Edward Thomson

Since I'm travelling more often, Internet service can be unreliable. Sometimes I need to get network access while I'm on the road, or maybe I just need to lookup a phone number or an address but don't want to pay the sometimes exorbitant access fees at a hotel.

Fortunately, I've got a Bluetooth enabled cell phone from Cingular. Its GPRS capabilities mean that I can use it as a Bluetooth modem on my new MacBook^[1]. It makes for an interesting trade-off between an (admittedly, painfully) slow connection and the convenience of not trying to find a coffee shop with open wireless.

The setup required a lot of trial and error, and I'd forgotten most of it since I made this work on my old PowerBook. Once you get it down, though, it's really easy, so I thought I'd share it in case it's useful to someone else^[2]:

If you have a GPRS-capable phone:

1. Get on a data plan from your cell phone provider. My initial plan with Cingular had no data service, and I couldn't make any data connection (even on pay-per-byte.) Check the plan carefully - a few years ago, it was cheaper to go on the Cingular's pay-per-byte plan than even their "best deal" of a plan. I suspect this has been changed by now.
2. Download the Motorola GPRS modem scripts from Ross Barkman's page. Make sure you get the GPRS scripts, as GSM and GPRS aren't compatible. (But see below if you only have GSM.)
3. Drop the scripts into /Library/Modem Scripts
4. If you haven't already, Bond with your Bluetooth modem: make your phone discoverable, go to the Bluetooth Setup Assistant and enter the various magic to bond your phone with your computer.
5. Open up your Network Preferences, select your Bluetooth modem, and click Configure.
6. Here's the trial and error part. You'll need to enter these settings for PPP:
     Account Name:   ISPDA@CINGULARGPRS.COM
     Password:   CINGULAR1
     Telephone Number:   WAP.CINGULAR
7. Now, pop over to the Bluetooth Modem tab and set Modem to "Motorola GPRS CID1".

--- www.l.google.com ping statistics ---
27 packets transmitted, 25 packets received, 7% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 601.630/916.474/1683.816/261.931 ms

Hey, I warned you that it was painful.

If you're lucky enough to have GPRS service - this used to be called "Internet Express Data Connect" - then change the username to "ISP.CINGULAR", and you'll get upgraded to nearly a whopping 128kb/s.

If you have problems with this, it's possible your plan (or your phone) is GSM-only. Expect still slower speeds - a whopping 14.4kb/s that will make you think you're living in 1991 all over again. And you'll need to change a few things around:

1. Download the GSM scripts from Ross Barkman's page instead. Install them in /Library/Modem Scripts.
2. In PPP settings, change your phone number to "*99#".
3. In your Bluetooth Modem tab, set your Modem to "Motorola GSM V.110 14.4k" ^[3].

So, there it is. Enjoy your ridiculously stone-age slow internet access from the side of the road!

1. Whee - a new MacBook Pro! I was excited about ditching my aging PowerBook, but I was worried about it being powerful enough to replace my PowerMac. No sweat - this thing is fast.
2. And, admittedly, because my memory's bad and I don't want to have to hunt down the modem scripts and go through the trial and error yet again.
3. Yes, 14.4k. It's like 1991 all over again.

It's been quiet on this little blog lately, which might upset the one guy in Turkmenistan who actually reads this. I've been loathe to update this, since I've been busy with work that we haven't officially announced yet^[1], and I've been rather busy in my personal life making some pretty big changes.

See, I've left the safe confines of Champaign, IL and relocated to a different college town - Lansing, MI. My girlfriend's working on her PhD at Michigan State and I wanted to join her here. My boss was generous enough to allow me to continue working at Teamprise while mostly working remotely. I say "mostly" because I'm travelling a lot lately, and back in the office relatively frequently, but primarily I'm in Michigan right now.

It's only been about two weeks, so I'm still getting the hang of it. It's tough working out of the office -- while our team has gotten very good about communicating online^[2], I still miss the conversations that occur when you just wander into somebody's office. Some of the best meetings happen unplanned - the unexpected convergence of a few people's random thoughts occasionally coalescing into a useful new feature or a brilliant fix for a nasty bug. (Not to mention the fact that I miss out on the office gossip^[3].)

It's not all negative, though. The network speed, for instance, is a mixed blessing. When you're 18 hops away from your server on a cable modem, with compression and crypto steps in between, you notice every little byte and round-trip to the server. This certainly helps make you squeeze everything you can out of your I/O routines^[4].

I'm also surprised by how focused I feel while working^[5]. I was expecting working from home to be very distracting, but I actually feel more focused than I often do in the office, and more capable of multitasking. If this is actually true, I suspect it's related to the lack of coworkers. Interesting trade off, that one, a little bit of productivity for a little bit more dynamic work environment.

It also makes me - gasp - network with other developers. I'm used to being able to walk down the hallway and get into a discussion comparing the relative merits of the ext3 and XFS filesystems, but no more. So I'm seeking out User Groups, going to conferences[6] and chatting up other developers. Sort of a shy kid, I've always resisted "networking" and the like until now. People say this is good for Professional Development. I'm not sure about that, but at least it's helping me keep my sanity.

In any case - I suspect it's going to be interesting. I have a lot to learn yet about working remotely, but I'm glad to have this opportunity to learn it. And now that I'm finally getting settled back in, I'll start writing in here again.

1. But we will be soon, so check back at the Teamprise site.
2. Thanks mostly to the fact that our coworker Martin works 6 timezones away.
3. For example, what's Eric thinking about the fact that Borland just spun off their development group into a remarkably similarly named company called "CodeGear"? Previously, I would have just wandered down the hall to ask, now I have to read it on his blog the same time everybody else does.
4. Instead of slowing the I/O down. No, I'm not joking, I lazily added an unnecessary query to our label manipulation code that's killing me. It's the first thing that I'm going to fix as soon as we branch for 2.0.
5. But note that I said that I feel productive. Whether this is real or simply cognitive dissonance is still unclear.
6. In fact, I just returned from No Fluff Just Stuff Great Lakes. But that's another entry.