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NetworkManager and phones and data plans

Dan Williams:

NetworkManager mobile broadband support…can most likely use your GSM mobile phone…if you add the appropriate stuff to the HAL .fdi file.

Blimey, that’s excellent. What would be required to get .fdi files for loads of phones into HAL by default, so it Just Works out of the box? For a given mobile phone model, will the serial port always have the same settings, or does it depend on who your phone company is and so on as well? It’d be brilliant to have this all working with no configuration required.

(PS. Dan, I couldn’t use OpenID to log in to leave this as a comment on your site; it didn’t recognise http://www.kryogenix.org/ as an OpenID for some reason.)

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 7:19 pm and is filed under Deskbar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “NetworkManager and phones and data plans”

  1. Serial port settings will depend on your phone, whether you’re using bluetooth, a data cable or IR. They shouldn’t change based on provider.

    However, the PPP dialup chatscripts do change based on your provider, and even your plan - for example O2 PAYG has a different access point to O2 contract. And different proxy settings, I believe.

    El cillianos
    43 minutes later

  2. I wonder if this covers USB 3G modems as well?
    lsusb gives me the below stuff, but I’m not entirely sure how to proceed. Vencor and Product IDs seem straightforward enough, but then?
    At the very least, maybe Firefox would stop starting in the ever so annoying Offline mode because NM doesn’t know about this dongle…

    Bus 003 Device 003: ID 12d1:1003 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. E220 HSDPA Modem
    Device Descriptor:
      bLength                18
      bDescriptorType         1
      bcdUSB               1.10
      bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
      bDeviceSubClass         0 
      bDeviceProtocol         0 
      bMaxPacketSize0        64
      idVendor           0×12d1 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
      idProduct          0×1003 E220 HSDPA Modem
      bcdDevice            0.00
      iManufacturer           1 HUAWEI Technologies
      iProduct                2 HUAWEI Mobile
      iSerial                 0 
      bNumConfigurations      1
      Configuration Descriptor:
        bLength                 9
        bDescriptorType         2
        wTotalLength           85
        bNumInterfaces          3
        bConfigurationValue     1
        iConfiguration          0 
        bmAttributes         0xa0
          (Bus Powered)
          Remote Wakeup
        MaxPower              500mA
        Interface Descriptor:
          bLength                 9
          bDescriptorType         4
          bInterfaceNumber        0
          bAlternateSetting       0
          bNumEndpoints           3
          bInterfaceClass       255 Vendor Specific Class
          bInterfaceSubClass    255 Vendor Specific Subclass
          bInterfaceProtocol    255 Vendor Specific Protocol
          iInterface              3 Data Interface
          Endpoint Descriptor:
            bLength                 7
            bDescriptorType         5
            bEndpointAddress     0×81  EP 1 IN
            bmAttributes            3
              Transfer Type            Interrupt
              Synch Type               None
              Usage Type               Data
            wMaxPacketSize     0×0010  1x 16 bytes
            bInterval             128
          Endpoint Descriptor:
            bLength                 7
            bDescriptorType         5
            bEndpointAddress     0×82  EP 2 IN
            bmAttributes            2
              Transfer Type            Bulk
              Synch Type               None
              Usage Type               Data
            wMaxPacketSize     0×0040  1x 64 bytes
            bInterval               0
          Endpoint Descriptor:
            bLength                 7
            bDescriptorType         5
            bEndpointAddress     0×02  EP 2 OUT
            bmAttributes            2
              Transfer Type            Bulk
              Synch Type               None
              Usage Type               Data
            wMaxPacketSize     0×0040  1x 64 bytes
            bInterval               0
        Interface Descriptor:
          bLength                 9
          bDescriptorType         4
          bInterfaceNumber        1
          bAlternateSetting       0
          bNumEndpoints           2
          bInterfaceClass       255 Vendor Specific Class
          bInterfaceSubClass    255 Vendor Specific Subclass
          bInterfaceProtocol    255 Vendor Specific Protocol
          iInterface              3 Data Interface
          Endpoint Descriptor:
            bLength                 7
            bDescriptorType         5
            bEndpointAddress     0×85  EP 5 IN
            bmAttributes            2
              Transfer Type            Bulk
              Synch Type               None
              Usage Type               Data
            wMaxPacketSize     0×0040  1x 64 bytes
            bInterval               0
          Endpoint Descriptor:
            bLength                 7
            bDescriptorType         5
            bEndpointAddress     0×05  EP 5 OUT
            bmAttributes            2
              Transfer Type            Bulk
              Synch Type               None
              Usage Type               Data
            wMaxPacketSize     0×0040  1x 64 bytes
            bInterval               0
        Interface Descriptor:
          bLength                 9
          bDescriptorType         4
          bInterfaceNumber        2
          bAlternateSetting       0
          bNumEndpoints           2
          bInterfaceClass         8 Mass Storage
          bInterfaceSubClass      6 SCSI
          bInterfaceProtocol     80 Bulk (Zip)
          iInterface              0 
          Endpoint Descriptor:
            bLength                 7
            bDescriptorType         5
            bEndpointAddress     0×83  EP 3 IN
            bmAttributes            2
              Transfer Type            Bulk
              Synch Type               None
              Usage Type               Data
            wMaxPacketSize     0×0040  1x 64 bytes
            bInterval               0
          Endpoint Descriptor:
            bLength                 7
            bDescriptorType         5
            bEndpointAddress     0×04  EP 4 OUT
            bmAttributes            2
              Transfer Type            Bulk
              Synch Type               None
              Usage Type               Data
            wMaxPacketSize     0×0040  1x 64 bytes
            bInterval               0
    Device Status:     0×0002
      (Bus Powered)
      Remote Wakeup Enabled

    Stoffe
    96 minutes later

  3. Nice thing,
    Any example of an .fdi file for a Bluetooth phone? (I have rfcomm setup, but having NM see it would be nice!)

    I couldn’t find anything in Google for Bluetooth ;(

    telenieko
    99 minutes later

  4. For the provider info, any way we could get that data from Maemo/Nokia N810. They have information about a lot of these that makes it very simple to connect via a gsm phone.

    Alexander Larsson
    119 minutes later

  5. The existing support is for 3G modems, including USB and PCCard/PCMCIA. It just happens that when you plug your phone in with a cable (USB or serial) it works the same way as 3G does.

    There isn’t support for changing the APN right now but that’s on the list to fix up pretty soon.

    Dan
    12 hours later

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