Verizon V620 wireless card

[John Nielsen]

On Monday 05 February 2007 17:57, Volker wrote:
> > ucom0: Novatel Wireless Inc. Novatel Wireless Merlin CDMA, rev
> > 1.10/0.00, addr 2
> > ucom0: ubsa_request: STALLED
> > ucom0: ubsa_request: STALLED
> > ...
> > (lots more STALLED messages)
>
> John,
>
> just added myself to mobile@ (thanks for cross-posting this to usb@
> so I got notice of this discussion).
>
> If you're using the V620 (or any other (W-)CDMA) card with ppp, you
> should make sure you're using:
>
> set cd 30! (note the exclamation mark at the end)
>
> I've seen _a lot_ of problem reports (not just with FreeBSD) where
> ppp does not recognize a connection loss when using W-CDMA cards.
> The exclamation mark forces ppp into waiting for a carrier and
> following that CD signal.

I'll play around with that, thanks.

> I suspect your problems might come from a bad signal. I don't know
> much about the V620 (just that it's only used in nothern america)
> but if it's a high-speed card (transfer rate > 56k, 3G mode?) you
> should force your card into GPRS or 3G mode.

I'll experiment with that too. One thing I'm not sure I mentioned in my 
first post is that the STALLED messages only show up when the device is 
opened and closed. If I use ppp in manual mode I get about six of them when 
I first start ppp but none while I issue any AT commands or while the link 
is active. Then I get about six more when I close the link.

It is a (relatively) high-speed card. Under Windows all the fancy 
third-party software does is create a regular dial-up networking link with 
a serial speed of 230400. Doing the same with ppp under FreeBSD gets me a 
usable connection. Under either OS the latency is pretty high (~300ms) and 
a few packets get dropped here and there, but it beats straight dial-up (or 
heaven forbid, no connection at all!)

> By default W-CDMA cards are trying to auto detect the best signal
> reception and that might cause often signal loss due to band change.
>
> If you know how to force the card into one or the other mode, please
> use that in ppp's init string. If you don't know it, you may try the
> commands for the U630 (I guess both cards are using the same command
> set). You may find a bit info about the U630 at:
> http://bsd.vwsoft.com/3g/merlin_u630.html

Thanks for the link. More documentation is almost always better. :)

> Please note the U630 is serial-over-PCMCIA and not usb so the
> hardware is not the same. I thought the V620 is also
> serial-over-PCMCIA but it seems you proved me wrong. ;)

I was a little surprised when I first plugged it in under Windows and a USB 
hub popped up. But hey, I didn't design the card or even choose to buy it 
(it's part of the lucky ball-and-chain package I get from work when I'm on 
call).

Thanks for your response.

JN