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A few days ago I purchased the Huawei E173 mobile broadband USB modem ("Internet Stick") with SIMcard from Tchibo; they use the 3G+ network (HSPA/UMTS) from O2 in Germany. I installed the modem with its "Mobile Partner" GUI in WinXP/SP3 on my Asus EeePC 1001R netbook and in WinXP/SP3 on a Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop and also installed the modem in Arch on the Dell laptop.
For the Arch install I followed the section "Easy Install using Network Manager" in the Archwiki "Huawei E220"; that was all that was needed, using NetworkManager, modemmanager and the Gnome network-manager-applet (nm-applet).
All went well: I successively and successfully used the modem and got on the net in WinXP on the netbook, then on WinXP on the laptop and finally in Arch on the laptop. Then I tried to use it again in WinXP on the Asus netbook: no access to the Internet. Tried it again in Arch: no access. Tried it again in WinXP on the Dell: no access.
The symptoms were the same in all three cases: when the stick was inserted, the OS recognized it, it asked for and accepted the SIMcard PIN#, established a link with the ISP access point - with excellent signal strength -, I was given an IP address in the 10.xx.xx.xx range, and according to the stick's LED, the connection alternated between being on an UMTS and HSPA net. But no Internet access, neither in Firefox nor Chromium nor Opera, with and without firewalls or system proxies! I was able to ping my own IP address but not the IP addresses of the standard gateway, DHCP server, and DNS servers, and some of these addresses were peculiar (I can provide more info on that). And no luck pinging Google or Amazon, either with their hostnames or IP addresses.
A support call to Tchibo confirmed that there was no O2 net service outage in my area, that signal coverage ought to be excellent in my area, incl. for an HSPA connection, that my new account was active and in good order, there was no block on it and there was plenty of high-speed data capacity left in it.
So I exchanged the stick. So far I've installed the new stick/SIMcard only in WinXP on the Asus netbook, with new cellphone # and PIN. And everything is fine again; I'm back on the internet.
I don't want to be confined to browsing in Windows; Arch is where I do all my work and that's where I want to access the Internet as well. But for nothing in the world do I want to go again through the ordeal of being completely locked out of the Internet and trying to troubleshoot this problem without access to it. But I'm leery of using the new stick in Arch again and again experiencing the same lockout; I need to know what the cause of this problem was.
I see several possibilities:
1. Hardware failure of the first Huawei stick.
2. Some network config setting might have gotten corrupted in going through two Windows and then the Linux install.
3. Some account or network settings on the ISP side might have gotten corrupted.
Re 1: Seems highly unlikely to me; the stick I returned worked flawlessly for 24 hrs. and is probably still perfectly all right.
Re 2: Are such config settings stored on the SIM chip or elsewhere in the data storage section of the stick, so that they an incompatible setting might be carried over from one OS or install to another?
Re 3: Tchibo already seem to have gotten confused over the uses of the stick in my two Windows installs. When I installed it in WinXP on the Dell (after having installed it in WinXP on the Asus netbook), the data volume counter was reset, and they again started counting KB's from zero in the Dell WinXP install, but kept track of usage from the Asus install separately, in spite of the fact that there was only one account with them, and account identifiers such as cellphone # and SIMcard PIN# were identical in the two cases. Further, they don't officially support Linux; perhaps their software got totally confused by the usage coming from NetManager in Linux. But one would think that this stick would be completely portable from machine to machine and from OS to OS, just like a USB WLAN adapter.
Any thoughts about the cause of these problems, whether they might reoccur if I use the new stick in Arch, and how I can get around them?
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Sorry that I didn't read through your whole bunch of text but you may consider trying the sakis3g all in one script.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/US … em#sakis3g
Regards
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Sorry that I didn't read through your whole bunch of text but you may consider trying the sakis3g all in one script.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/US … em#sakis3g
Regards
Thanks for the tip. I'm very leery though of trying to use the new stick in Linux until I know exactly what caused the problem before because with the first stick it was after I'd used it in Linux (just once) that I lost internet connectivity in all three systems. If that happens again, I'd be in the same hole as before: trying to troubleshoot a potentially complicated networking problem without access to the Internet. Short of an expensive call to customer support of doubtful outcome that could cost me the price of the stick (not toll-free; costs 0.42 EUR/min), the only way out then may be to return the stick again and again set up a new account. I doubt, they will go along with that.
Setting up the stick in Arch was actually the easiest thing. After I'd installed networkmanager, modemmanager, nm-applet and some other bits (such as mobile-broadband-provider-info), it was all plug-and-play, and with these bits of software Arch automatically set up a mobile broadband connection to the ISP's server and I had an excellent Internet connection. Only after I went back into WinXP, did I lose all Internet connectivity in all three systems, even though I still got a good link to the AP (persistent misconfiguration of GW, route, subnet mask, etc?).
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