Archive for December, 2006

Alltel Data Tethering with RAZR v3c

Friday, December 15th, 2006

I’ve got a RAZR v3c and alltel, and have enjoyed the prevalent 1xRTT data tethering for the last year or so whenever I’m out and about, even in the car. However, recently I upgraded my laptop and lost the configuration settings, and forgot the specific details. As of today, the needed settings are as follows:

Phone Number: #777
Username: nxxnxxxxx@alltel.com
Password: alltel

where nxxnxxxxxx is your Alltel mobile number.

Also, for ease of reference, heres the skinny on Alltel data plans,
from the [Howardforums Alltel Data Thread](http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1026028)

SPEEDS
1XRTT: Gives you about 100k down speed and is supported by all phones and running in most areas

EV-DO: Gives you about 500k down speed and is currently supported by only some models, this speed is only available in some places but is rapidly expanding and is indicated by a EV icon next to the signal strength on your handset
QNC: Gives you about 10k down speed and is supported by all phones but this is being discontinued in some areas

PLANS
FST1: This allows unlimited 1xrtt and evdo data usage for anything you want and minutes are used just as they are in a phone call (so that means ulimited on nights and weekends!). You must have this on your plan/account for 1xrtt or evdo to work at all, it comes on most but if you do not have this it can be added for free with a call to *611

Axcess My Mins: This gives you unlimited 1xrtt and evdo when it is used for on-phone axcess services (sorry, no dialup allowed on this plan) and it does not use your minutes and is for normal handsets only. Cost: $10/month per line

Axcess Data Connection: This gives you unlimited 1xrtt and evdo for anything you want without using your mnutes and is only for normal handsets. Cost: $25/month per line

Smartphone: This gives unlimited 1xrtt and evdo to smartphones only for anything you want without using your minutes. Cost: $30/month per line

Axcess National Unlimited: This gives you unlimited 1xrtt and evdo for your PC card. Cost: $80/month per line, $60/month per line if you already have a current voice plan

NO DATA IS CHARGED PER KILOBYTE!

I’ve had FST1 on my phone for over a year, and have had great luck just using data against my minutes, and for my usage pattern its absolutely perfect. Usually, I’m just on 1xRTT which usually ends up giving around 128kbps, which makes for a pretty decent web browsing experience. Ping times to the office under 400ms under PPTP makes for reasonably usable ssh sessions, but really slow RDS.

Today, however, I’m connected using EVDO in ohio, which appears to be able to saturate my ‘Motorala USB Modem’s 1Mbit maximum serial connection speed downloading. I was able to get 128kB/sec downloading the Python 2.5 installer for windows, which is pretty darn impressive for a cell phone connection in my book. I’m getting consistent sub 200ms pings under PPTP also, which is resulting in darn near usable RDS sessions.

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RAZR v3c disables ring style selection when closed

Monday, December 11th, 2006

Edit January 7: See bottom of post.

Every person I’ve talked to with a RAZR seems to have this problem, and nobody has known how to fix it. You know what I’m talking about! You put the phone on ‘vibrate’ and stick it in your pocket, confident that when that important phone call comes in you’ll know. 3 hours pass by and nothing happens, and you pull the phone out of your pocket only to find out that it’s now on ’silent’ and you have 5 missed calls! WTF!

Well, here’s a really easy and 99% functional solution. It’s so simple it pains me that I never poked into the menus far enough to find it, but alas I was too lazy to figure out the default unlock code. As it turns out, you can lock any individual application to use require an unlock code before use. Enabling this feature for the ‘ringtone selection’ application will make it ask for your passcode every time that stupid side button gets pressed in your pocket. Since the phone is closed… no more accidental switches to silent!

On my phone, the default unlock code was 1234. I’ve also read it can be the last four digits of your phone number or 0000, so try all three. To disable the feature, open the phone. Click the center (”menu”?) button. Select Settings. Select 4. Security. Select ‘Lock Application’. At this point it will ask for your unlock code. Bang stuff in here starting with 1234 until you get in. If you can’t, get your provider to fix it for you. Scroll down the list to ‘Ring Styles’ and use the right arrow to change from ‘Unlocked’ to ‘Locked’. Voila!

Bear in mind you will have to enter your unlock code to change the ring style now, even if the phone is open, so it isn’t really the ideal fix. Resetting the unlock code to 0000 makes this just a bit less painful. You can reset your unlock code using the ‘New Passwords’ selection under 4. Security and selecting ‘Unlock Code’.

For those who care, here’s where I found this info [thread about v3c ringstyle lock](http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=843301) and
[thread about v3c unlock codes](http://www.wifi-forum.com/wf/showthread.php?p=377669). As a point of reference, I have an [Alltel](http://www.alltel.com) v3c running bone stock, but supposedly most (all?) RAZR variants are susceptible to this trick.

For those who don’t like keying in the unlock code to change ring styles, I’d love to hear of a way to just allow me to remap those outside buttons to something more useful or nothing at all, but haven’t found anything so far. Prove me wrong!

Edit January 2, 2007:
So I found the fly in the ointment. The problem is that the phone pops up the ‘enter unlock code’ screen whenever you bump a button, and along with it turns on the backlight! and never turns it off! Nice work Motorola =/.

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WatchGuard Core x750e first impressions

Friday, December 8th, 2006

So I finally got my WatchGuard eval unit. 2 months after I would have liked, but c’est la vie, I guess they had some employee turnover over there and my box got lost in the shuffle. Upon opening the box, everything looks very nice, and yes, its all red, and very cute looking. Turning it on, however, the LCD screen just says ‘Booting OS …’ and never makes it farther… Not a great sign.

There is, however a yellow sticker on top that says I have to install Fireware Appliance Software on the device, and that I must hold down the up arrow on the front while turning it on. This I can do. So I do. And the box just says ‘Booting OS …’ and never makes it further. So it’s time to get all sorta of ninja-hacker-style on it’s ass.

I plug in the included serial console cable, install [tutty](http://putty.dwalin.ru/) on my newly vistafied workstation and fiddle around until I determine that the watchguard is using 115200,n,8,1. This is what I see:


Press any key to continue.

So good little monkey that I am, I smash the spacebar a few times, and get this


 +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 | Red Hat Linux (2.4.26-wgrd)                                             |
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 +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
      Use the ^ and v keys to select which entry is highlighted.
      Press enter to boot the selected OS, 'e' to edit the
      commands before booting, 'a' to modify the kernel arguments
      before booting, or 'c' for a command-line.

    GRUB  version 0.93  (638K lower / 515072K upper memory)

 [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported.  For the first word, TAB
   lists possible command completions.  Anywhere else TAB lists the possible

Ok, so they're running a redhat variant. Well, I knew this was a linux based product, and I know redhat, so in general this is good news. 15 seconds later, grub times out and I see this:


  Booting 'Red Hat Linux (2.4.26-wgrd)'

root (hd0,2)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /boot/bzImage ro root=/dev/hda3 console=ttyS0,115200 ramdisk_size=256000
 ide=nodma

Error 15: File not found

Press any key to continue...

Uh ok. So this isn't such great news. Getting really fancy and setting the boot loader to boot (hd0,0)/bzImage gives me this:

Pretty standard linux boot spam, but it looks like perhaps we've got a bad CF disk, given the seek errors. The real kicker is that punching the serial number from the back of the box into the 'activate online' page of the WatchGuard website is utterly unsuccessful as well.

In its defense, the red box is at least as good looking as I imagined it, and it IS exactly the solid state Linux 1u rackmount with a lot of Ethernet interfaces i've been looking for. Unfortunately, $3000 + service contracts is an awful lot of money for a cute box with software that doesn't work!

Update 2006-12-10

I spent too much of my weekend poking around with this and posting on the [WatchGuard forum](http://forum.watchguard.com), but I'm pretty convinced that this machine is just DOA. I can't get link lights on any of the Ethernet interfaces (sort of a show stopper for a firewall), and in addition the compact flash card doesn't seem to be loaded with the rescue image, let alone a full firewall OS. I was at least able to get onto the livesecurity website, turns out I'd transposed two digits of the serial number while reading it leaning over the firewall, and caught it when I recopied it from the box.

Being able to get on the website means I was able to get the software, and found out that it requires an explorer extension to complete the installer, which means it won't finish installing on xp64 or vista64. None of it seemed to want to run on vista either, but putting it into compatability mode seems to bring it to the same point as xp, meaning it won't finish installing because I can't activate the toolbar in a way it can find it since it installs into 32 bit explorer. The good news is that the important parts of the install do seem to have completed, at least all the files are on the disk. I was able to try to use fbxinstall to reinstall my CF image, but apparently that does'nt work on the e-series boxes, so I don't know if it failed due to bum hardware or not. Maybe its just me, but it seems making your installer dependent on activating a shell extension, for a firewall product of all things, seems like some dumb decision making.

I've opened a support ticket and started some dialog, but I'm not holding a lot of hope that I'll actually get a replacement unit in here in time to have it usable over the holidays. The responses I've gotten to my post on the forums indicate that the general user base of these boxes, 'experts' included, doesn't really have a clue what the underpinnings of the system look like, which is I guess for the most part a good thing. It does, however, tend to reduce the usefulness of their responses to my questions. DOA units also seems to be outside the radar of the average forum denizen, so I'm hoping my box is an isolated case. It does start making HA failover look pretty nice though.

Update 2006-12-11

I got a call from a 'fixer' at WatchGuard who has arranged for me to get a new unit overnighted. He concurs with my assessment that the unit is very much DoA. Kudo's to my sales guy and watchguard for stepping up on this one, I'm awaiting a functional unit with baited breath!

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