http://www.osnews.com/story/12272/GPRS_Calls_Through_Infrared_Under_Linux Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:35:38 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread?45950 http://www.osnews.com/thread?45950 It's not ready for my desktop. Sun, 16 Oct 2005 21:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?45982 http://www.osnews.com/thread?45982 I think that an K700i is an pretty highend phone, but it is hard to tell what an highend phone really is.
Is it an phone that is expensive with many functions/features, is it an phone with man yfeatures but cheap or is it just an phone with many features?? Because almost every phone on the market today can do GPRS an i don´t find that as an highend feature.

Anyway, even if noone can use an expensive mac (which doesn+t have to be expensive, (look at macmini) they, according to your description, has tohave an very late version of linux, and an pretty late phone model to hang along.

I can right now say direct that i have not read the whole story, just the initial description for the story and have to say that you "say againt yourself". Sun, 16 Oct 2005 22:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?46004 http://www.osnews.com/thread?46004 You have completely misunderstood.
Points:
1. While I used the K700i for this article, even some of the CHEAPEST phones come with Infrared. For example, next week I am planning to review the J210i which costs around $100, and it's given for free by some carriers. And it comes wiht IrDA, but not bluetooth, obviously. IrDA-SIR costs about $1 to add to a device, while Bluetooth costs $10. So, obviously, most low-end phones either come with IrDA, or with nothing.

2. You talk about the mac mini, but the mac mini is not a laptop. GPRS is used by MOST and FOREMOST by people "on the go". Which means two things: people either they use a laptop or a PDA with it (David, the owner of osnews uses with GPRS his Powerbook and his PalmOS PDA for example). And because Apple has REMOVED the IrDA networking stack that they used to have in MacOS9, you can only use Bluetooth with them anymore, or the phone's usb cable.

You really went nit-picking here. You shouldn't do that because I spent more than 5 hours putting everything together and researching (and I even hit a bug, which I later filed on linux kernel's bugzilla). For this article, ANY irda-compatible phone should do. I just used the K700i because it's the only phone that I have at home that has IrDA (my Motorola, Nokia and my Linux phones don't have IrDA).
Well, ok, I have the T310 too (somewhere in a closet, it's an eyesore so I have it hidden away from humans), but that's a very-very old phone, although IT DOES work with my tutorial too. Sun, 16 Oct 2005 23:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?46005 http://www.osnews.com/thread?46005 This is an excellent article, but I want to point out for users of Cingular GPRS service that the APN username/password authentication settings are for the standard APN and that legacy Blue/ATTWS subscribers would pass different settings for APN and not require the username/password authentication for the RADIUS server.

I have written documentation for USB and Bluetooth tethering for the Cingular knowledgebase(I work there) but have not been able to perform any IrDA tethering since none of the laptops I have have infrared ports.

I will definately look through this in more detail on Monday though and see if I can incorporate this into a distrobution generic solution for our customers. Sun, 16 Oct 2005 23:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (squiffles) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?46006 http://www.osnews.com/thread?46006 >Because almost every phone on the market today can do GPRS and
> i don´t find that as an highend feature.

What are you talking about? This article is NOT about calling to GPRS and using it directly with your phone! It is a tutorial about getting an internet connection VIA your phone and ROUTE it to your LAPTOP via infrared. In the first case you use the phone's tiny screen and web browser to browse the web and in the second case you are using a full blown Konqueror/Opera/Gecko browser to browser the net! Do you understand the difference? In the first case you can do between 96x64 up to 240x320, and in the second case, you can go up to 1600x1200, at least. There is an obvious usage difference and it requires quite some work to route the connection from the phone. This is why I wrote the tutorial. It's not a trivial thing to do for most users. And all the IrDA stacks are so buggy (except Palm's which is apparently pretty good), that people do need guidance. Sun, 16 Oct 2005 23:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?46070 http://www.osnews.com/thread?46070 Any semi-modern phone that supports data calls should have some form of USB or serial cable available for purchase. Going the IrDA route is definately adding complexity to a very simple problem, with a very cheap solution: buy the cable.

In fact, most wireless companies will sell you a "mobile office kit" with your phone for this very purpose.

I think this is what the previous anonymous poster was hinting at, when he/she said that "almost every phone on the market today can do GPRS", which is true... Most phones are capable of handling data, and most are capable of using a cable to tether the phone to a laptop or PC.

Personally, I've done data connections through my Verizon phone on their 1x network many times via Bluetooth from my Palm Zire 72, and via USB cable through laptops and desktop machines. There's nothing to it, really, and nothing special required to route the data through the phone to the PC/PDA. Mon, 17 Oct 2005 04:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?46071 http://www.osnews.com/thread?46071 I know that Verizon's network is not the same as Cingular's network. But getting a PC connected to the network through a tether isn't much different on either network. Mon, 17 Oct 2005 04:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?46079 http://www.osnews.com/thread?46079 It is not difficult when using Windows. But it's getting much more complex if you are using Unix or Linux. Using the cable, yes, it makes it easier (it's just ppp over usb, you find the equivelant /dev/ttyACM0 device on your linux and you go from there).
But doing it with IrDA, it ain't that easy, not only because of the IrDA stack bugs, but also because many distros are configuring IrDA or serial ports in a different way than other distros.
Most low-end Sony Ericsson phones don't come with a USB data cable either, the user needs to shed $15-20 for it. Someone, might choose not to buy it. For these people, this tutorial might be useful. Mon, 17 Oct 2005 05:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?46081 http://www.osnews.com/thread?46081 Also, it's not difficult when you do it via Palm or PocketPC, not only just Windows. These OSes have special tools to work via Bluetooth or cable with a mobile phone. But on Linux, there is a lot of manual work that needs to be done, and if you read the article, you would notice that it is not a trivial job for a non-power user or non-developer. Sure, having it laid out for you in a single page and having myself or someone else do the research, might look "easy" to you, but I promise you it is not. And putting in place the irda bugs (I stumbled on a major one) and the differences between distros, this quickly becomes a headache. And yet, one might choose that route. A lot of people already have. Mon, 17 Oct 2005 05:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?46097 http://www.osnews.com/thread?46097 And the good old *k* days are back.

Off topic:

Are there free (non-subscription) GPRS services? Mon, 17 Oct 2005 06:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?46110 http://www.osnews.com/thread?46110 the one I am using is with "pay as you go" with Cingular. I don't have a long term plan with them.

BTW, I tried my Linux phone to work as a modem with my Linux laptop, via USB. The Anonymous earlier tried to make a case as to how "easy" is to have that working. Well, it ain't under linux, not for all. I stumbled into ANOTHER *kernel* bug (apparently a 2.6.x one), where the /dev/ttyACM0 device doesn't get "serial" properties from usbserial and cdc_acm modules. It doesn't happen with all phones (most work), but my Linux smartphone doesn't. I might try tomorrow my nokia phone. Mon, 17 Oct 2005 07:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?46149 http://www.osnews.com/thread?46149 I used to use IrDA with my old SE T68i, but to be honest it's daft for most purposes - it's ok for sending the odd contact, game or photo to/from the phone, but the line-of-site thing is a pain in the ass (and with a PDA it takes up the IR port that it's more useful to use a keyboard with).

These days I use bluetooth for the link to the phone (from my Linux laptop and from my Zaurus PDA). Much better (once it's setup) - and I actually have a K700 at the moment. It works a treat, much nicer than using IrDA - and on the laptop, KDE comes with the tools you need to handle bluetooth anyway....unlike IrDA.

Also, several phones have stopped including IrDA in favour of bluetooth these days (my wife's Motorola V3 has bluetooth, but no IrDA). Mon, 17 Oct 2005 09:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?46195 http://www.osnews.com/thread?46195 I use GprsEasyConnect.
It works easy, works with my phone and runs under
Linux or BSD.

http://www.gprsec.hu/modules/index Mon, 17 Oct 2005 13:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devnull) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?46199 http://www.osnews.com/thread?46199 http://www.gprsec.hu/images/gallery/3/2-o.jpg

http://www.gprsec.hu/images/gallery/3/3-o.jpg


Irda, BlueTooth, USB, Serial

Enjoy! Mon, 17 Oct 2005 13:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devnull) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?46222 http://www.osnews.com/thread?46222 put you phone 20 cm from your irda and start paying 1 dollar for 100 kb of data.....
I dont know what kind of deal he gets from his ISP, but I get 10 MB for a buck.... here in hungary... Mon, 17 Oct 2005 13:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments