3G Router at the Cottage

I've been spending as much time as possible this summer at a friend's cottage near Lake St. Peter, Ontario.

My laptop usually runs long-lived connections (upwards of a dozen SSH sessions in particular, perhaps a VPN or two in support of those SSH connections, an RDP or two, etc).  Once upon a time, I had its mPCIe slot filled with a nice Gobi 4000 LTE modem, but in my undying quest for more local storage, replaced it with a Crucial M500 240GB mSATA module.  So these days, I'm depending on my iDevices' hotspot feature.

Unfortunately, there are compromises and annoyances with this approach, as each device (iPhone 5, iPhone 4, iPad 3) has a particular role in my life.  iPhone 5 is my auxiliary brain on iOS 6, iPhone 4 is running a couple iOS 7-only apps (like Ingress), and the iPad is an auxiliary visual cortex with a lot of games and also iOS 7.

Having to reestablish those connections after using the iDevice for other things is tedious.

It would be grand if my iDevice wireless hotspot capabilities were stable, but they're not.  Regardless of which iDevice, both iOS 6 and 7 stop serving over wireless after some random period of idleness, requiring restarting the hotspot function, bringing another wave of manual reconnections.  Meh.

Anyway, I finally thought of something I could try.  I've had a Bell MC998D HSPA+ USB modem forever, but I could never get it working on my laptop.  I figured it was simply DOA off eBay.  With this terminal thought in mind, I checked eBay for another option to try things again, and found an overlooked Bell U679 LTE USB modem for pocket change.

When I got the U679 in, I tried it on the laptop and it worked!

Then I realized, I have a now-unused ASUS RT-N66U wireless router still in my kitchen's ceiling.  Checked online and found that though it doesn't list supporting either of my 3G modems, it does support some.

Upgraded the router's firmware to the latest, and gave the 3G modems a go.  To my surprise, I found the opposite condition; the router can't seem to bring up a connection on the U679 LTE modem, but it brought up the MC998D HSPA+ modem with relative grace.

I brought the router and both USB modems with me to the cottage, and couldn't get either modem going again.  It was frustrating.  I did some research all over again, and after repaving the 3G WAN configuration on the router again, managed to get the MC998D connected.

I'm using a spare Bell LTE micro SIM with an adapter to work in both the MC998D and U679.  These are the settings I used that finally got things going:

Location:  Canada
ISP:  Rogers (yeah, I know, I'm on Bell)
Network Type:  Auto (other options are 3G, 4G, both, etc)
APN service:  pda.bell.ca
Dial Number:  *99#
PIN, Username, Password all empty
USB Adapter:  Auto (other options are 3G modems I don't own)

In particular, that dial number seems important.  I might play with that more before I leave, but I don't want to mess with it and possibly ruin the good thing I've got going right now.

Older guides called for pda2.bell.ca, and I'm sure I had that working in Mississauga, but it didn't work up here.  Under USA, there's a Bell Mobility option, but I never got that working either.

At this time, I've got excellent wireless connectivity throughout the cottage and area, and it has been rock solid for 2 days now.  Very handy.

The ASUS GUI also tells me how much data I've consumed, which is very handy to monitor how close to my 5GB cap I'm getting.  A couple visits ago I tried Netflix on the iPad and in the space of about 4 hours, I managed to consume 9GB of data without realizing.