[SOLVED] Vodafone dongle

Hi all,

I am planning a trip to London shortly and I will be using a vodaphone dongle to get internet access.

My question is, if the dongle will have no problem been detected and working in Zorin.

(The problem is that I have the dongle in London right now so I have no way to test it and experiment with it.)


Has anyone tried it? Are there any suggestions/advices/settings etc. that I should look out? (a short guide will be nice... )

I thank you very much in advance for your assistance.

Hi MV,

there are 1000's of sites that have Q & A's, I think that once you have the dongle in your hands, you can start trying to work it out!!.

http://search.linuxforums.org/search/all/vodafone/

http://www.google.com/search?pq=install ... 6196803024

What type is it, do you know??.

Regards Wolfman

Thanx for the reply Wolfman.
I did not know that there are many types of vodaphone dongles... and right now I cannot find out what type is mine... (as I said the dongle is in London).

I found myself various guides, but I was just wondering if someone actually tried it with Zorin.

Thanx you guys. You are so helpful. I hope I will not run into trouble. We will find out mid of this month. If I manage to get it working I will also write a short guide about it.

No, you are right. It's an "f". I really don't know why I keep writing it like that!

Some further developments on the above.

I have here in Greece a WIND ( a Greek mobile provider) dongle (type: huawei E1550) and I started to experiment.

I plugged the donlge and immediately the green lights started flashing.
Then a pop-up appeared asking me for the pin code. I entered it and the blue lights started to flash.

I then clicked on the network manager, I enabled broadband connections and I chose from the list the "new available mobile broadband connection".

A wizzard came up and I chose country, provider and I left the rest of the default settings unaltered.

In 1 second I got the wirling network balls going around and around and voila! connection established sooooooooo easy.

The notes I have are the following:
i) First of all CONGRATS to Zorin OS. I have read in various web sites of other distros that the dongle will not be recognized as a modem but as a storage device so you have to do this, and that, or add files in root or alter the settings or or or...
Nothing was needed for Zorin. In synaptics the latest (for ubuntu 11.04) modeswitch package is already enabled so no need for anything else.
The settings (APN, passwords etc) of the provider were correct so no need to change anything else.

ii) The ONLY problem I faced was that I could not top-up the dongle from Zorin. It seems that there is no way to do that. In windows, as soon as you plug in the dongle, something called "connection manager" is installed and through that you can send an SMS with the top-up code to a specific telephone number and top-up.
In Zorin I had to take the sim card out of the dongle, put it in my mobile phone, send the text message with the top-up code to top up, and after the top-up was confirmed I put the sim card back to the dongle. Is there any other way to do that? Nevertheless it's not a big deal.

The proccess was very easy and I REALLY hope that I will face no problem with the vodafone dongle in London!

Hi to all. Presently I am in London and I am using the vodafone dongle for internet.

As expected the process was very easy.

I opened up the network manager, went to the tab of mobile broadband and I added a new connection.
Selected UK for country, vodafone for provider, pay as you go for connection type. I have also chosen in the settings to connect automatically and available for all users.
Plugged the dongle, waited for a few seconds and got internet connection. That's it!
All the other settings (APN etc) were left to default and as it seems they were all correct. No need to change any settings at all!

As regards the top up I have the following options:

1) I can top up by going to any vodafone store and bying a voucher, or they do it automatically. They have also given to me a swipe card connected to the number of my dongle to do the topup even easier.

2) I can top up by inserting the sim card of the dongle in my phone and send the relevant message with the toup voucher code to top-up.

and,

3) Even if the dongle was completely out of money, I could log on (only) to the vodaphone web page, and perform the top up from there either by inserting the voucher code or even paying by credit card!

So mission acomplished. Again congrats to the Zorin team for making everything so easy!

Hi MV,

glad to hear you got it sorted

Regards Wolfman

Hi madvinegar, if you are still here, welcome to the UK - if you get the chance to come to Sheffield, let me know!

Thanx for the welcome! Yes I am still here and I will be staying for about another two weeks. I will look in the map to see were Sheffield is!

How can I speed up my mobile internet dongle? I have a mobile internet dongle which is as slow as anything, it takes like 3 minutes to load a webpage. I was going to use it on my xbox but now I know it's terrible. Maybe wrapping a bit of metal around it?

Hi,

have you fully updated your system, there are many new updates what with the new kernel etc:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2247

MV can give you more tips but that is always one of my first!!.

Regards Wolfman

It depends on the reception and the internet speed of your provider.

A nice trick is to go to network manager>edit connections>mobile broadband tab>select your mobile broadband connection>edit and in the first tab set the "type" to 3G/. (It is set to "any" by default).

This will ensure that your stick connects only with 3G and it will be much faster.