Penguin

Woosh Wireless (formerly WalkerWireless) have licensed some of the frequency spectrum off the Government to offer cellphone-style always on, mobile BroadBand in NewZealand.

They're just starting in Auckland, Hamilton, and Christchurch and their pricing is reasonable. Watch this space. Anyone on the service, please comment.

Hah! I looked into getting WalkerWireless when I first arrived in Hamilton in 2000. They've been claiming that they will extend coverage to Hamilton in the near future for as long as I've been here. Don't hold your breath. -- JohnMcPherson

They do own 3G frequencies now, and are partnered with Vodafone, so they're a bit more than all talk and nothing but 802.11b -- CraigBox

Good product, lousy tech service. The company I work for setup a data logging box in a supermarket in Auckland. It took several phone calls even to find out if what we wanted was possible and we had to explain everytime that while the company is in Hamilton, the box needing connection is in Auckland. When we realised their software did not support auto connecting on startup we had to contact their support again with their only solution being to by a external PPPoE router ($150) not once did they suggest adding another network card and setup XP/Linux to do the PPPoE routing. $150 solution vs a $15 one that worked fine. -- SamMcKoy

There have been reports of high latency on woosh wireless. This makes it unsuitable for online games or anything that requires low latency, like voice over ip.

In June 2004, Woosh were replaced for the 3 regions it had won the tender for in the Project Probe broadband initiative when it became obvious that they would be unable to fulfill the contract.


How to configure a Woosh Modem using the Ethernet cable under Linux

These modems speak PPPoE.

The following instructions are for Debian Woody.

 apt-get install pppoe

Edit /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider, make sure you have the following lines

 user "foo@woosh.co.nz"
 # if you're using an interface other than eth0 substitute it below
 pty "/usr/sbin/pppoe -I eth0 -T 80 -m 1452"
 noipdefault
 # Comment out if you already have the correct default route installed
 defaultroute
 hide-password
 lcp-echo-interval 60
 lcp-echo-failure 3
 # Override any connect script that may have been set in /etc/ppp/options.
 connect /bin/true
 noauth
 persist
 demand
 mtu 1492

In /etc/ppp/chap-secrets you need a line like

"foo@woosh.co.nz"    *       "foopassword"

Then run

 pon dsl-provider

And you should be away.

The following instructions are for Ubuntu (Warty Warthog version).

Run the pppoeconf tool (either as root, or use sudo)

 pppoeconf

If in doubt accept all the default options. Remember when asked for your username enter something of the form:

 foobar@woosh.co.nz

pppoeconf will set up the file /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider and edit /etc/ppp/chap-secrets

If you make a mistake when selecting options there is no option to go back and correct the selection. To correct any errors first finish using pppoecof. Then remove the file /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider before running pppoeconf again.

Once pppoeconf has been run with the correct setup you can connect using

 pon dsl-provider

To switch off use

 poff

How to configure a Woosh modem using the USB cable under Linux

For this to work you almost certainly need a recent 2.6 kernel with ipw either available as a module or compiled into the kernel. This works out of the box with Ubuntu Hoary, just plug it in and you will see in dmesg the ipw driver loaded. It'll allocate you a usb tty:

Jun 16 10:34:49 localhost kernel: ohci_hcd 0000:00:02.1: wakeup
Jun 16 10:34:49 localhost kernel: usb 2-3: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 5
Jun 16 10:34:50 localhost kernel: usb 2-3: configuration #1 chosen from 2 choices
Jun 16 10:34:50 localhost kernel: ipwtty 2-3:1.0: IPWireless converter converter detected
Jun 16 10:34:50 localhost kernel: usb 2-3: IPWireless converter converter now attached to ttyUSB0

Create a ppp peer for woosh, by creating the file /etc/ppp/peers/woosh:

noipdefault
/dev/ttyUSB0
115200
defaultroute
usepeerdns
lcp-echo-interval 60
lcp-echo-failure 3
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/woosh"
noauth
persist
mtu 1400
user "username@woosh.co.nz"
maxfail 0
deflate 15

Create the chat script /etc/chatscripts/woosh:

TIMEOUT 30
ABORT "NO CARRIER"
ABORT "BUSY"
ECHO ON
SAY "Dialling w00sh...\n"
""              \rAT
"OK-+++\c-OK"   ATH0
OK ATZ
OK AT+CGDCONT=1,"PPP","woosh.co.nz","username@woosh.co.nz,foobar",0,0
OK ATD*99#
SAY "Waiting up to 30 seconds for connection ... "
CONNECT ""
SAY "Connected..."

Note the double handling of the username/password, both in the chat script and in chap. This is almost certainly unnescessary but seems to simulate the Windows ipw software configuring the modem. You can probably get away with putting garbage in the chat script.

Make an entry to chap-secrets as above with your username and pass.

username@woosh.co.nz   *       pass       *

Then use pon to initiate the connection

pon woosh

These notes came from the original author of ipw, r0dent heavy industries.


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