Tips on 3G Dongle Modem With Telstra

[snoop]

Hi all

This may save some people some time. I am using a Telstra Elite 3g usb modem and wanted to use this as the Internet connection rather than route/tether through my laptop. Telstra Elite is also known as Sierra USB 308 and uses the sierra and sierra_net modules which you can get precompiled for the openwrt platform. Here is what you do (via SSH).

1. Make sure you are running flash 2.7 (3.3.8 kernel).

2. Install the sierra drivers from opkg repository (google it). It will fail as the kernel version or modules have a specific 3.3.8 build appended to the version (the kernel minor version is fine tho and it loads - so just "opkg install --nodeps ".

3. Do a lsmod and you should see the sierra_net and sierra (serial) modules loaded into the kernel. The devices /dev/ttyUSB0-3 should pop up. Note no network interfaces will be shown by an ifconfig though at this stage.

4. Check the drivers are working by running "gcom info /dev/ttyUSB2" and "gcom -d /dev/ttyUSB2". The output of this command should show the apn etc. Note this seems to turn the lights on the modem on (not sure which modem commands this issues but it works). Other actual modem commands are in /etc/chatscripts/3g.chat.

5. Alter the /etc/config/network file to add the following interface definition:

config interface wan

        option ifname ppp0

        option device /dev/ttyUSB2

        option apn     telstra.internet

        option service umts

        option proto 3g

6. bring up the interface by issuing "ifup wan" (or whatever you called the interface). you should now see a "3g-wan" interface pop up and a default route added. Note the address assigned will be the standard Telstra NAT address range.

Moving forward once this is setup, just run the gcom commands and then ifup wan. It should do the rest.Useful links:Sierra: http://mycusthelp.ne...?aid=44OpenWRT: http://wiki.openwrt....ecipes/3gdongle