Price
It’s quite expensive for a toy. I had a hard time justifying the cost to myself but the old laptop I was using had some issues and I didn’t expect it to last long. My wife wasn’t too happy with the expense but she got over it this weekend when she was able to surf the web and IM with people while we drove 4 hours to Galveston.
If cost is a real concern, just get the evdo card and plug it into your laptop. The next option is one of the commercial 3G routers that can be up and running for under $300. It’s probably possible to do the stompbox for under $500 but it’d be tough and you’d have to scrounge a lot of parts.
Value
The stompbox is a solid and robust solution. I don’t have experience with any of the cheaper commercial routers but would expect them to be as reliable and nearly as solid. One thing the stompbox offers is endless configuration and software options. It’s 133Mhz 486 processor and 64MB of RAM make it powerful enough to run a large selection of applications. If you’ve got some Linux experience, time, and a few C-notes to burn then I’d suggest giving it a try. The project has and continues to be fun.
Real World Use
Overall I’m still not 100% satisfied with EVDO. The service works great for 2-3 days, then goes nuts for an hour, reconnecting every 5-10 minutes. The problems do not seem to be soley related to heavy cell traffic (it’s gone nuts at 3am), weather, or location. I suspect it’s a problem with Verizon’s network since I can just wait an hour and it’s all well again.
EVDO is still much better than my only other option, dialup. I like being able to take it with me. No more hunting for a ethernet cable, reconfiguring my wifi for a different AP or key, and worrying if the hotel has reasonable internet. Even if I were able to get cable or dsl I think that I’d still keep evdo for travelling and as a backup to the other service.
Sources
http://www.stompboxnetworks.com/
http://forum.stompboxnetworks.com/
http://www.evdoforums.com/
http://www.evdoinfo.com/
http://kenkinder.com/evdo-pc5740/
Part 1 – Before You Start
Part 2 – Getting The Hardware
Part 3 – First Boot
Part 4 – Config and Customize
Part 5 – Future Plans
Part 6 – Summary
2 Comments
Ehlo, Anton.
Did you ever get a chance to add the USB adapter to your stompbox?
Any lessons learned?
I picked up an Adaptec 2-port USB cardbus adapter, but I’m unable to get it to be recognized along with the kpc650.
tnx,
–dio
I haven’t gotten the USB adapter yet. It’s on my list of things to do someday but life’s been too busy to make it a priority yet. Probably this fall when things slow down a little and we get back into the camping and travelling mode.
I will be writing a follow up article on switching to Sprint’s EVDO and setting up bandwidth tracking.
Post a Comment