Re: AirCard580

On Wed, 10 Aug 2005, Jon Reynolds wrote:

> Justin Dieters wrote:
> > $99/month for unlimited monthly transfer + $450 for the card (w/ 1 year
> > contract) IIRC, speeds are up to 768kbs (varies depending on where you
> > are, obviously).
> >
> > It's cool that it works in Linux - I didn't think it would. Was it
> > "plug-and-play" or did you have to fiddle to get it working?
> >
> > Justin
>
> It was plug and play, the link I sent said you had to create the ttyUSB0
> but when I went to create it, it was already there. I then opened up
> Kppp and did the setup just like the doc said. The cool thing about that
> doc is at the very bottom there was a guy that sent some more info on
> using it from ACS Alaska. That little bit of info helped out
> tremendously. It was really quite simple to set up and I had it working
> in 5 minutes, I was completely amazed.
>
> I think you can rent the card from ACS and not have to buy it.
>
> Jon

Speaking with my employee hat half off.

Latency varies depending on where in the state, and 1xRTT vs EVDO, EVDO is
generally close to 100ms first hop, with 500 kbit ish downlink rates
normal, 600-900 kbit common, and up to 2.2 Mbit usable on a completely
unloaded site, max channel capacity (without overhead) is 2.4Mbit (though
the 580 cards seem to do around 1.5Mbit peak).

Note, far out from the site things will step from EVDO to 1xRTT, and RTT
is a 57.6kbit downlink.

The cards need to be programmed under windows, and the only supported
driver are for Win, however... The end station to PDSN session is pretty
standard PPP, and the 580 card shows up as a USB serial device.

I know of people using them under both Linux and MacOS X, but this is
*not* a /supported/ thing.

Fairly up to date coverage maps are up on the company web site.

In general... Where there is ACS CDMA coverage 1xRTT works. Most sites
in the major regions (Anchorage, Fairbanks, Jun, Mat-Su) also have EVDO
available. The CDMA network is being constantly expanded.

I have been using a 580 card almost daily for general work, and CDMA data
network debug for about a year and a half now, in Anch, Mat-Su and
Fairbanks.

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Received on Wed Aug 10 19:01:03 2005