[CALUG] Verizon Wireless 3G with UM175

[Eldon Ziegler]

FWIW, I purchased a UM175 from the Verizon Wireless store in Columbia
and ran into a few glitches getting it working with Fedora 9 i686. The
first "glitch" was that the folks at the Verizon Wireless store had no
idea of how to install it on Linux. One person said he had heard you had
to install in on Windows first and then move it to Linux. As far as I
can tell, he was right.

I couldn't find a way to register the wireless modem with Verizon other
than going through the install on Windows with the CD that came with the
modem. After that, installing gnome-ppp and plugging the UM175 into my
Fedora 9 laptop installed the cdc-acm driver automatically and the setup
given at
http://ulpcs.com/blog/2008/09/verizon-3g-evdo-working-on-my-linux-aspire-one/
got it up amd running with the following notes.

1. The Username field seemed to need the phone number in the form
123-456-7890 at vzw3g.com, i.e., with dashes, and

2. As the site above says, Verizon's DNS servers didn't work nor did the
servers listed in his setup below. I setup a free account at
www.opendns.com at then it worked using the openDNS servers.

SETUP:

Type “sudo gnome-ppp” and press <ENTER>.  Configure by entering the
information described below.

      * Username: your-modem’s-phone-number at vzw3g.com
      * Password: vzw
      * Phone number: #777
      * Click on the <Setup> button
      * Under the Tab: “Modem”
      * Device: /dev/ttyACM0
      * Type: USB Modem
      * Speed: 460800
      * Under the Tab “Networking”
      * Check: Manual DNS (Automatic does not seem to work)
      * DNS 1: 66.174.92.14
      * DNS2: 69.78.96.14
      * Under the Tab: “Options”
      * Check “Dock in notification area”
      * Click on <Close> button

Hope this is helpful to someone.

Eldon