Hi and Help please|

After one failed attempt we are back on a 3g dongle in Italy. We live very remote and this may well be our best option. I have a couple of questions though if someone could help?

From what I see its easy enough to buy a router to put the dongle in so that the signal can be shared on several computers in the house?

However what's confusing me is that our package gives us 100 hours access (not a data limit). So if I put the dongle in the router is it always 'on'? As in will it be running the clock down? Or is it only when someone logs on? And then if two people log on at the same time what happens? Do you share the time or is it counted twice? Hope I'm explaining myself well!

Among the current routers I'm not sure which one to recommend, but there are usually options to limit time online in a number of router devices.

Disconnect on idle may be one option, but generally once connected the dongles stay online all the time.

I would expect this to be more likely in a router aimed at the 3G market, rather than the general devices where 3G dongles are seen as an emergency backup.

This was something that old ISDN routers in the German market had a lot of.

I don't use 3G so I wouldn't want to suggest a router.

Regarding the 100 hours access, I would surmise that it is simply total time connected, not on a "per user" basis. Otherwise the other end would need to determine whether it is two users or one user running two applications. Possible, but not likely I'd have thought.

Limiting your time- depending on your usage pattern, would a simple mains timeswitch (probably with independent weekday/weekend settings) on the router do the job?

you could use Internet Connection Sharing on a windows PC hosting the dongle to share the connection via its wireless or wired LAN connections.

Sounds like it is simply a connection time, there's only one circuit as far as the 3G system is concerned so the hours will be hours the dongle is on line regardless of what's attached.

FWIW I find that the WiFi hot spot tethering facility in Android phones works quite well for allowing multiple computers to access the Internet.

In the UK neither T-Mobile or Vodafone require a log on, but for example many public WiFi systems do.

I think you should as the network supplier how the 100 hours is measured.

When I am in Spain, I use a mifi router with a dongle (which allows for casual use on a laptop outside my residence). These were sourced through an agent in Spain who deals with Vodafone Spain.
This router can be set up to connect on demand or connect during given hours.
The data contract I buy covers a period of time (eg weekend, fortnight ...) and a max amount of data during that period.
Perhaps the same provisions are available in Italy

Thanks,

So am I right in thinking that it may be possible to disconnect the dongle remotely via a computer or do I have to physically take it out to disconnect it. Another problem here is that the only good signal is right at the top of the attic so tramping up and down all the time to disconnect it isn't ideal.

I guess there isn't going to be a perfect solution to this.

I can take the option of a Webcube from 3three which effectively acts as a wifi router as well, I don't know if you have these in the UK? The only problem is they only supply these on contract that are metered by data and not time. The time option is much better for us as we use the internet to stream UK tv and skype back home etc which is data heavy of course. But they only offer this option on PAYG dongles.

Hi Dan, do you know what model/make the router is?

In reply to a post by yarwell:

you could use Internet Connection Sharing on a windows PC hosting the dongle to share the connection via its wireless or wired LAN connections.

Sounds like it is simply a connection time, there's only one circuit as far as the 3G system is concerned so the hours will be hours the dongle is on line regardless of what's attached.

I've tried this as it occurred to me this could be a good option but somewhere along the way it doesn't seem to work. I've followed a couple of tutorials and I can set up the ad hoc connection ok and bridge it to the dongle connection and then use another computer to pick up the signal but on the 2nd computer there is no internet/network connection. I've tried various combinations of computers but can't seem to crack it. I've also tried turning off the firewall just to see if that was blocking it but no joy.

Any thoughts?

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

FWIW I find that the WiFi hot spot tethering facility in Android phones works quite well for allowing multiple computers to access the Internet.

In the UK neither T-Mobile or Vodafone require a log on, but for example many public WiFi systems do.

I think you should as the network supplier how the 100 hours is measured.

So by this way I could use an old android phone, put the sim in it and then turn on the data when I want to use it? Would the phone have any effect on the speed of the connection or is that purely affected by the quality of the signal the sim picks up? Sounds like a good possibility to me if it's practical. Presumably I just turn the phone on when I want the connection and then turn it off when I want to stop it running down the hours, or just switch off the data option?

In the ones I've used you can login into the routers web interface and 'disconnect' the 3G connection, so should be possible without wandering all the way to the attic.

The webcube is in the UK, but not seen anyone using one.

I would just switch the phone off when not needed, just to be sure. Disabling packet data would prevent internet access but whether the network would see that as a disconnection is another matter.

thoughts ? you don't do any bridging - you tell the ICS wizard thingy to share the 3G network connection using the wi-fi network connection. Bridging is not what you want.

If you have a wireless AP you could pug that to the ethernet of a windows PC and use it to connect wireless stuff as that way it isn't peer to peer.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-vista/usi...
http://lifehacker.com/5369381/turn-your-windows-7-pc...

I would start with no wireless security. The "client" PCs get their IP address etc from the "host" PC.

In reply to a post by yarwell:

thoughts ? you don't do any bridging - you tell the ICS wizard thingy to share the 3G network connection using the wi-fi network connection. Bridging is not what you want.

If you have a wireless AP you could pug that to the ethernet of a windows PC and use it to connect wireless stuff as that way it isn't peer to peer.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-vista/usi...
http://lifehacker.com/5369381/turn-your-windows-7-pc...

I would start with no wireless security. The "client" PCs get their IP address etc from the "host" PC.

Thanks, I've followed the instructions above but I can't see how it works? Apologies if I'm seeming stupid. I enabled ICS on the pc that has the connection but then how does another pc in the house find the connection wirelessly? The pc the connection is with is running windows 8 and then i have one running 7 and 2 on vista.

you have to establish a peer to peer connection from your devices to the laptop doing the ICS.

Smartphones may not do peer to peer wireless, or you may not have the settings right to allow it if a laptop can't see it.

I'm not up to speed enough with Windows 8 to advise on setting up a peer to peer / adhoc wireless network. What you're trying to do is :-

3G modem in PC for internet connection
ICS shares internet connection using wireless on the PC
client PCs have ad-hoc or peer to peer wireless link to PC

if you can't get ad hoc connection between PCs you've fallen at the first fence.

Dont know whether I'm better starting a new post or continuing on this one. The dongle is working well now that we've found the sweet spot but I'm still having trouble converting it into a wireless signal.

I've bought a 3g router and tried that but so far no luck. The router is a TP Link MR3220 and the dongle is a Huawei E3131 and is on the 3 network on a 100hr a month option. I followed the set up and the router is picked up fine around the house and the router recognises the dongle but I cannot get the dongle to connect to the internet. Usually it uses the installed 3 software to make the connection but with the dongle not actually connected to the computer it cannot pick it up to log on if that makes sense?

Looking at the router info once it has identified the dongle it is always in the process of 'connecting........' but never actually makes the connection.

Admittidly the dongle is not on the list of approved dongles for the router but I found an Italian forum where someone said this combo worked straight out of the box.

I've also made a firmware update just in case.

If anyone can help us get this going it would be really appreciated as trying to get a decent connection here has taken us three years to get this close!