In a couple of weeks I will be working away from home for a few months, I don't want the hassle of sorting out broadband etc after I arrive at my temporary flat or the hassle of haggling with telco's when I want to leave, I should be there 6 months but I could also only be there for 3.

So I was thinking, I have an old sony Viao laptop, it's quite small and more than powerful enough to run Smoothwall.

But before I hare off and spend money on a dongle and a contract, I was wondering what peoples experiences were with 3G USB modems and linux.

Has anyone used it in conjuction with something like smoothwall to create a mobile LAN.

I have 2 laptops, one with Linux and the other windows, I was thinking of setting up the laptop to act as a firewall for everything but sometimes there will be more than one person using it and I do love screwing around with things so don't want to do anything that means friends can't use the internet when I'm messing around on my laptop.

Normally I would tinker around and figure stuff out for myself but unfortunetly without a dongle it seems a little pointless.

Hi, I too have a usb 3G dongle.

I set my system up with a proxy server (squid) and Iptables Firewall.

Without the proxy my connection is rubberband like in it's responsiveness.

But with the proxy it is smoothed out quite a bit.

I think it is because of the compression used for the transmission,

but can't be sure if that is a 3G thing or Vodafone (my isp)

But this also gives me a way of measuring the bandwidth used, so as to avoid over-use penalties.

I get 5gig/month and 25c/Mb after. So an extra cd worth of files can be expensive.

Anyhow, I used this page, and others to set it up.

http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/w...ess_with_Squid

But search here to at LQ, there may be a better, fuller tute for your distrib.

Cheers, Glenn

I had a USB mobile dongle from Three. It was a Huawei 169G and a PITA to set up, but eventually worked.
The Huawei e220 seems to be supported "out of the box" with the later kernels.

I took my little Asus eee701 into the phone shop, and they let me plug in a variety of dongles.
I found out what they were by looking at the output of lsusb
Go for the e220 if you have a choice.

My biggest problem was network coverage - the dongle would work at home (where I did not need it) but not at work (where I did).

This is my biggest worry I would like something reliable, don't want to be stuck with something patchy as I will want to use it for work...

Hi, I also use the Huawei 220e.

I think you should be able to find out about usability issues, for local groups.

For instance Here Down-Under we have...

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/

and

http://www.ozcableguy.com/

I use These sites to check what successes others have had and with what devices in certain areas.

Here in Oz coverage is a big issue, I live in a city so not so much for me, but

The dongle has 3 dial settings, within 25kms, between 25 and 50 kms

and over 50 kms from the nearest base device.

This might help you too.

I found there was heaps of docs written about setting it up,

I just had to adjust the info for my region and system.

You might try a shop near by to where you will be temporarily stationed,

More likely to have something that works for the area in question

Cheers, Glenn