Setting up your Huawei E220 3G USB Modem on Ubuntu (Three UK)
Take a deep breath, unwind and relax. Setting up your Ubuntu Linux powered PC for mobile internet access isn’t half as hard as you thought it’d be.
My brother just got a £7.50 a month deal with Three, for 3 GB per month of internet access over 3G (HSDPA). I installed Ubuntu onto a PC for him and had a bash at getting the 3G dongle up and running.
Here is the easiest way to get this up and running.
1.) Plug the dongle into a spare USB slot and restart the computer.
2.) Download the Vodafone Mobile Connect Card Driver for Linux. The version I’m using is 1.99.17 (Beta) and comes as a .deb package.
3.) After installing, run the Vodafone application that you’ll now find in Applications > Internet.
4.) If the application doesn’t detect your dongle restart your PC and try again (although it should).
5.) Insert these settings if you’re using the Three (UK) network. Leave the DNS settings empty to allow dynamic configuration of DNS.
Username: three
Password: three
Preferred connection: 3G preferred
Authentication mode: Default
APN host: 3internet
6.) That’s about it. You should be able to see a signal strength bar at the bottom of the app screen, and connecting to the internet is a simple as pressing the big green connect button.
The vodafone application itself is pretty good. Particularly useful is the usage indicator. It allows you to restrict the amount of data transferred to help ensure that you don’t breach your monthly limit. Check out the screenshot below. Cool eh?
Enjoy mobile internet on Linux!
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 10:06 pm and is filed under Tags: internet, ubuntu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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July 27th, 2008 at 11:33 am
ineed complite instruciton for connecting this modem can u please mail me
iam using windows xp
i own this modem and as well as sim card for this modem but stil i cant able to accesc internet
August 5th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
I did the above, and it connected OK, but then it said that the host had set an invalid DNS server. By using the Modem in a Windows system, I determined that the DNS servers were 4.2.2.4 and 4.2.2.3. Setting these manually got it to work. (It also worked on my Asus EeePC, using the same tricks).
August 6th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Thanks to both Chris and Alec. I tried a few different ways using wvdial, but using both the above bits of advice instead has me connected at last. The DNS server change is a bit of a surprise? Anyway its working now, thanks again.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Alec - many, many thanks to you, sir!
After trawling the web trying to fix my dns, you came up trumps.
I wouldn’t touch MS Windows with a barge pole, so wouldn’t have come up with the idea, but your endeavours did me proud today.
Thanks again.
A.