[nmglug] mobile phone offering network to laptop?

[andres]

On Fri, 2008-05-09 at 12:10 -0600, Mark Galassi wrote:

> Amigos, this is something I've never done, but I will need to do for
> some experiments we have.
> 
> I need to have a gadget (maybe a mobile phone?) which offers an ethernet
> port, preferably with a dhcp server and local subnet, but it's OK if
> it's a single address.


I don't know how portable your gadget has to be,
there are two options here, some takes more hacking than the other,

one solid solution for this is using something like a soekris mobo
with one evdo card to connect to the mobile network
and either using the regular ethernet port or having a second,
regular wifi card for the users to access it as a gateway to the mobile
network,
some iptables required but certainly not a complex setup,

plugged to i.e. your car, will convert it in a mobile hot spot,

and if you are about 100 feet from your car,
you can still use a wifi voip phone as your "mobile"



> 
> In other words, the same kind of router that you typically get with a
> DSL modem at home, but small and mobile.


define mobile,

if you need something really mobile as a phone
the only device I know off that is capable of this is the openmoko phone
you can plug it to the phone wireless network and add usb wifi to it for
the users,

a caveat though is that you might not want a digital network because
they are very slow,
so the solution is verizon with evdo, or probably still openmoko but
you'll need to replicate the usb port,
do usb to evdo on one,
and usb to wifi on other,





> It should allow incoming ssh, possibly via a "port forwarding" setup on
> the router's 192.168.0.1 address.
> 
> I have heard of people with mobile phones that can surf the web, but
> they usually are self-contained and don't have twisted pair ports.
> 
> I have heard of pcmcia cards for laptops that are cellular modems.  This
> might be the kind of thing, because then the laptop might be configured
> to offer the ethernet to other machines, but it would be bulky.  (I also
> wonder if nowadays the pcmcia cards are becoming USB cards; this would
> help since the equipment we are sending out has rack-mounted computers,
> not laptops, hence no pcmcia.)
> 
> Are there other gadgets that I have not heard about?  Maybe this biggish
> cell-phone with an ethernet port really exists?
> 
> And I'll buy a beer if your answer includes information on whether these
> mobile phone providers have good coverage of very rural "south coast of
> Louisiana" and mississippi delta swamplands.
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