Re: ANNOUNCE: Mobile Broadband Configuration Assistant

[Antti Kaijanmäki <antti kaijanmaki net>]

Hello,

pe, 2008-04-11 kello 09:13 +0200, Stefan Seyfried kirjoitti:
> Dan Williams wrote:
> > On Thu, 2008-04-10 at 07:08 -0700, Michael wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I have a Verizon broadband card and my experience has been that the
> >> card acts as a modem.  I also use Fedora 7 and setting up the device
> >> in the Network applet as a modem allows NM to control the card as a
> >> dial-up connection.  The specific card support is still required from
> >> the Verizon software to program the card for specific stuff (tower
> >> info, other programming - SPL).  Although it would be nice to have
> >> some kind of signal strength meter...
> > 
> > Unfortunately, the interfaces to get this additional data are all
> > proprietary vendor interfaces, with the exception of a few Sierra GSM
> > cards that accept AT commands on the second tty.  So this is not
> > currently possible without licensing the SDKs of each vendor and using
> > non-free, binary blobs.
> 
> Sorry, but that's simply not true (to not call it FUD or BS).
> Almost all cards work just fine using UMTSmon (http://umtsmon.sf.net). Klaas
> is acquiring those cards that don't right now and then they will work, too.

Whoa! This is fantastic! I've been interested in mobile broadband under
GNU/Linux for three years now and this is the first time I hear about
UMTSmon. Well, it's never too late to find out something new ;-)


> The only thing that is still needed is a port multiplexer for single-port
> cards like my novatel xu870, but there was just no pressing need for having
> signal strength while being connected, so i did not yet look into that :-)
> 

It seems to me (after looking at the screen shots:) that NetworkManager
and UMSTmon could definitely have a some sort of future together.

 -- Antti