Tethering a VS415PP on Verizon 3g

I bought a phone flashed with a grandfathered 3g unlimited plan from a private seller, who had in turn bought it from one of the [in]famous eBay device flashers.  This particular device is a Zone 2 (vs415pp). It came rooted with Wifi Tether Router installed.  Over time WTR started getting flakier and I dorked up

Verizon grandfathered 3G speed test

Tested through wifi tether.  The 3G is slow enough that the overhead from wifi tether won’t be a bottleneck.   73ms ping, .56Mbps down, .40 Mbps down   Direct link

making the most of intermittent internet

RV folks without mobile data plans (or outside of cell coverage) have to deal with brief periods of wifi access followed by long stretches of no connection.  The impact of this restriction can be lessened by using some old-school tools.

email bandwidth conservation

Email is something we take for granted until we can’t get it; then it’s a First World Crisis.  Luckily email can be extremely efficient because text is cheap to send/receivetext.  And since so little data is moved in minimal setups you can often get email through when nothing else works. We need to look at

web bandwidth and data conservation

There are two entangled ideas here: the amount of data you use over time (like a month).  If it were electricity this might be kilowatt-hours. the amount of data you use at any given time (available bandwidth of your connection).  If this were electricity it might be Amperes. We will address the data side of

Internet best practices: email security

There are a couple of things we need to understand about email. Browsing is anonymous; email is not.  You can clicky-click all over the open web without logging in to most places.  You can search, look at youtube, read for days on wiki without logging in unless you want to.  It’s like listening to the

Internet best practices: web security

Based on my reading of this thread RVers could use some clear information on how to minimize risk online.   Using that topic as a jumping off point I plan on a short series of posts to help non-technical folks get the most out of the internet.  Alpha geeks can

podcast bandwidth conservation

Podcasts are awesome I don’t own a TV now and I don’t plan to own one during my boondocking adventure.  I have largely given up on commercial radio.  For those and several more reasons over the past 10 years podcasts have become my main source of information/entertainment.  eBooks do the heavy lifting for more complex

Poor man's Wifi Ranger

Wifi Rangers are nice, and they are also $$$.  That kind of setup does a couple of things: talk to more distant wifi access points (APs) repeat that link to the RV Since I don’t have a few hundred bucks lying around but I do have a WRT54GL router I picked up for $8 at

Poor man’s Wifi Ranger

Wifi Rangers are nice, and they are also $$$.  That kind of setup does a couple of things: talk to more distant wifi access points (APs) repeat that link to the RV Since I don’t have a few hundred bucks lying around but I do have a WRT54GL router I picked up for $8 at