Re: [MM 0.6] Allowing plugins to specify that only one AT port is expected

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Wed, 2012-03-07 at 18:41 +0100, Aleksander Morgado wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> The '06-api' branch has a new property
> (MM_PLUGIN_BASE_ALLOWED_SINGLE_AT) for MMPluginBase, which allows
> specifying that only one AT port is expected in the modem [1]. If this
> property is set, whenever the first AT port is grabbed, all the
> remaining port probings will cancel their AT-specific probing steps,
> which improves a lot the overall time needed to finish device probing.
> Of course, this property is only meaningful if the device exports
> multiple ports where only one of them is AT. For single-port devices
> (e.g. Cinterion) there is no improvement.
> 
> During my tests, I enabled the property for my Gobi 2000 and my Nokia C7
> devices (which expose several ports, but end up grabbing only one AT
> port here), and it works pretty well.
> 
> Now, the question is; should I enable this for every Gobi and Nokia
> device? Are there Gobi-based or Nokia devices with more than one AT port
> out there?

At this point I don't think so.  What I *don't* know is whether the
Nokia Internet Sticks (CS-1x) expose two AT ports or not.  But at the
moment I'd guess most Nokia phones only expose one, and anything else
happens over PhoNet.

> Also, is there any other plugin which could benefit from this probing
> improvement?

Most of the CDMA plugins *except* for Huawei; there are quite a few
Huawei CDMA devices that have two AT capable ports.  So I think you can
add it to sierra-cdma, novatel-cdma, and the generic-cdma plugin, I
think.

Dan

> Cheers,
> 
> [1] Plugins can now set either `MM_PLUGIN_BASE_ALLOWED_SINGLE_AT' or
> `MM_PLUGIN_BASE_ALLOWED_AT'; no need to set both.
>