Three's 3G Wi-Fi router Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

Back in May I noted that Three were thinking about rolling out a line of home routers...

So this is just to note that they're now offering their D100 Wireless Router for £69.99 when purchased with one of their USB broadband dongles which I recently had for review. The nice thing here is that, unlike some other 3G routers, this one uses the USB dongle to provide the network connection, which means that you can pull the dongle out and take it with you when you're traveling.

It's nice to see this sort of technology trickling down into the consumer market at last. Of course, I'm still more interested in getting my hands on a femtocell. Is there any network that's even doing a closed beta trial of femtocells in the UK?

Update: Unboxing video from KCJH (via 3mobilebuzz)...

Three and the spam problem Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

So if you've been keeping up you'll know I have one of Three's new HSDPA USB modems on loan for review, and that I'm also currently out in Italy.

After sorting out some teething troubles, the SIM card I have didn't come pre-activated for international roaming since it's a trial account, I've been using it fairly heavily. There is actually good coverage out here in Trieste, better in fact than I've seen in the UK in the past. Transfer speeds are pretty good, it's only noticeably slower than WiFi when you hit something like Google Maps which is heavy with AJAX and dynamic content.

I have stumbled across one problem though. Interestingly, it looks like the email I'm sending when connected through the dongle is getting black holed by the SpamCop, SORBS and NJABL lists.

Looking at the SpamCop entry for the pool address I was using it has been listed 17 times for a total of 69.4 days in the last 71 days. Most the other IP addresses in the same block have also been listed. In other words, it looks like a lot of Three's dynamic IP pool is listed as a source of spam.

That's bad news. Certainly anyone who sent me email that got flagged as coming from an IP address which is on one, or in this case more than one, real-time blackhole list stands a poor chance of me ever actually seeing the message unless they're on my mail client's white list. Since my white list basically consists of my boss and my wife, and not necessarily in that order, it's unlikely that will help them that much.

Of course I can work round the problem by connecting to my work's VPN, which means that to the world it'll look just as though I'm sitting back at my desk in Exeter. However, not everyone has that option. While black listing addresses in dynamic IP pools isn't entirely without controversy, it's fairly common practice. It looks like Three needs to clean house...

Three and (not mobile) broadband? Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I was interested to spot (via 3mobilebuzz) that Three is thinking about rolling out a line of home routers which, instead of connecting you to the Internet via a land line ADSL connection, instead provide your home broadband via their 3G network.

CREDIT: Electricpig

To be clear, we're not talking about a femtocell, which uses your existing landline broadband to provide a cell base station, and allows networks to extend their coverage indoors, or other places where their coverage is limited or just plain unavailable. In fact what we're talking about here is exactly the opposite of a femtocell. Such a device would have its own SIM card, and then share its 3G conneciton to the Internet over a local wired and wireless network.

This is interesting, and not an idea I've come across before. Of course, with only spotty coverage on any of the networks in the out of the way village I live in, such a device isn't going to be on my shopping list. I'd be much better off with a femtocell, and when they finally (if ever) come onto the market I'll be the first in line, no matter which of the UK networks are offering it. However as someone that does drop off grid in some weird and wonderful places from time to time, I can see the attraction of this anti-femtocell.

Of course if you have a 3G dongle, you can already share your internet connection with other devices fairly easily, at least you can if you have a Mac, I'll not speak for Windows. But it's really nice to see this wrapped in a box for ease of use...

Mobile Broadband via India Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

If you've been following along, you'll know that I currently have one of Three's new HSDPA USB modems on loan for review, and up till now I've been having problems getting it to work under OSX Tiger on my Intel Macbook, although I did get it working under Leopard on my PPC iMac without a hitch.

Well today I had a call from Three's technical support team, and from the sounds of things I was talking to the same Bangalore based team as you'd normally end up talking to if you'd managed to fight your way through the front line call centre people and got a call back from a real technical support person. I was pleasantly surprised, the agent at the end of the phone rapidly ramped their level of technical support from "...and have you tried plugging it into a different USB port?" to talking about the Kernel protection faults and driver conflicts.

The short story is that I now have a working USB modem, and am a happy geek with a new toy. The long story is, well, longer...


Now configured and connected to the Internet
It turns out that I having the configuration problems Aaron Heath was having, but with my own unique spin on things. The initial network driver configuration was indeed failing, because I had turned on the "Require password to unlock each secure system preference" option under the security options in my System Preferences. This meant that Three's proprietary connection software didn't actually have the permissions it needed to add or configure the new network interfaces. We actually accidentally stumbled across this during the tech support call when I plugged the dongle into the laptop while I had the Network Preference pane open and unlocked and it automatically enabled the HUAWEI Mobile device. From there we more or less followed Aaron's walkthrough to manually configure the network interface...


...and it shows up in the normal modem menu
The modem now shows up under the normal Mac drop down for such things, and I can connect to the Internet using it without a hitch from my Intel Macbook using the standard Mac tools. However, and perhaps somewhat tellingly, I still can't use the proprietary Mobile Connect application included with the dongle. It crashes, a bit further forward this time, but still with a Kernel Protection Failure...


The Mobile Connect application still doesn't work though?
Of course this doesn't really bother me, I'd rather use the device using the default tools anyway. However, without the Mobile Connect application, I do need a new way to monitor my bandwidth usage. I might not be paying for my packets while I have the dongle, but I'd like to be able to report back at the end of my trial with how much it would have cost had I actually had to pay for things. Especially since I'm off to Trieste in a couple of weeks and will be using the dongle to roam onto Three's Italian partner network, which could get interesting price wise.

It was surprisingly hard to find a simple, free, application that would just monitor my total bytes up and down on a specific network interface, until I stumbled across the oddly named SurplusMeter, which does exactly what I need, monitor ongoing usage against a preset bandwidth allowance.


Annoyingly there isn't any way of getting rid of the mounted volume on the dongle.
Which leaves me with my final annoyance, every time you plug in the dongle it mounts the partition with the driver software on it. This was actually rather nice the first time I plugged the stick into the computer, but now it just leaves me with an extra mounted volume cluttering up an already over full desktop. I'm not going to muck around with it right now, but after I've tested the dongle, and I'm back from Trieste, I might have a play around with Disk Utility and see if I can stop it doing that and still have access to the modem itself.

Anyway, as it turns out, this post is brought to you via mobile broadband and Three's dongle. I'd forgotten to plug my ethernet cable back into the laptop after taking the screen shots for the post....

Three's dongle and OSX Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

Well it's been a week since I received one of Three's new HSDPA USB dongles on loan for review. They're probably regretting sending it to me...


Because this isn't a review, and it doesn't look like I'll be giving one. After a week in my company the dongle is still sitting in its box on the shelf. I still haven't managed to get it to work with my Intel Macbook which, despite claims of support, seems to be due to problems with the connection software and OSX Tiger.

Interestingly I have tried the dongle with my old PowerPC iMac, which is the only machine I have on my desk right now running Leopard, and unlike my laptop, which is still running Tiger, it works without any problems...


On first connection Three's software creates a HUAWEI Mobile network device, and oddly two more unconfigured devices; DIAG and PCUI
Not that my desktop was in need of mobile broadband, but the dongle does connect to the Three network successfully, creating a HUAWEI Mobile network device which, despite my previous complaints, does actually show up in the normal modem drop down menu. So it looks like there is no need to touch the proprietary connection software after your first connection to the network...

Having seen the software actually working now it looks to me as if, under Tiger, the problem is that it's not correctly updating the network devices list the first time it attempts to use the device.

In summary, if you're running OSX Tiger I'd advise steering clear of Three's new mobile broadband dongle because there seems to be some serious software problems. However if you're running OSX Leopard, or Windows come to that, it's likely you'll be okay.

However as I am running Tiger, unless I can resolve the driver problems, I'm pretty much at a dead end. As always of course, you mileage may vary...

Update: From the screen shot it looks like it is possible to get 3's dongle working under Tiger. Milage, as always, does seem to vary...

Update: After manually configuring the network interfaces, the dongle is now working.

Mobile Broadband? Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I was recently offered on loan one of the new HSDPA USB sticks from the UK network operator Three under a similar deal, which is I promise to write about it, to the Skypephone I had on loan from them at the tail end of last year. The stick arrived this morning...


I'm off to the IVOA Interop Meeting in Trieste next month, and Three are one of the few mobile operators with decent roaming rates, at least if you're in a country covered by one of Three's sister networks which are: Austria, Australia, Denmark, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy or Sweden. Which I will be, so it's all rather well timed...


Opening the box you find a USB stick, a cable and a SIM card. You have to insert the SIM card into the stick, and the stick into your laptop. The hardware setup therefore isn't that hard. I'm on a Mac and plugging the stick into my Macbook made the stick mount a partition with the driver software in it, double click to install and theoretically we're good to go...

The initial bad news is that the connection software doesn't use the default OSX utilities. The modem doesn't show up in the normal Internet Connect application, nor does it turn up in the modem status pull-down menu in the menu bar along with my Bluetooth and wired modems. What it does do is tread heavily over my root file system and install various bits and pieces onto the disk. It also installs a proprietary MobileConnect.app into my root Applications folder. Which doesn't make me that happy. None the less we're good to go...


Except that it doesn't work, firing up the proprietary connection software it finds the dongle without a problem, and I appear to have signal. Hitting connect I'm asked for my admin user name (why does it do that?) and then... connection failed.

There are interesting things going on in my system log file, but the application itself doesn't seem to create its own logs so its difficult to tell what's happening. But what seems to happen when you hit connect is that the SetNetworkConfig call crashes due to Kernel protection failure. In other words, bad things happen.

Which is where I am now, I'm about to email technical support with my crash dump and I'll let you know how I get on when they get back to me...

In the mean time you should probably head off and read the interesting BBC News article on why these dongles are so important to Three and why, after initially being a strong supporter of walled gardens, like most people they realised that these are not really a good thing...

Update: Works under Leopard, but not under Tiger?

Update: After manually configuring the network interfaces, the dongle is now working.

Now where? Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

For the last few years I've got my broadband from Plusnet and watched it go from a moderate sized technically savvy company to a sprawling less technically savvy, or at least less responsive, company.

However during the entire time I've been with them I have had no problems and almost no down time, despite numerous hardware upgrades at their end. I've also now got an 8Mb/s connection for what I was initially paying for a 1Mb/s line. So no complaints from me...

Now I hear that they're going to be bought out by BT. I've been with BT, so it's time for a new broadband provider. Any suggestions?