Supercool Verizon DSL, Missle Defense and the Power of Knowledge

DSL has come a long way. I put in an order with Verizon over the weekend and I'm up. Compare that to the first time I tried to get DSL back in 1999, and that was when I worked for Southwestern Bell Network Integration. It took like 5 months and I had quit by the time the order finally came through.

All in all no complaints. And more importantly my wife won't keep telling me how horrible our Internet his here. My short experiment of running 4-6 computers through a single EVDO connection is over. Too many user revolts and Verizon was too cheap.

A few minor glitches, had to call tech support, and their IVR was totally hosed, but the first tech I got solved the problem. Hell of a lot better than my experience with Comcast in Vernon Hills when it took over 2 hours after the initial install. RCN was good when it didn't snow, which was a bit of a problem in Chicago

But on the way home from work today listening to C-SPAN Radio, I heard some 3-star director of the the Middle Defense Agency briefing the folks at the Pentagon today. Very impressive and after hearing about this, I'm all for the interceptors they are putting in Eastern Europe. Silly Russians. He was rattling off stuff about azimuths, frequencies, correlation, simulations, various types of radars. Good stuff.

Who knows if it was accurate. The great thing technical knowledge (especially if it is classified) is you never know if they are right or wrong or even telling the truth, but this guy was a good briefer.

Blog Code Repo & Revised EVDO Scripts

Since pasting code snippets into the Blogger is a real pain and I've been rebuilding a lot of my personal systems lately (and forgetting to save config files) I created a code repo for various stuff I want to have managed under revision control. Last night I added the EVDO (and wvdial) scripts I've been use on my Linux gateway as it has gradually moved from backup comms. I finally migrated over to the Ubuntu Hardy based box I built a few months ago because it has the airprime drivers which allow you to exceed the 500Kbps cap.

Frederick County Broadband -- looks like Sprint EVDO it is!

I was sort of worried about broadband in New Market because I would rather die that use Comcast and it doesn't look like DSL is possible, so I guess I'll be rigging up my home grown EVDO router again. Well the fact that I'm under contract for God knows how long is certainly an incentive to stick with it, too.

BTW I actually hit 1.5/1.0 earlier which I thought was pretty amazing.

EVDO airframe drivers and Hardy

Turns out (big surprise!) I was full of it the other night for contemplating leaving Linux for OpenSolaris to get better USB throughput.

[ 63.558567] /build/buildd/linux-2.6.24/drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for airprime
[ 63.558587] airprime 2-1:1.0: airprime converter detected
[ 63.558675] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[ 63.558719] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB1
[ 63.558761] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB2
[ 63.558768] airprime 2-1:1.1: airprime converter detected
[ 63.558812] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB3
[ 63.558854] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB4
[ 63.558897] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB5
[ 63.558903] airprime 2-1:1.2: airprime converter detected
[ 63.558946] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB6
[ 63.558995] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB7
[ 63.559037] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB8
[ 63.559043] airprime 2-1:1.3: airprime converter detected
[ 63.559088] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB9
[ 63.559129] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB10
[ 63.559171] usb 2-1: airprime converter now attached to ttyUSB11
[ 63.559180] usbcore: registered new interface driver airprime
[ 63.577915] /build/buildd/linux-2.6.24/drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for GSM modem (1-port)
[ 63.577937] usbcore: registered new interface driver option
[ 63.577939] /build/buildd/linux-2.6.24/drivers/usb/serial/option.c: USB Driver for GSM modems: v0.7.1

And

mfranz@ubuntu-t61:~$ lsmod | grep usb
usbserial 35688 5 option,airprime
usb_storage 73408 0
libusual 18980 1 usb_storage
scsi_mod 151180 6 usb_storage,sbp2,sr_mod,sg,sd_mod,libata
usbcore 146028 8 option,airprime,usbserial,usb_storage,libusual,ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd

Faster EVDO: Maybe A Reason to Try OpenSolaris?

So the Linux USB serial driver is capped at 500Kb and as I found tonight (piece of shit RCN is averaging about 50% uptime these days) it was pretty much impossible to watch 30 Rock (or any of the other streaming NBC shows) with my EVDO card plugged into my Linux router. (or now that I think of it, maybe this is a just QoS issue since I'm going from 100Mb to 500kb?) but of course when I plopped the card into XP got 1MB easy and we could watch all about the Teamster sandwiches with no problems.

But this OpenSolaris WWAN project looks promising.... Wonder if I can get my Novatel card working with Nexenta Core?

Or are there any of the EVDO routers (that take USB) that don't run Linux or have somehow managed to work around the 500Kb cap?

To answer my own question, it looks like the airpime drivers might actually do the trick.

OpenBSD Finally Gets WPA/WPA2

This could be good news for all those fools^H^H^H^Hfolks that try to run *BSD on their desktop/laptops (although I'm sure someone will prove me wrong, cause I didn't take the time to man those devices)

Damien Bergamini (damien@) just committed WPA-support (wikipedia) for OpenBSD. In the commit message, Damien states that "bwi(4), malo(4), ral(4), iwn(4), wpi(4), ural(4), rum(4), upgt(4), and zyd(4) should work." And, Damien says "support for more chipsets should arrive soon."

To me this is of more significance for folks that build wireless routers than anything else.

But what do I know/care. Although truth be told I wouldn't mind running PF as my home firewall if the USB EVDO card would work.

Down Came the Snow, Down went RCN Cable

Coicidentally with the snow today, RCN went to hell again but my Debian EVDO Router was ready. Actually got rid of the OpenWRT box (wasn't using the wireless anyway) and switched to wvdial, which has done a great job of automatically running pppd if the connection drops.

/etc/rc.local

if mount /dev/sr0 -t iso9660 /mnt
then
       echo "Found Novatel u727"
       sleep 3
       umount /dev/sr0
       eject /dev/sr0
fi

echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
iptables -A POSTROUTING -t nat -o ppp0 -j MASQUERADE
sleep 10
wvdial &

/etc/wvdial.conf

[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Baud = 460800
Init = ATZ
ISDN = 0
Modem Type = USB Modem
Phone = #777
Username = ''
Password = ''
Carrier Check = no
Stupid Mode = yes

Obviously need to clean up the iptables rules, although I'm not terribly worried about it.

Novatel u727 on Debian Etch

I previously blogged on getting this card working on Ubuntu but obviously nobody tried my instructions because it wouldn't have worked. The bizarre thing is that in order to get the USB serial devices to show up, you have to first mount the "Novatel CD" device that gets detected, unmount it, and then eject it. This only has to be done once after the device is powered up ( meaning if you unplug it) so here is what I added to the /etc/rc.local an old Optiplex 100 running Etch so things get automatically setup.

if mount /dev/sr0 -t iso9660 /mnt
then
       echo "Found Novatel u727"
       sleep 3
       umount /dev/sr0
       eject /dev/sr0
       sleep 10
       pppd call sprint
fi

The only thing left is to add an iptables commnad to masquerade everything out the ppp0 interface and I have my backup EVDO gateway. Well and change the default route on a box or two -- or get VRRP working.

So the next time RCN hits the fan (must have been the weather) I'll power up this box and plugin the EVDO adapter and I'll be good to go.

Sprint Novatel u727 on Ubuntu 7.10

Add vendor and product options to /etc/modules

usbserial vendor=0x1410 product=0x4100

Disable automounting of USB serial devices with gnome-volume-properties

Otherwise the USB Serial devices won't show up and you would have to unmount WTF that image that is being mounted from the

Create /etc/ppp/peers/sprint
/dev/ttyUSB0 # modem
115200 # speed
921600 # works, abt 60kbytes/sec on S620
#1036800 # doesn't work
defaultroute # use cellular network for default route
usepeerdns # use the DNS servers from the remote network
nodetach # keep pppd in the foreground
crtscts # hardware flow control
lock # lock the serial port
noauth # don't expect the modem to authenticate itself
local # don't use Carrier Detect or Data Terminal Ready
user
ppp
#passive
debug
lcp-echo-failure 4 # prevent timeouts (1of2)
lcp-echo-interval 65535 # prevent timeouts (2of2)
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/sprint-connect"

Create /etc/chatscripts/sprint-connect

TIMEOUT 10
ABORT 'BUSY'
ABORT 'NO ANSWER'
ABORT 'ERROR'
SAY 'Starting SPRINT connect script\n'

# Get the modem's attention and reset it.
"" 'ATZ'
# E0=No echo, V1=English result codes
#OK 'ATE0V1'

OK 'ATDT#777'
CONNECT

Start pppd

root@gutsy61:~# pppd call sprint
Starting SPRINT connect script
Serial connection established.
using channel 1
Using interface ppp0
Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyUSB0

I might add links to the source materials (cause I obviously didn't come up with this all on my own) but this should work.