Vodafone Linksys WRT54G3G
Although we’re not a Vodafone customer (for no special reason), we signed up for their 3G data package which includes a 3G PCMCIA data card plus a Linksys WRT54G3G wifi router.
The reason to choose a 3G solution is that we spend the weekends away from civilization (i.e. ADSL or a cable connection at least), and we were using an ISDN line (64kbit up/downstream for a single connection, 128kbit if you want to pay double), which is expensive and slow nowadays. For €29.90 a month you get 10GB of traffic (if you sign up until the end of the year), which is more than enough for the weekends.
It works like a charm, and it was very easy to setup. It’s a robust solution. So you have an idea, I “remote desktop” installed Apache + Perl + PHP + MySQL + Wordpress on my home server (you’re reading this, aren’t you?) through it. On my iBook. In the kitchen. And have I mentioned we are (were!) away from civilization? If I put the router near a window facing south, I can get downloads up to 35KB/s, so I’m more than happy.
The only thing that I haven’t managed to get working is the Auto Connect feature – it doesn’t, and it disables the hardware connect/disconnect button. Haven’t been able to find anything about it yet.
The new firmware which fixes this bug is available here.
