[Sugar-devel] adding 3G support to Sugar (was Re: Sugarizing an application)

[Peter Robinson]

On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 12:10 AM, James Cameron <quozl at laptop.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 03:48:22PM +0100, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>> It's great to hear that. Starting with the user experience, what if we
>> have a control panel section where the 3G account is setup and a
>> device icon in the bottom frame that allows the user to connect and
>> disconnect?
>
> Several wireless broadband modem providers require no account
> information; the authentication is done using the IMEI of the device and
> the IMSI of the SIM.
>
> Some require that the modem contain a username and password, and this is
> set by AT$QCPDPP, and not by the PPP authentication.  ;-}
>
> PPP authentication happens anyway, sometimes with irrelevant data items.
>
> What is often needed is the Packet Data Protocol (PDP) context Access
> Point Name (APN), which is set before a call using AT+CGDCONT.  Even
> then sometimes it isn't needed, if it has been stored in the modem
> previously using AT&W.
>
> The actual number to dial is *99#, although this can be *99***1# if one
> wants to direct the modem to use a specific collection of profile
> settings (including $QCPDPP and +CGDCONT).
>
> On Linux and Mac OS X this leads to several fields having to be made
> available to a user, yet often few of them being needed.
>
> I think I've seen Ubuntu handling this UI design issue by building a
> data set of providers.  It might be possible to piggy back on some of
> that work.

Well NetworkManager in Fedora which we already use has all that
support already so we don't need to piggy back off anything as the
tools we use already support all of what we require. All that needs to
be done is to extend the sugar interface to add the 3G support that's
already in NM.

Peter