I want you and me and everyone to be able to access the Internet anywhere and be able to share it. In a beautiful future world, our energy will be 100% from renewable resources, everyone will just get along, Reality -TV will be long gone, there'll be Spandex jackets (one for every one) and there will be WiFi (or its beautiful, green, multicultural equivalent) on every sqare inch of this big blue marble.

At this point, sadly, none of these is true (except for satellite Internet which is slow and VERY expensive). And since our personal and business lives seem to rely more and more on information and communications, what's a modern now-a-gogo Travelling Techno Geek supposed to do? Here are some ways of getting connected and sharing that connection, in order of cost.

Sharing What You've Got
If you travel for business a lot, you might find good reason to share the Internet you've already got in your hotel room, conference facility, etc. Many places now provide it for free & some still charge $10-ish a day for it. Either way, if it's a jack on a wall, you're pretty much tethered to it and you can't share it with multiple users. You might have The Kids with you in the hotel and they've got NetBooks (Dell, HP) and you've got a Laptop and a SIP phone to connect to the office. Maybe you have 4 colleagues at a trade show and you only get one Internet connection at your booth. You can whip out a small ethernet switch to connect you all - and watch the Keyboard Cops movie that ensues as everyone goes tripping (man)... OR you can share the Internet wirelessly.

Any basic WiFi router will do the trick as long as you're not doing anything fancy. Dlink packages one called the DWL-G730AP for travellers. At $70 list, it comes in a nice case so things don't get lost. At less than 4 x 3 x 1 inches it can fit in your pocket. You just connect it to the ethernet jack you're given and it makes that connection wireless via 802.11g within a ~ 200' radius.

But Wait - There's More!
This unit has 3 modes. In Router mode, it connects to a public Internet connection and provides NAT (Network Address Translation) and DHCP (machine addressing). In Access Point mode, it connects to a private Internet connection (e.g. 192.168.0.x) that is already NATted. As a convenience, it can also be used as a Wireless Client - got an old laptop or video game or other ethernet item that's not wireless? Plug the G730P into it and now it is. I set up The World's Greatest Consumer (R) with one of these and, though he hasn't used it much, it did work for him and he liked the convenience of it

For just a little less you can get the little bigger Trendnet TEW-434APB . It doesn't have the carrying case but it has 2 additional features. First, if you already have WiFi at your location but it doesn't go far enough, you can put this unit near the end of the existing WiFi's range and, in REPEATER Mode, extend that range.

Second: if you use it in AP Client mode as mentioned before, you can do the exact inverse of what I've just described - you can take a single, provided, WiFi connection, and connect more than one wired laptop to this single feed (most AP clients only handle one machine at a time - see my table in the PS below). I have installed 2 of these at the UCAN.ORG offices - each feeds their WiFi network to both a PC and a VoIP "SIP" phone.

WiFi When Wandering the World
OK. so as I originally stated, we don't have a Utopian data world yet. WiFi is not available everywhere, though some people are working on it with technology like WiMAX and LTE. Today, the most ubiquitous Internet access we have that's not made for the military or rich people is that which the cellular networks provide. (Read about CDMA vs GSM) For CDMA networks like Verizon, Sprint, and Cricket it's called EVDO (and RevA is the current version). For TDMA/GSM networks like AT&T and T-Mobile it's called W-CDMA.  Since this kind of Internet access is available pretty much any place there's cellular coverage (though the technology used in rural areas can be much slower than the fastest available today), you can get Internet in a lot more places. And, you have to pay for it; see my prior post, Weathing Tethering, for data plan costs from the Big 4 and a definition of TETHERING.

So, now we have to get this cellular-provided Internet access into your laptop or other device. There's "tethering" where your SmartPhone uses its guts to provide your laptop with Internet. It's the least convenient method but for occasional users it means having just one device and one data plan. Or, you can buy an "Air Card", a USB or ExpressCard device that's essentially a cellphone that you can't talk on. It connects to your carrier and gives your laptop Internet access. That's ALL it does. Some laptops come with these radios, aka WLAN adaptors, factory-installed (just like WiFi). Any of these 3 methods will get you Internet in your car, in your hotel, at your friend's house, in your mobile home, and maybe even camping. Read paragraph 5 of this reply I posted about how Mrs. Telecom and I made a Skype call from the middle of Grand Teton National Park using my Verizon Omnia phone tethered to my laptop.

BTW, here's an interesting comparison of the Big 4s' networks and pricing (from 2006)

Sharing Your Wireless
So now we're in the same position as we were in Paragraph 3. How do you share this valuable resource. Here are a couple of fairly new products that the traveller and especially the business traveller will appreciate. You're going to create your own WiFI hotspot!

You're with your sales team on a retreat in the mountains, trying to be one with nature AND the number one sales team. You want all 5 of you to have Internet access so you can connect to the office LAN using VPN software, get email, do web research, even make calls on the office VoIP phone system. You could pay for each of you to have an Air Card (let's say $50 each) and a data plan (let's say $60/mo/each). That's a lit of money if you all don't use this regularly.

Or you could buy a Cradleoint CTR-350 Wireless Router (typ $100). This box, toughly the size of a pack of smokes, tethers to you Smartphone, getting Internet from it. It then repeats this Internet signal as WiFi-G for everyon within range to use. It also has an ethernet port in case you want to use it wirelessly. Can be used in an office network as a temporarily Internet backup should your main Internet connection fail. Works with most brands of phones on all carriers. There's also the PHS-300 which is like the CTR-350 but is WiFi only.

The  CTR-500 has the additional feature of an optional external WiFi antenna. When you're at the summer cabin, you can pick up WiFi (assuming a cell tower is within range) then repeat it as WiFi all the way down to the boat dock. It also hasan Express Card slot so you can use it with an Air Card instead of a tethered cell phone. In the office, this goes from being a TEMPORARY Internet backup to a permanent one. Here's a product comparison guide from CradlePoint. 

All In One and One For All
The hottest thing on the market is the MiFi by San Diego - based Novatel Wireless. The MiFi2200, provided for review by Franco of Imagineering Wireless, looks like a piece of a black Hershey bar and is a piece of cake to use. Though comes with a power adaptor, it's got a battery inside and can run for over 4 hours on it. It's cool. It just sits there. Once you configure it, all you'll ever do again is turn it on and off. Connected to your EVDO data account, it just repeats that Internet over WiFi-G for you and up to 4 others around you. If you aren't in a sharing mood, you can connect your laptop to it via its included USB cable and, essentially, tether to it. At this moment, Verizon sells the 2200 for $50 after rebates and contracts. The MiFi 2372 will be sold for use on AT&T and T-Mobile networks.

Crossing Over: The John Edward "Medium" for Multiple Networks
It's sad that they all don't use one method of sending their signals but in our less- than-beautiful REAL world Reality TV still exists and you can't buy one phone or piece of hardware for competing networks. "Or can you? Mwahahah..." Let's say you already have a plan with Verizon, so you buy a Cradlepoint and tether your SmartPhone to it (or use a MiFi with a second account). Now you're repeating this Internet signal over WiFi, right? Many Smartphones can use WiFi for Internet access. So, your husband, that GEEK, has an iPhone with AT&T. He can pick up the WiFi from your repeater and surf the web on his phone while you use your laptop.

A Third Party Option
Taproot Systems of North Carolina offers software that lets your Smartphone become a "Walking HotSpot". In essence, if you install their $30 software on one of the supported phones  the phone essentially becomes a MiFi, repeating the cellular Internet as 802.11g WiFi. The web site says "Verizon Wireless Not Supported". I'm not surprised since Verizon has always had a reputation of being what I can only say APPEARS as anti-competitive. A couple years back, when I asked why they would not allow tethering on my old VX-6700 phone, they said it was because they didn't want to offer any features they didn't feel were going to cause their subscribers any problems. I read their "we're looking out for your cellfare" (I can look out for myself, thanks) as "we're looking out for alternatives to our proprietary revenue sources".

The Plus And Minuses: A Summary
Depending on your needs, you can

• Pay for one data account (typically $60-ish) that covers your SmartPhone and occasionally provides shared internet via a Cradlepoint or other fine brand of router. You cannot use the phone, the phone's browser/mail, or the tethered router, at the same time on CDMA networks.
• Pay for one data account that covers your SmartPhone ($30-ish) and another data account (typically $60-ish) that provides simultaneous (and less hassle) shared (or private) Internet.  For this approach there are essentially 2 options:
  
  • Use an ExpressCard or USB "Air Card" with a Cradlepoint box. The same card can be used, when sharing isn't necessary, by your laptop privately
  • Use a Mifi which is designed to share, but can also connect to the USB port of your laptop for private use

And as a parting thought, if you're downsizing at home (kids are gone, YOU'RE gone half the time, you've dropped the landline) you should consider dropping the DSL or cable modem too. At $25 to $50 a month, you could use that money to pay for a data plan with your carrier. Add one of the solutions mentioned herein, and you've got WiFi, 24/7 around the house. It's not nearly as fast as the wired solutions but at ~1300kb/s down by ~500kb/s up it's more than enough speed for typical email and web surfing. Don't expect to download movies or play online games. And watch your account (you can do this online) because some plans have quotas (typically 5GB) that, once exceeded, can cost you a bundle in overage charges. But if you can work with the plan limitations and reduced speed, you can take this same Internet with you in the car, to the beach, to Grand Teton National Park....

ADDENDUM: 11/10/09 - Look for information on the rumored "vPhone" Android-based phone for Verizon customers which is said to include a WiFi router in it. That's like having a phone with a built-in MiFi!  This article from PhoneScoop.com says it will also have a web cam facing you (as well as the usual 5MP camera facing out the back) so that you and a friend can video-chat via Skype, etc. What a beautiful world this will be...what a glorious time to be me ;^)

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PS: As Promised - A Chart Of WiFi Bridges
Here's a list from Spring 2009 of non-cellular products that can be used as wireless clients (aka WiFi Bridges) that can connect an ethernet-enabled item, or an entire network, to a WiFi Access Point:

Model              Sell   Bands  >1 MAC?       Info 

Trendnet TEW-434APB $55   G      Yes  http://trendnet.com/products/proddetail.asp?prod=120_TEW-434APB&cat=124  

SMC SMCWEB-N        $90   GN     Yes  http://www.smc.com/index.cfm?event=viewProduct&localeCode=EN_USA&cid=5&scid=117&pid=1635

Dlink DGL-3420      $85   GA     No   http://games.dlink.com/products/?pid=383&#DGL-3420  

Dlink DWL-G730AP    $55   G      No   http://dlink.com/products/?pid=346  

Dlink DAP-1555     $175~  GAN    No   http://dlink.com/products/?pid=570  

DLink DAP-1522     $108   G N    No   http://dlink.com/products/?pid=663

LinkSys WBP54G      $40   G      No   http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10046/index.html  

LinkSys WET54G      $93   G      thinkso   http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WET54G

LinkSys WET610n     $93   GAN    ?    http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WET610N

LinkSys WGA600n     $93   GAN    ?    http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WGA600N

Cisco WET200       $120   G      256  http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10053/index.html

3COM 3CRWE675075   $180~  GAN    16   http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/detail.jsp?tab=features&sku=3CRWE675075&pathtype=support

Engenius ECB-3220   $75~  G      Yes  http://www.engeniustech.com/datacom/products/details.aspx?id=170

Airlink AP431w/421W $25~  G      ?    http://www.airlink101.com/products/wireless.php

A long long time ago, way way back when some people still had 8-track tape players, there was The Phone Company. Except for a couple little insignificant private companies (like GTE and Continental) all of that wire belonged to Ma Bell. It was pretty easy to picture how your voice got from Miami to Madison because this network was pretty much one-dimensional.

The Internet, today, is not "owned" by any one company. It originated as a private academic/military network with a single provider connecting all the users together but became a public network-of-networks with multiple providers. If you're a capitalist (or an evolutionist) you like diversity because it provides choices and engenders quality and advancement.

But What's It Look Like?
The Internet is composed of major networks (providers like sprint, uunet, verizon, qwest, level3, etc) called Autonomous Systems or "backbones".  They connect the local ISPs (known as "last mile" providers, like your DSL provider and my cable company) to the rest of the world. They might be considered freeways while our last mile providers would be surface streets. Try to picture a spider web in 3D. Now picture a couple more of them above and below each other. A spider can go all over his web but can't get to another one. So they have places called peering points where these webs are connected to each other. Now, if my cable company uses LEVEL3 as their backbone provider and yours uses AT&T, my packets go from my house, thru TimeWarner cable's net to LEVEL3's backbone, to a peering point, to AT&T's backbone, to your ISP to you. Here's a very cool map, from CIO.com, of the NA internet - it's not geographic, it
just shows connections and who the main backbone players are.

See For Yourself
You can actually see the path that data packets take from you to any web site, mail server, etc. Kinda like an Internet GPS "make the next turn at Verio Router, LAX. Now make a right at your destination, Yahoo.com"  Using Windows, from a command prompt, type:  TRACERT  AnyWebAddress  <enter> (in MacOS use Network Utility > Traceroute; for Linux/Unix, see here)   You will slowly get a collection of steps showing you each router "hop" between your end and the destination. Conventionally, engineers name the routers using nearby airport codes. So a router in the LA area would include LAX in the name and one in San Diego would incl SAN and Bogota would include BOG. It's interesting to see the geographic path that your packets take to get someplace and, if there's an internet outage along the way, you can see where the packets stop.

The fact that there are multiple networks, and the fact that there can be routers and fiber out of commish anyplace at any time (and the beauty of IP is that it allows routers to report to each other about best routes - like traffic reports) explains why the "best" route from you to your favorite web site might not be the geographically best route.

Here is a good, basic, overview of what "the Internet" is, without all the tech talk. To get an idea how much it's changed since 2000, go here and, starting from the bottom of the page, see the historical charts.

Net Neutrality
The CIO.com article mentioned above is about an important subject, one dear to the hearts of the folks at newmediarights.com and UCAN.ORG, and that is about keeping the internet free of content restrictions. If there were only one backbone provider, they could say "we will block the transmission of (e.g.) music files because we also sell music on our web site and ones you buy elsewhere thus compete with us". They could be less protectionist and more protective of themselves from litigation: "we will block the transmission of (e.g.) music files because they may be copied and we could be sued if they go across our network". And they could be interested in filtering your 1st Amendment-protected free speech because they don't agree with you. These examples are pretty black-and-white but there are other, less clear issues currently in play. For example, some networks won't allow people to use mass-dowload applications, like BitTorrent, because, they believe, these people are using more than their fair share of the bandwidth available. I can see where I, personally, might not want to have my email be delayed or have my rates go up because some people need to download large files (full length movies, for example). I can also see where the provider might want to block something I want to download. Some balancing has to happen.

Net Redundancy
The main reason there's more than one backbone provider is, simply, redundancy. Having all your bits in one basket isn't a good idea. And while, not so long ago, The Internet was a toy for amusement and non-realtime academic interchange, today a lot of people rely on it, now, this instant. Having more than one means that your packets have options.

"Comcast Must Die" movement rises from the ashes.

It might be funny if it weren't true, but when you are a victim of Comcast one of the world's worst cable companies, bad service is no laughing matter.

Comcast's customers are rebelling again with a reincarnation of the original "comcastmustdie" Web site called customer-circus.  The blog gives consumers an opportunity to vent about the cable companies ruthless disregard for its own customers.  Comcast earnned the ignomious distinction of being the first cable company to limit bandwidth in August of 2008. Here in San Diego, Comcast has a well-earned reputation for driving its customers into fits of irrational anger and murderous rage. In February of last year, San Diego resident Gary Thomson greeted his Comcast repairman with a shotgun. The repair tech indicated that he experienced this sort of thing all the time.  Not surprising. This is the same company that caused a 75 year old granny named Mona Shaw so much mental angst that she took a hammer to Comcast's lobby, smashing computers and furniture. In fact, Ms. Shaw was so traumatized that she ended up seeking free therapy on the Dr. Phil show, where UCAN's Executive Director was drafted to serve as a co-therapist. Small wonder that there is a growing movement of consumers who believe that Comcast's customer service is really a Customer-Circus. But here's some good news:  if you are a UCAN member, you don't need to resort to violence, our watchdogs can probably help you with your local Comcast issue.  Just file your complaint and let us do the dirty work.

You're out in the middle of noplace with your laptop - no ethernet, no WiFi - and you really need to download your mail or look at a map online. If you have an Air Card (which is Sierra Wireless' registered name for a "mobile broadband card" like Kleenex is to tissues) and a cell signal, you're golden. But most of us don't care to spend a $100+ for the card plus $30 to $70 per month for the service IN ADDITION TO the talk plan we already have. With most carriers, even if you have a data plan for your phone, if you want to use an air card, you have to buy additional plan. Enter the concept of "tethering".

Making the Connection
If you have a smart phone or data phone or whatever you want to call it - one that can web surf and get/send email - it may have an option called TETHERING which lets it act as a modem for your laptop. When it's tethering, it brings in the same Internet data as it does when you're using the phone itself to surf but the phone stops surfing and this data all goes via a USB cable (or BlueTooth if you like) to your PC. Since you're already paying for the data plan, you only have to add (at least with Verizon) a $15 charge to let you tether. This beats $30 to $70 a month for a separate account. And it does work. But my experience with it at Verizon has been very frustrating.

Sometimes, phones can tether yet the carrier won't allow it. The reasoning is beyond me. This was true with my good ol' XV6700 phone on Verizon: thethering worked but if they found out you were tethering with it (guessing by data usage) they could drop you. To my knowledge this is no longer true of any current Verizon phones but according to an early June post at BoyGeniusReport this may still be true of AT&T and the iPhone:

We've also just heard that tethering will be 100% locked out at launch, but AT&T's in the process of putting together a $70/mo unlimited data and tethering plan. SMS and MMS will not be included in that plan, we're told.

A Look At The Plans
T-Mobile's data-only chart is a little confusing to me because it shows "additional minutes" for a data plan that says "Unlimited data transfer" in the $30 column. It's not clear to me what the differences are other than the more expensive plan has limited minutes. =:^| Regardless, it looks like $60 is the most you'd pay if you don't go over 5GB per month (and that's a LOT as long as you're not downloading lots of videos and music and YOU try to limit your email attachments).

Verizon gets, as mentioned in a previous posting, $30 to $50 per month for the data alone. If you decide to tether, the plan becomes $65 - unlimited monthly bytes for the phone and 5GB when tethering. According to my contact at Verizon, Data Babe (now Mrs. Data Babe) the differences between these plans (when not tethered) are that the cheaper one is for non-business people who aren't syncing Exchange, Blackberry, or Lotus Notes mail. They want the business users to subsidize the data costs, and this may be justified, but I can't grasp why someone with a consumer POP3 account, downloading every attachment that comes to them + MP3 and MPEG files, should pay less than a business customer using MS Exchange and having the box checked to leave attachments on the server. It's academic in this diatribe, though, because the $30/$50 pricing difference is only an of consequence if you aren't tethering - i.e. these prices only help us understand what it costs to have data on your phone and NOT tether it.

Sprint gets $60 a month for 5GB. Pretty much in line with the 2 above.

AT&T seems to have more plans which means more flexibility and more confusion. But, as of today, it appears that they're in the same price range as the others: 5GB for $60/mo.

It's Not Useful If It Doesn't Work
I was tethering with my old Verizon Treo and it worked OK. It was sort of a pain to get going at times but it worked. My new Samsung Omnia is a different story. One bennie of the Omnia is that it gets the much faster EVDO-RevA data rate than the last series of smart phones and air cards - but at what cost? It worked fine initially but eventually stopped. I'd do a Hard Rest on my phone (meaning another hour to get it all reprogrammed again) and it would tether for a few days then stop again. Verizon support and Verizon's Data Babe thought it was my laptop - indeed, the amazing Mrs. Babe spent her lunch hour with me and got my PC tethered again. She brought her own Omnia and it worked OK too. But a few days later things stopped again. I subsequently called Verizon again and, after an hour, the data rep decided it's not me or my laptop, but the phone. One thing I did that many do NOT do is to use Bluetooth as well as USB to tether and we're thinking that using both eventually corrupts the internal modem drivers or something. I have, today, done another Hard Reset and will run it without Bluetooth tethering and will report the results. But, if something is supposed to work, it should work. Here's how it manifests itself:

* I connect the phone via USB. We know it's not a USB problem because the laptop goes binkbonk and the modem settings change showing the modem attached to a USB port
* When I click on the connection, VZ Access Manager software says dialing. It must have found something it liked. Eventually it times out and says "There was a hardware failure in the modem (or other connecting device)".
* I did a Hard Reset of the phone and once the phone boots up, after some finagling, I get it to tether BUT NOW the laptop no longer finds the storage device drivers that worked, just moments ago, with the same phone and laptop.

No problem. I've got nothing else to do...

I've Got A Feeling I'm Not The Only One
The Worlds Greatest Consumer has the same phone and after I set him up with tethering for a road trip he complained of having to reboot his phone each time he used the tether.  What's that about?   From what I can tell, it all boils down to crappy software and crappy hardware.  The phone companies are churning out so much new product at such an accelerated rate that their customers have become de facto beta testers......except that they charge us for the privilege.  Imagine spending this much time getting your car to function? 

Any Other Omnia Users Had the Same Experience?
I was given the email address of a data services manager at Verizon. If any other UCAN.org readers have had the same problems, please post as much here so I can send him a summary. Maybe we can get this problem fixed. Me? I'm ready to toss the Omnia and get an HTC Touch Pro-with ITS attendant set of problems.

Keywords: omnia, tethering, tether, cellular, data, plans, air card, aircard, mobile phone, wireless