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.
These modems speak PPPoE.
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.
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
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.
2 pages link to WooshWireless: