Strange GRPS problems in Guernsey ??

Hi,

I have a laptop with the Sierra 750 GPRS card

http://www.sierrawireless.com/Produc.../AC750_GSM.asp

and a Vodafone PAYG SIM card in it, GPRS enabled. In fact the Sierra
card was the Vodafone-badged one which was widely sold, until recently
when they started plugging their GPRS/G3/WIFI product.

It was running OK on the UK mainland and this was the first time it
was used outside it.

There are two GSM providers in Guernsey; one is Cable & Wireless and
the other is Jersey Telecom. Both had good signal strength. C&W
appears as the default option; to get JT I had to use the Manual
network selection mode.

With C&W I was never able to get a usable connection. The laptop would
get an IP and a DNS IP allocated however. Pinging the DHCP server
failed but that's to be expected an as anti DOS measure. I could not
ping any other IP, including some private ones which I know have ping
enabled.

If I did a ping (in a DOS box) of various URLs, including some which
could never have been cached on this laptop, the lookup to an IP
worked OK but the ping always failed.

So for example doing:

c:\>ping www.cisco.com

would show the correct IP for the name:

Pinging www.cisco.com [198.133.219.25] with 32 bytes of data:

but nothing would come back. The GPRS data counter would show 0 (zero)
received bytes.

It is as though they allowed UDP through and little else.

With Jersey Telecom the same problem occassionally occurred too but
most of the time it worked fine. Basically I had to disconnect and
reconnect and eventually it worked.

I am a bit concerned about this since this year I will need GPRS
abroad. Is there some Vodafone <-> Whatever roaming restriction, which
might perhaps be eliminated by using a *contract* GPRS SIM card? I've
tried to avoid contract because the usage is very occassional and all
the GPRS enabled contracts I've seen are expensive, and this SIM card
is inside a ruggedised laptop, cannot be removed and used in a normal
phone where one might be able to use it for normal calls.

Any views would be appreciated.



Peter.
--
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E-mail replies to (E-Mail Removed) but remove the X and the Y.

"Peter" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi,
>
> I have a laptop with the Sierra 750 GPRS card
>
> http://www.sierrawireless.com/Produc.../AC750_GSM.asp
>
> and a Vodafone PAYG SIM card in it, GPRS enabled. In fact the Sierra
> card was the Vodafone-badged one which was widely sold, until recently
> when they started plugging their GPRS/G3/WIFI product.
>
> It was running OK on the UK mainland and this was the first time it
> was used outside it.
>
> There are two GSM providers in Guernsey; one is Cable & Wireless and
> the other is Jersey Telecom. Both had good signal strength. C&W
> appears as the default option; to get JT I had to use the Manual
> network selection mode.
>
> With C&W I was never able to get a usable connection. The laptop would
> get an IP and a DNS IP allocated however. Pinging the DHCP server
> failed but that's to be expected an as anti DOS measure. I could not
> ping any other IP, including some private ones which I know have ping
> enabled.
>
> If I did a ping (in a DOS box) of various URLs, including some which
> could never have been cached on this laptop, the lookup to an IP
> worked OK but the ping always failed.
>
> So for example doing:
>
> c:\>ping www.cisco.com
>
> would show the correct IP for the name:
>
> Pinging www.cisco.com [198.133.219.25] with 32 bytes of data:
>
> but nothing would come back. The GPRS data counter would show 0 (zero)
> received bytes.
>
> It is as though they allowed UDP through and little else.
>
> With Jersey Telecom the same problem occassionally occurred too but
> most of the time it worked fine. Basically I had to disconnect and
> reconnect and eventually it worked.
>
> I am a bit concerned about this since this year I will need GPRS
> abroad. Is there some Vodafone <-> Whatever roaming restriction, which
> might perhaps be eliminated by using a *contract* GPRS SIM card? I've
> tried to avoid contract because the usage is very occassional and all
> the GPRS enabled contracts I've seen are expensive, and this SIM card
> is inside a ruggedised laptop, cannot be removed and used in a normal
> phone where one might be able to use it for normal calls.
>
> Any views would be appreciated.
>
>
>
> Peter.
> --
> Return address is invalid to help stop junk mail.
> E-mail replies to (E-Mail Removed) but remove the X and the Y.

The C & W connection sounds like it's WAP over GPRS only and not full
internet access.
That means no HTTP on port 80 and maybe no email too.

It's the same results as i get connecting my laptop to Tesco's (currently
free) GPRS.
It connects and DNS look-ups work but no actual web browsing or much else -
again pings fail.

Using a WAP browser (Klondike WAP Browser) or the Nokia Mobile Browser
Emulator i can access some web content on my laptop - but still only WAP
pages mainly.

Martin.

"Martin" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>The C & W connection sounds like it's WAP over GPRS only and not full
>internet access.
>That means no HTTP on port 80 and maybe no email too.
>
>It's the same results as i get connecting my laptop to Tesco's (currently
>free) GPRS.
>It connects and DNS look-ups work but no actual web browsing or much else -
>again pings fail.
>
>Using a WAP browser (Klondike WAP Browser) or the Nokia Mobile Browser
>Emulator i can access some web content on my laptop - but still only WAP
>pages mainly.

That's right, POP email didn't work either.

Nor did a VPN connection to a known location.

I wonder how common this is... is't quite useless.


Peter.
--
Return address is invalid to help stop junk mail.
E-mail replies to (E-Mail Removed) but remove the X and the Y.

"Peter" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi,
>
> I have a laptop with the Sierra 750 GPRS card
>
> http://www.sierrawireless.com/Produc.../AC750_GSM.asp
>
> and a Vodafone PAYG SIM card in it, GPRS enabled. In fact the Sierra
> card was the Vodafone-badged one which was widely sold, until recently
> when they started plugging their GPRS/G3/WIFI product.
>
> It was running OK on the UK mainland and this was the first time it
> was used outside it.
>
> There are two GSM providers in Guernsey; one is Cable & Wireless and
> the other is Jersey Telecom. Both had good signal strength. C&W
> appears as the default option; to get JT I had to use the Manual
> network selection mode.
>
> With C&W I was never able to get a usable connection. The laptop would
> get an IP and a DNS IP allocated however. Pinging the DHCP server
> failed but that's to be expected an as anti DOS measure. I could not
> ping any other IP, including some private ones which I know have ping
> enabled.
>
> If I did a ping (in a DOS box) of various URLs, including some which
> could never have been cached on this laptop, the lookup to an IP
> worked OK but the ping always failed.
>
> So for example doing:
>
> c:\>ping www.cisco.com
>
> would show the correct IP for the name:
>
> Pinging www.cisco.com [198.133.219.25] with 32 bytes of data:
>
> but nothing would come back. The GPRS data counter would show 0 (zero)
> received bytes.
>
> It is as though they allowed UDP through and little else.
>
> With Jersey Telecom the same problem occassionally occurred too but
> most of the time it worked fine. Basically I had to disconnect and
> reconnect and eventually it worked.
>
> I am a bit concerned about this since this year I will need GPRS
> abroad. Is there some Vodafone <-> Whatever roaming restriction, which
> might perhaps be eliminated by using a *contract* GPRS SIM card? I've
> tried to avoid contract because the usage is very occassional and all
> the GPRS enabled contracts I've seen are expensive, and this SIM card
> is inside a ruggedised laptop, cannot be removed and used in a normal
> phone where one might be able to use it for normal calls.
>
> Any views would be appreciated.
>
>
>
> Peter.
> --
> Return address is invalid to help stop junk mail.
> E-mail replies to (E-Mail Removed) but remove the X and the Y.

Peter,

The service you get abroad is limited by the network used abroad. To put
your mind at rest, I use (and have used) both a Vodafone 3G card and a
Vodafone 2G card all over Europe with no problems.... although I have never
been to Jersey.

Bet

"Peter" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> "Martin" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>The C & W connection sounds like it's WAP over GPRS only and not full
>>internet access.
>>That means no HTTP on port 80 and maybe no email too.
>>
>>It's the same results as i get connecting my laptop to Tesco's (currently
>>free) GPRS.
>>It connects and DNS look-ups work but no actual web browsing or much
>>else -
>>again pings fail.
>>
>>Using a WAP browser (Klondike WAP Browser) or the Nokia Mobile Browser
>>Emulator i can access some web content on my laptop - but still only WAP
>>pages mainly.
>
> That's right, POP email didn't work either.
>
> Nor did a VPN connection to a known location.
>
> I wonder how common this is... is't quite useless.
>
>
> Peter.
> --
> Return address is invalid to help stop junk mail.
> E-mail replies to (E-Mail Removed) but remove the X and the Y.

I have Orange, Tesco, Virgin and O2 PAYG sim cards and Orange is the only
one that i've found to actually provide a full internet service over GPRS.
Virgin, like Tesco, seems to be only WAP over GPRS - haven't tried O2
recently as i don't want to top up that sim card!

I did a bit of research on Google and found a few references to running a
proxy server on an internet connected pc and then connecting to that proxy
server through WAP over GPRS to get real internet access.
Unfortunately i found no guides or tutorials and it seems like quite an
advanced project to take on - i know little about such things and there's no
guarantee that it would work anyway.

I'm experimenting with the Nokia Mobile Browser Emulator, running it on my
laptop while connected to Tesco's WAP over GPRS.
If it functions as well as the (Nokia) browser on my NGage then i'd have
'acceptable' internet access - but it crashes and gives endless page not
found errors even when accessing webpages that my NGage can display.

£4 for 4MBs of data - the basic Orange bundle - is what i'm relying on now
for real mobile internet access.

Martin.

"Martin" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote

>I did a bit of research on Google and found a few references to running a
>proxy server on an internet connected pc and then connecting to that proxy
>server through WAP over GPRS to get real internet access.
>Unfortunately i found no guides or tutorials and it seems like quite an
>advanced project to take on - i know little about such things and there's no
>guarantee that it would work anyway.

That ought to work; the network provider has no way of knowing that
the WAP site you are connecting to is your own system.

I wonder if one could run a VPN over the protocol used for WAP... then
one would get full access.