Revision 2 as of 2007-01-19 19:47:15

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Evdo Networking in Ubuntu

I've started this page to document how I got Sprint Evdo up and running on Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft). There are several sites scattered around the web that indicate that it's possible to get evdo running on linux, but I was worried that none of these sites would apply to my card.

Most of these steps probably apply to many cards. I've read that it is common for many cards to have a USB interface regardless of whether they are mini-PCIe or PCMCIAor ExpressCard. This was tested on a Dell Lattitude D820 with the "Dell Wireless 5700 Sprint Mobile Broadband Mini-Card".

Most of this probably applies to Verizon as well, but Verizon has a very restrictive Terms-of-Service which prevents you from actually using your networking connection, so I went with Sprint.

Step 1. Activate your card using Windows. There's likely a way to do it in Linux, I just don't know how. (If you do, please edit this page!)

Step 2. Figure out what kind of network card you have by looking through your device list for an Evdo card. Anything that says CDMA is a good bet. 

$ less /proc/bus/usb/devices

8 Spd=12  MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 1.10 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=413c ProdID=8128 Rev= 0.00
S:  Manufacturer=Novatel Wireless Inc.
S:  Product=Novatel Wireless EXPD CDMA
C:* #Ifs= 2 Cfg#= 1 Atr=a0 MxPwr=100mA

Step 3. Try to load usbserial, using the Vendor & ProdID strings from step #2. 

$ sudo modprobe vendor=0x413c product=0x8128

Step 4. If that worked as expected, go ahead and add usbserial to /etc/modules. 

$ sudo nano /etc/modules

and add the line: 

# evdo
usbserial vendor=0x413c product=0x8128

Step 5. Add the following files to your /etc/ppp/peers directory:

http://kenkinder.com/evdo-pc5740/ http://www.evdoforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=6180#6180 http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~kfu22/evdo/