As the title says, our village currently has no internet. The local wireless phone provider, being on the bleeding edge of technology, last week enabled their new 3G EVDO Rev. A network. I'd like to use it to bring internet to our village - first, in the form of a small internet cafe, but possibly a wifi co-op in the future. I'll post the questions I have to this thread to pick the brains of you geniuses.

The only modem my provider offers is a Novatel Ovation mc760. If it were just me that would be maintaining this, I'd plug it in to a small linux box and set up a Squid proxy. However, I'm not going to be here forever (or even more than another year or two) so I'd like something more simple.

I'm looking at Cradlepoint (or similar) routers where I can just plug the modem in and have a simple broadband router setup. They seem to have at least 13 of these at various price points that are compatible with my modem. Can anyone offer any input on which I should choose and why? Are the more expensive ones really worth hundreds more than the cheap one? Other ideas that are as simple? We're on a shoestring budget, but I want to make sure I buy the right thing, rather than having to purchase something else in 6 months when I find out I got the wrong one.

That's my first question. More as I get them...

As an alternative to Cradlepoint, anyone know of any DD-WRT compatible routers that offer this functionality? That would be even better.

{shudder} Ew.

A bunch of the DrayTek routers claim to support this sort of configuration.

I think that might be a future enhancement:

What advantage [if any] do these offer over the CradlePoint routers? Better reputation?

I installed a Cradlepoint MBR1000 for my daughter's co-op preschool. Apart from an occasional power cycling, it's been totally trouble free. I'm planning on putting it on a timer switch to cycle power once a day which should then mean it never, ever needs to be touched again.

It's being used with a (very flimsy) T-Mobile data stick, but it seems to work just fine; I've seen about 6mbps down fairly regularly.

The cradlepoint offers all sorts of fun setup options like landing pages and access passwords (open network, but password to get to the internet).

Thanks! that's the kind of feedback I was looking for.

Amazon has the MBR1000 for $151 right now (MSRP $250). Should probably snap that up.

Have you tried updating the firmware to solve the occasional reboot issue?

The DrayTek doesn't have landing pages and such (at least that I've seen). What it does have is what appears to be a rock solid firmware, and hardware that doesn't arbitrarily overhead and die. That might be valuable.

Hmm...that is alluring...I haven't pulled the trigger on anything yet. I'll have to research further.

EDIT: All of these DrayTek devices seem to have DSL modems built in. That's handy, but I'm quite certain that DSL will NEVER reach this village (they don't have POTS yet). Not sure if it's that or the quality that drives the price up, but they're considerably more expensive. We don't have reliable running water or electricity, so I'm not sure they'd mind restarting the router occasionally to save $100+. The locals are paying for most of this, so they'll have real ownership in maintaining it. That's almost a weeks worth of wages for them.

Sounds like the Cradlepoint might be the better answer.

Not yet, though there is a firmware update available. I believe the symptoms are that you can get wifi but no internet, which could point to the T-Mobile stick being the culprit... power cycling regularly is probably the best bet for a quiet life

Wow, and I was bummed that Phoenix still doesn't have FIOS.

Re: "yet"

A lot of developing nations aren't going to bother with POTS. They'll forgo the capital expenditure involved in laying a load of expensive copper and skip straight to wireless.

Correct. Hence my assertion that they'll never have DSL. Even the phone booths (all two of them) are a point to point wireless connection with a mast and directional antenna. There is the possibility of cable coming at some point, and with it cable internet, but I've learned that in a developing country, unless you have money to throw at the problem, the wheels of change move VERY slowly. So our only viable options are satellite, cellular, or both (which is where one of those fancy Draytec routers would come in handy, since it can do load balancing.

The equipment fee for the satellite is about $1100 USD. to get started. 3G wireless is less than $250 USD. Ongoing fees are also less (although we'll have a cap of 1gb per month).

DSL is so last decade.

Newegg is listing the Cradlepoint PHS300 for $29.99, they do list your modem as compatible when under Verizon. No idea if it is any good...

Thanks! I bought one. Hopefully it'll make it in time for my brother who comes down on Saturday.

EDIT: Was worried about my order getting there on time so I got one for $39.99 on Amazon and free 2-day shipping for Prime. List price according to Amazon was $89.99...which is quite different than Newegg's $179.

Probably should have gotten something with a LAN port for wired connection. If it doesn't work out, I'll use it personally and we'll get one of the higher end versions for the internet cafe.

Just reporting back on this...I've been without internet for the last month and a half.

I'm posting from the beginnings of the new internet cafe and ice cream shop in our village. We're still trying to come up with a name. My wife came up with "Licks and Clicks". Too suggestive?

We're using the PHS300 and it connects and works immediately with the modem without any setup. As easy as I could ever ask for. My only problem is that the connection goes and comes very frequently. Sometimes every 3-4 minutes, then off for a couple minutes, then back up. I'm not sure if I should blame the PHS300 or the cellular provider. I get 96% signal strength according to the PHS300, so I should have a nice strong connection.

Thinking of how to make the connection more reliable. Thoughts are:

1. Get a real router instead of this cheap thing
2. Get a router that has two USB slots for dual modems and run one with Smart (current provider) and one with Digicell (the other provider in country). Have one fail over to the other.
3. Same as #2 except with a satellite connection. Much more expensive, so likely not a realistic option for the time being.

Anyone know of a device that would work for #2? Dual-modem capable with fail-over?

Sure the PHS300 doesn't do this? They definitely do fail-over on some of them. I guess checking for the latest software is something you've done already...

I also believe you can look in the logs for the router to see why it thinks the link went down.

Next Question:

I've got a spare WRT54GL. I've seen at least 3 different firmware packages that are designed to run an internet hotspot. Anyone have any experience with these or can recommend one?

Payment will be cash only, so cc or micropayments aren't necessary.

So I'm dragging this thread back up from the grave because I still cannot get a router to work properly.

When I posted above that I was getting frequent disconnections, I was actually mistaken. The problem seems to be a DNS problem. Specifically, names won't resolve. I purchased a more expensive Cradlepoint MBR95 that I couldn't afford thinking that perhaps it would fix the problem. I was sorely disappointed.

Here's the rub: It works perfectly 99% of the time with the modem plugged directly into my computer (and have tested with several other computers with equal success). From my Mac, I can do internet sharing via Airport and it works equally well. As soon as I plug the modem into the router, I start getting problems again. There are almost no configurable DNS settings on the router, other than to supply your own DNS servers. I've done this, and it seems to improve performance but not totally fix the problem. The only other setting is:



I've tried to enable and disable that without much success.

The other possibility is that my ISP could have their DNS servers configured badly and the Cradlepoint isn't very fault tolerant. Every once in a while I get the same problems with the modem plugged directly into the computer and I have to reconnect to clear the issue.

The problem seems to have something to do with caching DNS requests. The first time I go to a site, the name won't resolve. Wait 5 minutes and refresh and the name will resolve, but if the site loads some of its data from other domains, they may fail, causing the site to fail to load properly. For instance, to log into gmail, google forwards to like 4 or 5 different domains. As each one fails, I have to wait another 5 minutes or so before it will resolve, then refresh and wait for the next one to fail. Sometimes, by the time I've gotten most of them to resolve, the first one will fail again. Super frustrating.

Any ideas on where to look for a solution? Should I just get a cheap fanless linux box and create my own router? My biggest hangup with doing that is that it will have to be maintained by a local guy who is very intelligent but has little computer experience and none with linux.

Ok. The problem can't be my ISP. I switched to OpenDNS's servers and got an immediate speed increase and reliable service for about 5 minutes. then I tried to open Amazon.com and it's just spinning it's wheels. Weirdly enough, I can continue to surf on other sites that are already open, but Amazon won't resolve. I'm sure the request is either not getting to OpenDNS or that it's not returning. Page refreshes don't seem to make a difference.

The modem continues to work fine when plugged in directly.

Problem has to be the Cradlepoint router. I wonder what could cause it to randomly stop loading some sites and not others?

I guess you are running the latest firmware on it? I know this is basic, but still...

Can you still surf to Amazon using an IP for them ???

Cheers

Cris

It may be dropping the responses as low priority. Remember that DNS largely uses UDP, which is a little harder for a firewall to deal with. See if there's some option to change priority or timeout on those packets.

Alternately, you can run some low-level DNS tools to emulate what's going on and see if you can find the trouble.

What is your clients' DNS server set to?

Yes. latest firmware.


I'll try it out



Bitt: The clients are just using whatever DHCP passes them for DNS. They should be getting the same OpenDNS servers I set in the router.

Any suggestions on DNS tools? Must run on Mac.

Based on the diagnosis you've done, yeah, it sure sounds like a bad router. Would be interesting to see what happens if you replace it with a different brand and model.

In the meantime, is that the kind of thing that you can put Tomato onto?

That's the problem. My options are very limited for routers with a USB port that you can plug a modem into and connect to 3g. I'll have to look into the Draytek stuff linked above.

I'm currently in an email dialogue with Cradlepoint support. They don't support any providers in Belize, blah blah blah. They're still trying to help me out, but are basically saying if you have the latest firmware and your isp is configured more or less like Verizon (it is), it should just work.

So, thinking of other options:

What about just picking up a cheap Mac Mini G4 and using internet sharing built into OS X. Anyone see any ugly flaws with that idea?

Similarly, any one familiar with any inexpensive linux platform that I could use? Some sort of Atom based PC perhaps? I'd like to keep it under $100. I already have a PATA SSD that I could throw in it, so I'd likely just need a motherboard/case. Used/old stuff would be fine since it just has to move network packets around.

Just use "dig" at the command line.

So I'm thinking a Raspberry Pi board would be perfect for what I want.

the Novatel USB760 drivers say noarch so they should work on the ARM board, right?

I think if I put it inline with a WRT54GL (free - I already have it) with Tomato or DD-WRT, I should pretty much be able to do whatever I want. All the Raspberry Pi would have to do is pass through the network connection to the LAN port.

I realize I could use the Pi as the router itself, but I'd like to keep the setup as simple as possible for the guy I'm training to run this here. Any thoughts or suggestions or see any problems with this idea?

I had a look at the .deb package for you. It contains i386 binaries for the USB serial drivers -- probably unmodified, so you can skip those files (with .ko extensions) and use the rest. "The rest" consists of configuration files to set up the Novatel CDMA board in udev, which should all be "noarch" stuff.

These wireless "modems" just appear as very fast serial ports when connected, and the software generally then uses PPP or something to set up a network connection over them.

Cheers

Raspberry pi has lots of stability issues with its USB, apparently the problems are with the SOC.....I suspect using a raspberry pi is going to cause you more headaches.

Adrian

Well, after months of just sharing the internet connection using the PC that the modem is plugged into, I finally bit the bullet and ordered a Raspberry Pi to try this out. I got an externally powered USB hub, so hopefully that will take care of the USB power issues. The modem draws 650ma max while transmitting, and I'm sure that the Rpi can't supply that without a Raspberry Pi Power Supply.

I may order one of those in the future simply to tidy up the installation, but for now, the USB hub was only $15.

As a status update, using the 3G modem with external antenna has worked so well, I've now got 4 of them setup here, and I was just contacted by someone on behalf of the village school to try to get a setup there. It's the only school in our district without internet. If the Rpi setup works nicely, I'll eventually do another one for the school.

A friend of mine has been struggling with a Raspberry Pi -- even just a USB Wifi adapter kills it for current draw. So he also has gone for a powered USB2 hub.

Cheers