Huawei E220 Modem on Linux

Unfortunately for mobile broadband Internet connections, network setups are usually difficult and inconsistent experiences between the different network providers. Getting the modem to work can be a rather frustrating experience if things don't work straight out of the box.

Before I start, I'll let you know that some of the settings here may be specific only to my provider, O2 Ireland, which you may have to do your own specific tweaks, and as the saying goes, "your mileage may vary".

On the good side, the Huawei E220 modem seems to be a rather popular and well supported device, and it did on one instance worked straight out of the box on one of my friend's computer running Ubuntu 9.04 with Network Manager. It doesn't seem to work on 8.10, not on my machine (Ubuntu) or my laptop (Xubuntu), which may just boil down to configuration issues, or not. On the funny side, when I tried to get the settings off my friend's computer by right-clicking on it, it simply froze the machine entirely. (Windows users, insert your jibes here ;p)

This problem is probably specific to O2, since I had a Vodafone modem dongle that I had borrowed before, which worked flawlessly on when plugged into my laptop, which I had assumed will be the case when I got O2, but it turned out not to be so.

Update: Found the reason why Network Manager will work in 9.04 but not 8.10, the newer release had included Modem Manager which had specific setup that will request for a PIN which the O2 card was set up in default. By comparison, the Vodafone dongle did not require a PIN, hence network manager worked without a hitch.

Anyhow, maybe these information I've gleaned from will help you find out what you need to get things to work.

What the lights on the modem really means.

Ignore what the documentation says (partially) that came with the subscription. From my personal observation, if the light is green and flashing, it means that the modem is active, just that it's not authenticated to the provider. That should be a sign that your modem is working.

The modem is also capable of flashing in blue colour (which is nowhere explained in the booklet). This means that your connection is authenticated with the provider, but currently is not having ppp connection established.

If the lights are in solid green, blue, or light blue, it means that your connection is active, and in various different operating speeds (GPRS, 3G, HSDPA respectively) as explained in the booklet. From my observations, it seems like the connection typically reside in the 3G mode (dark blue colour) when it's passive, and only switches to HSDPA mode whenever you start sending or receiving data from the network.

Modem doesn't work with Network Manager

A number of sources suggests that the E220 modem works straight with Linux via Network Manager, but it certainly didn't work for me straight off. So I had do some reading on the wireless broadband forums to try to find answers. Most of them are geared towards solving problems for Vodafone, and the information is really spotty when it comes to O2. Given that I had no idea where to look to find out what's actually happening inside Network Manager, I had to try some other alternatives.

Update: I didn't know where to look before, but I've since found that Network Manager logs to /var/log/daemon.log - still the messages are not too helpful to actually tell you what exactly is the problem.

The saviour - wvdial

'wvdial' is the alternative application that got the connection to work after a bit of reading. The documentation on wvdial can be confusing, and even as I've gotten it to work, I still don't fully understand the relationship between wvdial and pppd. Here's the excerpted config I had in '/etc/wvdial.conf', it's a little half-baked, and sometimes still fails:

[Dialer O2]
ISDN = 0
Baud = 460800
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Phone = *99#
Modem Type = Analog Modem
Stupid Mode = 1
Username = gprs
Password = gprs
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2
Init3 = AT+CPIN="1234"
Init5 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","open.internet"

[Dialer O22]
ISDN = 0
Baud = 460800
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Phone = *99#
Modem Type = Analog Modem
Stupid Mode = 1
Username = gprs
Password = gprs
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2
#Init3 = AT+CPIN="1234"
Init5 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","open.internet"

Do replace '1234' with the actual PIN number that you have.

You can see that I have 2 entries for the connection, which the only difference between the two is that the second entry doesn't have a PIN authentication command. This is the intentional, because wvdial does not know whether the modem is in authenticated mode or not (ie, whether if it's flashing blue or flashing green. The ATZ command does not seem to reset this authenticated state.)

If you started your computer fresh and your modem is showing a flashing green light, invoke wvdial this way:

% wvdial O2

That should work if you started your modem cold. Sometimes the first connection gets dropped for no reason, and to try to reestablish the connection, run wvdial with the O22 connection instead. If you succeed, you should see an output like this:

--> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.60
--> Cannot get information for serial port.
--> Initializing modem.
--> Sending: ATZ
ATZ
OK
--> Sending: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2
ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2
OK
--> Sending: AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","open.internet"
AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","open.internet"
OK
--> Modem initialized.
--> Sending: ATDT*99#
--> Waiting for carrier.
ATDT*99#
CONNECT
--> Carrier detected.  Starting PPP immediately.
--> Starting pppd at Sat May 30 08:20:44 2009
--> Pid of pppd: 7312
--> Using interface ppp0
--> pppd: H�c X�c ��c
--> pppd: H�c X�c ��c
--> pppd: H�c X�c ��c
--> pppd: H�c X�c ��c
--> pppd: H�c X�c ��c
--> pppd: H�c X�c ��c
--> local  IP address 89.204.199.133
--> pppd: H�c X�c ��c
--> remote IP address 10.64.64.64
--> pppd: H�c X�c ��c
--> primary   DNS address 62.40.32.33
--> pppd: H�c X�c ��c
--> secondary DNS address 62.40.32.34
--> pppd: H�c X�c ��c

Trying Network Manager Again

If you have established a connection successfully before, but got dropped for some reason, the light on your modem should be flashing blue. In this case your modem is in the authenticated state, and Network Manager will start working happily if you wanted to use it now.

As I said, Network Manager did work with one of my friend's computer - the difference being that when I tried connecting, his version of Network Manager prompted me to key in my PIN, while my didn't. Even manually setting the PIN in the configuration won't make it work.

But at least it'll work indirectly, and tells us that the problem lies within authentication.

Fun things to do with the modem - AT Commands

Through using wvdial, I realised that the usb modem actually uses a variant of the AT commands of the phone modems I used to have for dialups and BBSes. It kind of piqued my interest a bit, and good for reliving the good old days of fiddling around with AT commands on my modem.

To do so, we'll need to find the interface in which you can send and receive commands to - 'dmesg' will be helpful for these occasions:

[   21.839161] usb-storage: device found at 2
[   21.839163] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[   21.849151] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for GSM modem (1-port)
[   21.849175] option 4-1:1.0: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
[   21.849429] usb 4-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[   21.849441] option 4-1:1.1: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
[   21.849519] usb 4-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB1
[   21.849535] usbcore: registered new interface driver option
[   21.849538] option: USB Driver for GSM modems: v0.7.2

So, /dev/ttyUSB0 is the interface in which Network Manager/wvdial uses to connect to the mobile phone provider, which kind of perplexed me why there is an additional /dev/ttyUSB1 interface. One of the things that came up from googling was an out-of-date kernel support page for the modem.

It provided a tool to read the signal strength of the modem, which out of curiosity, I downloaded the source code and waded through it. That's when I realised that /dev/ttyUSB1 is the interface in which you can issue AT commands to.

Armed with that knowledge, we can now start issuing commands straight into the device! Relying on a primitive method, do this by starting two terminal windows side by side. On one window, do:

$ cat /dev/ttyUSB1

This shows you what's the output coming out from the commands issued. On the other window it is where you issue your commands. For example:

$ echo "AT" > /dev/ttyUSB1

You should see "OK" coming out from the other window, showing that the modem has acknowledge your 'attention' command. Pretty cool eh?

Fun Things To Do #1: Disabling PIN Authentication

Remember the problem with PIN authentication that prevented Network Manager from working properly? Well you can side-step the problem by disabling the PIN authentication feature on the SIM card:

echo 'AT+CLCK="SC",0,"1234"' > /dev/ttyUSB1

Replace '1234' with the actual PIN number that you have. This should disable the need for authentication. A word of caution: do this only if you're not too concerned about the physical security of your modem, otherwise if it gets lost or stolen, others can start using your Internet connection for free!

Fun Things To Do #2: Get SMS Messages

For linux users, we aren't provided with any GUI for us to access and send SMS messages from the SIM card. Unfortunately the O2 site registration assumes that we are all Windoze users, which is the only way in which we can pull out the authentication SMS message that it sends to the mobile phone.

Well fret no more, here's how we can gain access to SMS messages simply by using AT commands:

$ echo 'AT+CMGF=1' > /dev/ttyUSB1
$ echo 'AT+CMGL="ALL"' > /dev/ttyUSB1

This should turn on SMS mode on the modem and dump out all the received SMSes. And from the output messages, you can pick out the authentication message that looks like this:

+CMGL: 0,"REC READ","02",,"25/05/27,20:33:07+04"

Welcome to O2 Broadband! Should you have any queries, visit www.o2.ie/broadbandfaq or our interactive forum on http://forums.o2online.ie. Best wishes, O2.

+CMGL: 1,"REC READ","0000000000",,"26/05/28,21:04:54+04"

Your verification code is XXXXXXXX. Please go to o2.ie and continue your registration.

This is at least useful if you don't want the hassle of manually pulling out the SIM card to put in into your phone to get the SMS message for authentication.

More References

The Wikipedia page on the Hayes modem command set has a set of good starter commands on AT commands. Or to read up more on SMS AT write commands or read commands can be found in these links.