flip-up antenna. I am paranoid about PCMCIA things sticking out of laptops in a vehicle (my intended use). I use PCMCIA wifi cards for wardriving, and using it in a vehicle can be a pretty hostile environment. My use is nothing like the off-road guys, but I have had several PCMCIA cards broken, USB things snapped off, and several antenna pigtails damaged (those are quite fragile and small). Another old laptop I was using died while in use. Taking it apart I found a little nut that had vibrated loose, and bounced around inside until it shorted something out. This is why Toughbooks are appealing to me for wardriving.

Since some of the USB EVDO devices just had a miniPCI card inside them, that seemed like it would be really safe and secure deep inside the Toughbook under the HD compartment. Again, that was assuming the whip antenna was suitable for Sprint's cell frequencies, there are several different bands that cell phones use.

For my interest in Sprint's EVDO, I would be keeping it at home, just thought the Toughbook might offer an interesting use for those that want to use it mobile. I have an old Pentium II PC, that has a working PCMCIA card slot, I was/am planning to use that as the main "radio" PC, then share it's connect locally in my house with Ethernet.

Doc, a comment on your post, while I am fairly fluent in Linux, I was considering http://www.mikrotik.com/ as an OS for this old P II that I have. I follow some wireless ISP lists, and these guys have been in love with this for some time. It's a Linux variant, but all tweaked up exclusively for being used in wifi AP's, firewalls, routers and networking. They sell it on small boards, and the OS is available separately. I spoke with them awhile back, to see if they could/would support some of the EVDO cards, and they indicated that they might. I was interested in it, because it has very light hardware requirements, and this old P II that I have is a tank, and should run it very well. It has a nice Windows GUI remote control panel for it as well.

It's a commercial product, and it's not open sourced. It's for sale. You can use it for awhile free, then they want you to buy it. I don't begrudge them that, they are in a small country in I think Eastern Europe, and seem to be very good at this. You could do every single thing that they are with most any Linux distro, but this seems very convenient, and they have all the other stuff stripped out. I have worked on making a barebones stripped down Linux variant for another project, and it's harder than it sounds.

 

Bumping this, as per the recent EVDO discussion... I searched a bit, what I was referring to above was the Novatel U720. The link is old, but if it was USD $50 a year ago, it's certainly cheap now. This was what guys were taking apart, and getting the miniPCI board out of.

The various cellphone services use different freqs, but it would sure be nice to use the whip as is for something like this. Looks like Evilbay has several for cheap. Be sure to not be buying one with a 2-year plan, unless you want to. You can find ISP resellers to use this for a flat $50/month with no 2-year plans required, and a free device.

edit: The device I was originally interested in for semi-permanent home use was a PCMCIA card, Pantech PX-500. Available free from some of the resellers.

 

I use a Sierra Wireless AirCard 875 on Cingular (ATT now) running in my hometown on the EDGE network, and its fast. The card supports the new network (3G) which is even faster, but is not yet in my area. The service plan is pretty pricey, but my work pays for it, and it is cheaper to pay the montly fee, than to have 1 occasion where I need to download a single 100MB file, paying by the MB.

Sometimes, the only way to connect is via cellular, and when you need it, it is very much worth it.

I would be very interested in a card that I can insert into the PCMCIA slot and close the cover, using the built in antenna. However, with my card, I like that I can switch it between laptops (work, and now toughbook), and since it has a GSM card in it, burying it inside the laptop may make things a little tricky if I want to switch plans or something like that...

 

Picoshark -- If I were building a router, firewall or any other device I had exposed to the net, I would do so in OpenBSD (which I have done). Its free, and well supported, and ported to many many platforms. The control of the applications available on it is also very high, so you don't run into some of the issues you get in Linux with applications stomping over one another. It runs on laptops, and I ran it quite successfully at work on my IBM thinkpad. The user communitty is very smart, but not as helpful as some others in that they expect you to do your homework before asking questions, but I love the OS. For security "out of the box" you can't get better!

 

I would be interested in a cingular based internal board that I can get broadband on if anyone has any leads. I took a quick look around, and it seems like there is one for the CF-18's that supports EDGE and HSPDA, so if anyone has any leads on that, I would appreciate it. min-pci or pcmcia with extrenal antenna that fits in the internal pcmcia slot. Though I am leaning towards the mini-pci...

 

Toughbook and others here have used miniPCI cards, and mounted a small connector on the right side for a removable wifi antenna. As long as you have correct cables/jacks/antenna, it looks like it would surely work fine for EVDO/Edge/HSDPA cell connects as well.