GPRS + Bluetooth on FreeBSD

[Kirill Bezzubets]

On Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 01:27:56PM -0700, Maksim Yevmenkin wrote:

> unrelated to the topic: i would like to know about people's experiences with
> GPRS + Bluetooth on FreeBSD. is it usable in real life or more like a toy?

Well, it depends. Mostly on operator, but hardware is important too.
As for me, Nokia is the best choice, Ericsson is good too, the others
usually need latest firmware and so on.

> what it your usage of such configuration in the real life?

As I work for ITSP it doesn't matter where I can be -
usually I need to get online as fast as possible 24x7.

So I have the following:
somewhat old but still great for BSD
DELL Latitude CPi D266XT + MSI-6967 + Nokia 6310.


> what is the price range? what is the normal speed?

Here in Russia GPRS is much cheaper, don't know why - 
it's about $0.10-$0.40/Mb and no monthly fee.
And some operators still have GPRS in testing mode so they're giving
it for free although quality is far from acceptable - free is free...

Average transfer speed is a little faster than 56K modems,
which fits my neeeds (5-10 ttys) well enough.

> is GPRS connection stable? is GPRS coverage any good?

Commercial GPRS is OK, even better than HSCSD and cost almost nothing.

> is that a reasonable configuration for road warrior type scenario?

Again, it depends ^_^. 
If you don't need broadband connection GPRS is the best choice.

By the way, thanks for your BT stack. It's great, although it would be
very useful if hcsecd could save its state. It will eliminate need to
do pairing every time I reboot my notebook (or do I do something wrong?).
I use the latest stack with patch from Jun, 6th.

-- 
BR,
Kirill Bezzubets                                CASE-RIPE CASE-RIPN
Head Of Technical Department / N.O.C.           mailto:kirill at solaris.ru
Solaris ISP & Telecommunications Co. Ltd        http://www.solaris.ru