[ale] Droid updates to a happy setup

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Mon, 2010-08-23 at 23:14 -0400, Jim Kinney wrote:
> My droid did the 2.2 update a few days ago. Poking around, I noticed
> the new addition to networks and wireless - tethering!
> 
> Let's make this short : It "Just Works". Plug in the USB cable, don't
> choose mount drive, select menu, wireless, tethering on then on the
> Fedora 13 side simply choose the new USB0 connection from
> NetworkManager. Wrote this email over it. 
> 
> happyhappyjoyjoy!
> 
> hooking this up to the netbook next so small portable connect nearly
> anywhere.
> 
> Wonder what _new_ data limits Verizon will come up with? 

Hehehe, modded versions of Android (such as those released by Cyanogen
for the HTC phones) have had that tether ability for a while... it is
really nice when it works.  At least for the last several releases, it
too has "Just Worked" with just about everything---it presents to the
operating system as an RNDIS device, and I think everything supports
that.

A few weeks ago I had to go to the office and I found that there was a
rather odd situation:

  * The DSL was not working.
  * The T1 equipment's Ethernet wire (a crossover cable) was _MISSING_
    and therefore I could not use it.
  * I had to build a crossover cable (which took me a while... I have
    probably made two whole Ethernet cables in my life).  Not
    unreasonable, except I just did this a few days prior.
  * Once I made the crossover cable and got ready to failover to the
    T1, I had another problem: the ISP somehow dropped its
    configuration.  Oops.  Hour later, it's running.

Once I had noticed that the T1's crossover cable was missing, I decided
that I would try something.  BTW, this was for a network of about thirty
people... this worked surprisingly well.

I took my phone and plugged it into one of the firewall's USB ports and
quickly added it to the /etc/network/interfaces file and brought it up.
It worked like a *dream*.  Well, aside from the fact that the whole
network was now double-NAT'd and I couldn't run any of the Internet
facing services provided by this network, well, on the Internet.  At
least they could still work for the 90 minutes it took to get the T1
properly up and running... *grumble*.

Long story short: tethering on these phones is bloody useful and
absolutely wonderful, and quite possibly could be a nearly literal
lifesaver.

	--- Mike