Since my apartment complex does not allow any forms of high-speed Internet access (2007, go figure), I recently purchased a mobile broadband modem that connects to my computer directly via USB and allows Internet access via cell phone frequencies:

Sprint Novatel Wireless Ovation U720

I have my hard disk partitioned as:

Windoze XP
SuSE Linux 9.0 Professional

I can get the modem to work in Windoze, but would rather it work on my Linux partition.

Please help...

You should be able to load the acm module.
Although you may need to patch the device id's. I saw
something similar to that on another page.

I have Ubuntu and the kernel doesn't support the modem either.

Although I wonder how one would specify EDO mode and 1rtxx etc...

Here, try reading this http://www4.sprint.com/pcsbusiness/d...etup_Guide.pdf

Perfect! That was the type of remedy I was looking for. I actually had time to try it this weekend and it worked right away on OpenSuse 10.2 and Kubuntu 7.04. Thanx for digging up that manual from Sprint!

Installing a Novatel u720 on a fresh Ubuntu 7.10 desktop install, followed the Sprint instructions, and worked like a charm -- with one exception:

The PPP device doesn't show up in the connection list.

More specifically, I am able to successfully configure and connect to the EVDO network, it shows the little globe icon in the activity bar, and the kppp statistics dialog shows that I'm connected and have a valid IP address. ifconfig says:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 08:00:46:E5:63:A1
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0E:35:3D:10:CB
inet addr:192.168.2.5 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20e:35ff:fe3d:10cb/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1492 Metric:1
RX packets:1977 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1239 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:1
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:29022188 (27.6 MB) TX bytes:974098 (951.2 KB)
Interrupt:9 Base address:0xe000 Memory:e0201000-e0201fff

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:70.0.189.111 P-t-P:68.28.57.69 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:5 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:5 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:3
RX bytes:576 (576.0 b) TX bytes:97 (97.0 b)

Everything looks golden! But if I turn off wifi, my connection to the internet dies. How do I actually choose the PPP device?

The instructions on screen 13 suggest that I just double-click on my network icon (in the example it's an ethernet icon, but I'm on wifi) and it should bring up a "Connection Properties" dialog, and that I should be able to simply select "ppp0". However, double-clicking on the icon does nothing. Right clicking brings up these options:

- Enable networking (checked)
- Enable wireless (checked)
- Connection information (a dialog showing that I'm on eth1, the wifi network)
- About (shows a standard about dialog)

If I single click I'm shown a list of all the nearby wifi networks just great, but nowhere can I choose the ppp0 network. When I single click and choose "Manual Configuration", it lists "Wireless connection", "Wired connection", and "Modem connection" -- the first two correspond to eth1 and eth0, respectively, and the third to my software modem that I don't use (and anyway, it gives me no option to configure it to use ppp0).

I have the feeling I'm missing something really obvious; all the hard stuff seems to be done, but I can't figure out how to use this perfectly good ppp0 connection. Any suggestions? Thanks!

-david

HI quinthar!

I have setup this modem in the past and I noticed a conflict with the wireless on it. I can't remember if I read it in the tutorial or what, but you need to manually disable wireless before going to kppp and turning it *the modem* on. You use it like a dial-up modem, in fact that is what I believe Linux considers it, a serial modem hooked up to usb...

When you right-click on the network icon, uncheck the wireless network connection, and then start kppp, and go from there. That's what I ended up doing successfully.

Hope it helps!

Thanks! This is what I ultimately ended up doing. I'd love for there to be some unified manager for all this, but this works in the meantime. Thanks again!

When I talked to Sprint's tech Support while setting this up, they told me that Sprint was indeed working on that. They want their Linux users to be able to know the speeds they are able to connect at, all the things they can find out in Windows, but not in Linux currently. Apparently there's quite a few Linux business users with this card, and Sprint wants to take care of them. No word on when it will come out however...

And you are very welcome! Glad I could help!

~Lynda