[COLUG] Sprint wireless broadband using Novatel U720 modem + Linux (anyone?)

[Peter Kukla]

--- William Yang <wyang at gcfn.net> wrote:

> I've gotten Gentoo laptops to handle a USB tethered
> phone to the Sprint 
> EVDO network (which is about the same problem). 
> I've seen Verizon cards 
> configured from Centos and Debian, and it was
> essentially the same problem, 
> which really wasn't all that hard to solve.  Based
> on my experience with 
> the problem and the solutions I've seen, I suspect
> it's not really a 
> distribution issue at all.
> 
> The key problems you'll need to solve are getting
> and configuring the 
> drivers so that the USB modem shows up in /dev
> somewhere, and configuring 
> PPP...  Any stability issues will probably come from
> what else you're doing 
> with the Linux box -- as a quick rule of thumb, the
> more it does, the less 
> likely it is to be stable.
> 
> 	-Bill



I guess that I've pored over enough rc scripts and
recompiled enough kernels over the years that I feel
mostly comfortable with the prospect of getting the
hardware working (assuming I can trust the docs I've
found online thus far.)  The distribution really is
the bigger question for me...I need to figure out
which to use before I start playing with the modem.

For the last umpteen years I've used Coyote as the
barrier between my home network and the Internet.  It
appears that the USB-nature of the hardware precludes
Coyote, so my distribution of choice would be a
functional replacement for Coyote.  That's the primary
requirement.

Secondarily, it would be nice (if this connection
proves stable / fast / unblocked enough) to host very
modest web and ssh services, but that's more of a perk
than a requirement.

My personal Linux experience is heavily Red
Hat-centric, with Ubuntu as my desktop for the last
several years.  For the past few years I've been too
busy to test-install the latest distros, so I'm not
sure which would be the best fit.

Any ideas on which ISOs should I be burning to CD?


-peter