Comments on: EVDO on Debian / Ubuntu

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:54:57 +0000

The new E6400 series from Dell has a signal readout LED right above the keyboard, so you can at least visually see the signal strength of the evdo card.

By: Robert

Robert — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 23:27:18 +0000

c_c – I read a bunch on evdoforums.com about people really liking the speed of the airprime module, I just haven’t tried it out yet.

As for signal strength, Sprint put together a very nice document on how to set up EVDO on Linux, and in that they state specifically that there is no way to monitor signal strength on any of their modems in any distro of Linux.

By: c_c

c_c — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 04:46:25 +0000

Hi,
I have a ZTE USB EVDO modem that identifies itself as ID 05c6:6000 Qualcomm, Inc. Have been using it in ubuntu (hardy beta) with the modprobe line – except that I’m using the airprime module instead of the generic usbserial module.
I think the performance is better with the airprime module as compared to the usbserial – especially when I’m in areas with speeds more than 50 kbps.
If only I could monitor the signal strength through gnome-ppp (which I use from the GUI).

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:17:11 +0000

My personal Linux requirements include having as many tools as possible available via SSH / console, including the ability to change networking – so I didn’t set my EVDO card via KPPP or NetworkManager. If you’re interested in a pure shell-oriented approach using “pppd”, this is for you, but was never intended as a pure newcomer tutorial.

I’ll copy this in an email to you, Ed: I’m curious what brand card you have, if you’ve activated it via Windows first (was required for me on all 3 cards), and what product/vendor ID your particular card lists – that is sometimes the only piece that’s missing.

rob@lt00-bofh:~$ lsusb |grep -i dell Bus 005 Device 003: ID 413c:8134 Dell Computer Corp. Bus 005 Device 002: ID 413c:a005 Dell Computer Corp. rob@lt00-bofh:~$ sudo lsusb -s 005:003 -v |grep -i cdma iProduct 2 Novatel Wireless CDMA
This shows that Device 005:003 is my modem (005:002 finds no matches in the 2nd grep). In that case, my modprobe subcommands are: “usbserial vendor=0x413c product=8134″, and from this you can see the changes to my /etc/modprobe.d/usbserial file. Hope that helps a bit more!

By: Ed

Ed — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 04:41:31 +0000

Is this supposed to be a tutorial. No offense but none of this worked for me in Ubuntu Gutsy on a Dell XPS 1330. Any pointers?