Debian 7 mobile broadband USB stick

Debian 7 supports mobile broadband connections provided by USB modems with just a little configuration. Different mobile carriers might require different settings, but looking at one is a good starting point for another.

2degrees, New Zealand

The following steps can get a SolarNode working with a 2degrees mobile broadband USB stick. This was adapted from this informative page.

Create /etc/chatscripts/2degrees chat script:

TIMEOUT 10
ABORT 'BUSY'
ABORT 'NO ANSWER'
ABORT 'ERROR'
ABORT 'NO CARRIER'

'' 'ATZ'
'OK' 'ATE1'
'OK' 'AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet","0.0.0.0",0,0'
'OK' 'ATDT*99#'
'CONNECT' '\c'

Create /etc/ppp/peers/2degrees pppd script:

hide-password 
noauth
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/2degrees"
debug
/dev/ttyUSB0
115200
defaultroute
replacedefaultroute
noipdefault
usepeerdns
crtscts
lock
local

# Redial and interval
persist
holdoff 5

# No compression
novj
novjccomp
nopcomp
nodeflate

# LCP echo messages settings
lcp-echo-failure 4
lcp-echo-interval 65535

Fix permissions of these scripts to 0640:

find /etc -name 2degrees -exec chmod 640 {} \;

Update /etc/network/interfaces with this:

auto ppp0
iface ppp0 inet ppp
	pre-up sleep 15
	provider 2degrees