Setting Up StarHub Maxmobile (Huawei E270) on RHEL 5.1

There are posts from other people saying that this can be easily configured in ubuntu. However, that doesn't really applies on RHEL 5.1. Unfortunately, I am using RHEL 5.1 on my laptop as preconfigured by our IT helpdesk. I have no intention to reinstall a ubuntu or Fedora as I will have to figure out how to configure other stuff like VPN, email, etc all over again.

RHEL is mainly a server OS. I think most people don't use RHEL on desktop/laptop except redhat employees. I have spent some time figuring out how to configure the Huawei e270 modem and getting it work on RHEL. I think it might be useful to share the information here in case some people need to do the same.

First thing first, you need to make sure that the modem is recognized properly. Most often the modem is recognized as a USB storage instead.
1) Download usb_modeswitch from http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/ and extract the files to /opt/usb_modeswitch, for example.
2) Plug in Huawei E270 modem and execute the following command as root.

# /opt/usb_modeswitch-0.9.4/usb_modeswitch -v 0x12d1 -p 0x1003 -H 1

You may need to execute the same command a few times until you see the following message:

Looking for default devices
Found default devices (1)
Prepare switching, accessing latest device
OK, Huawei control message successfully sent.
-> See /proc/bus/usb/devices (or call lsusb) for changes. Bye

3) Now if you execute "ls /dev/ttyUSB*", you should able to see a list of USB devices.


Second step is to dial-in to StarHub 3G network. Login as root and execute the following commands:

# chmod -c a+rwx /etc/wvdial.conf
# chmod -c a+rwx /etc/ppp/pap-secrets
# chmod -c a+rwx /etc/ppp/chap-secrets

Edit the file /etc/wvdial.conf and add the following content:

[Dialer hsdpa]
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Modem Type = Analog Modem
Baud = 460800
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init3 =
Phone = *99#
Username = star
Password = hub
Ask Password = off
Dial Command = ATDT
Stupid Mode = on
Compuserve = off
Force Address =
Idle Seconds = 0
DialMessage1 =
DialMessage2 =
ISDN = off
Check Def Route = on
Auto DNS = on

After these are done, execute the command "wvdial hsdpa" and you should be able to see the following output:

--> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.54.0
--> Cannot get information for serial port.
--> Initializing modem.
--> Sending: ATZ
ATZ
OK
--> Sending: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
OK
--> Modem initialized.
--> Sending: ATDT*99#
--> Waiting for carrier.
ATDT*99#
CONNECT
--> Carrier detected. Starting PPP immediately.
--> Starting pppd at Thu Jul 10 15:32:48 2008
--> pid of pppd: 5031
--> Using interface ppp0
--> local IP address 10.13.165.229
--> remote IP address 10.64.64.64
--> primary DNS address 203.116.1.78
--> secondary DNS address 203.116.254.150

Good luck!

Nine Trends Driving Business in 2008

Source: Wired Magazine: 16.04 (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_opensource)

1: Open Source Tycoons

2: Social Networks Grow Up

3: Green on the Outside

4: Invisible Internet

5: Rise of the Instapreneur

6: Building a Better Banner

7: Invented in China

8: VCs Look for a New Life

9: The Human Touch

Open Source as Career Opportunity for Developers

Esther Shindler, editor at CIO Magazine, has a great article on this topic. She says:

Sometimes, there isn’t much you can do to kick-start your career. Not everyone can be lucky enough to get involved in a high-profile project at work, or to develop a talent in a technology that’s suddenly in-demand. But it surprises me when IT professionals who aim to move up the career ladders don’t take advantage of one resource that’s a win-win solution all around: get involved in an open source project.

This is particularly important to women in IT, who can feel that it’s hard to get noticed in their companies (see The Executive Woman’s Guide to Self-Promotion for general guidelines on how to counter that problem). But it really applies to anyone who wants to gain experience and visibility in the IT department, even if you don’t care about becoming a rock star.

As a participant in an open source project, everything is in your control. You pick the project that you think is the most valuable, or in which you can develop the skills you need but can’t justify on your résumé. In the universe of open source, you’re judged only by what you contribute. Corporate politics aren’t an issue. If your code is useful, or your technical documentation is appreciated, or you’re just a welcoming voice on the community IRC channel, you have a good chance of being invited to become a committer.

Linux Desktop Applications

OpenProj by Projity is a desktop replacement of Microsoft Project. OpenProj has equivalent functionality, a familiar user interface and even opens existing MSProject files. OpenProj is interoperable with Project, with a Gantt Chart and PERT chart etc.

Google Desktop enables desktop search with Google and add Google Gadgets to customize your desktop.

CUPS-PDF project is a PDF writer backend for CUPS. It is designed to produce PDF files in a heterogeneous network by providing a PDF printer on the central fileserver. It will convert files printed to its queue in CUPS to PDF and put them in a per-user-based directory structure. It can execute post-processing scripts, e.g. to allow mailing the results to the user.

OpenOffice.org is a cross-platform office application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems. It supports the ISO standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office '97-2003 formats, among many others. The functionality of OpenOffice is enriched with the extensions like templates, addons, etc.

Pimp your desktop: automate desktop wallpaper with Webilder.

Firefox 3 web browser is available for download since 17th June. With more than 15,000 improvements, Firefox 3 is faster, safer and smarter than ever before.

The Five Open Source Business Models

Open source has become standard in Silicon Valley, with nearly every software startup planning to release at least some code. So far, they've found five main business models:

1. Sell support services. This is the traditional Linux model, prototyped by Red Hat. It's still a part of most open-source business plans, but on its own it's rarely enough for startups trying to grow. The problem (for the startups) is that anyone can redistribute the code and sell support or consultancy services, so there's nothing to stop an Oracle (NSDQ: ORCL), an IBM (NYSE: IBM), or a Novell (NSDQ: NOVL) from grabbing most of the services revenue.

2. Build (or run) hardware. Free software ought to make hardware more profitable, but relatively few open source companies have taken the hardware route. (Lots of hardware vendors use open-source in their products, of course, but they're not really open-source companies.) The main reason is that installing software on commodity components has even fewer barriers to entry than selling support, as VA Linux showed during the first bubble. Still, some startups have resurrected the idea, notably Vyatta (router) and SocialText (wiki appliance).

3. Proprietary components. Many startups now combine proprietary and open-source code, essentially holding back some functionality from what they release for free. The most successful to use this model so far was VMWare competitor XenSource (now part of Citrix (NSDQ: CTXS)), which gave away the Xen hypervisor but sold its proprietary management software.

Competitor VirtualIron does exactly the same thing, collaborating with Citrix on Xen but competing on management. XenSource's success has made this a popular strategy for other open source startups such as MuleSource (SOA) and Hyperic (systems management.) It also gives established software vendors a clear path to open source.

4. Dual licensing. Some customers just don't want to follow open-source licenses (usually the GPL), so many open-source vendors will happily sell them proprietary licenses for the same software. This works well for companies like Trolltech and MySQL, and it could become more popular thanks to new open-source licenses that place tighter restrictions on what other vendors can do for free.

For example, the limits on home DRM in GPL v3 are intended to make consumer electronics more open, but they could eventually give open-source companies a revenue stream from DRM vendors who want the code without the license. The (so far little-used) AGPL could have an even bigger impact, thanks to its requirement that SaaS users be able to download the source code. The big disadvantage for startups taking this approach is that they can't easily leverage community development, as they need to hold copyright on all code.

5. Advertising. The Mozilla Foundation discovered this almost by accident, when Google (NSDQ: GOOG) paid the Firefox developers so much in referral fees that they had to incorporate as a for-profit. It's also used (along with the other four) by Digium, the main backer of the free Asterisk PBX, which comes pre-configured to connect to particular IP telephony services. I expect we'll see more startups embrace this idea as SaaS becomes more common and ASPs offer big bucks for customer leads.

What is the open source business model?

It is often confusing to people to learn that an open source company may give its products away for free or for a minimal cost.

How do open source companies make money?

While it is true that an open source business may not make money directly from its products, it is untrue that open source companies do not generate stable and scalable revenue streams.

In actuality, in the 21st century web technology market, it is the open source company that has the greatest long-term strategic advantage. This is demonstrated by companies such as LINUX, Apache, and Netscape, a host of web-specific technologies such as Java, Perl, TCL, and a host of web-specific technology companies such as Sendmail.

The open source business model relies on shifting the commercial value away from the actual products and generating revenue from the 'Product Halo,' or ancillary services like systems integration, support, tutorials and documentation.)

This focus on the product halo is rooted in the firm understanding that in the real-world, the value of software lies in the value-added services of the product halo and not in the product or any intellectual property that the product represents.

In actuality, the value of software products approaches zero in the fast-paced, highly-customized, ever-changing world of information technology.

But it is not simply an acknowledgement of the revenue streams generated by the product halo that makes open source a compelling business strategy.

Open source also cuts down on essential research and development costs while at the same time speeding up delivery of new products.

This paradoxical situation arises from the fact that within an open source project, the community members themselves provide free research and development by contributing new solutions, features, and ideas back to the community as a whole. The company that sits at the center of any successful open source project may reap the rewards of the work of thousands of highly-skilled developers without paying them a cent.

A final strength of the open source business model lies in its ability to market itself.

Because open source products are typically released for free, open source companies that can produce quality products and generate a good reputation can almost immediately grab huge shares of any market based on the complex and far-reaching global referral networks generated by users.

In fact, in the web technology space, almost every global standard has been based upon open source technology.

By using the open source technology model, we can create a superior product, which immediately has a competitive advantage, and which generates multiple scalable revenue streams while being freely available throughout the community.

Cloud Computing

Here's a rough breakdown of what cloud computing is all about:

1. SaaS (Software-as-a-Service)
This type of cloud computing delivers a single application through the browser to thousands of customers using a multitenant architecture. On the customer side, it means no upfront investment in servers or software licensing; on the provider side, with just one app to maintain, costs are low compared to conventional hosting. Salesforce.com is by far the best-known example among enterprise applications, but SaaS is also common for HR apps and has even worked its way up the food chain to ERP, with players such as Workday. And who could have predicted the sudden rise of SaaS "desktop" applications, such as Google Apps and Zoho Office?

2. Utility computing
The idea is not new, but this form of cloud computing is getting new life from Amazon.com, Sun, IBM, and others who now offer storage and virtual servers that IT can access on demand. Early enterprise adopters mainly use utility computing for supplemental, non-mission-critical needs, but one day, they may replace parts of the datacenter. Other providers offer solutions that help IT create virtual datacenters from commodity servers, such as 3Tera's AppLogic and Cohesive Flexible Technologies' Elastic Server on Demand. Liquid Computing's LiquidQ offers similar capabilities, enabling IT to stitch together memory, I/O, storage, and computational capacity as a virtualized resource pool available over the network.

3. Web services in the cloud
Closely related to SaaS, Web service providers offer APIs that enable developers to exploit functionality over the Internet, rather than delivering full-blown applications. They range from providers offering discrete business services -- such as Strike Iron and Xignite -- to the full range of APIs offered by Google Maps, ADP payroll processing, the U.S. Postal Service, Bloomberg, and even conventional credit card processing services.

4. Platform as a service
Another SaaS variation, this form of cloud computing delivers development environments as a service. You build your own applications that run on the provider's infrastructure and are delivered to your users via the Internet from the provider's servers. Like Legos, these services are constrained by the vendor's design and capabilities, so you don't get complete freedom, but you do get predictability and pre-integration. Prime examples include Salesforce.com's Force.com, Coghead and the new Google App Engine. For extremely lightweight development, cloud-based mashup platforms abound, such as Yahoo Pipes or Dapper.net.

5. MSP (managed service providers)
One of the oldest forms of cloud computing, a managed service is basically an application exposed to IT rather than to end-users, such as a virus scanning service for e-mail or an application monitoring service (which Mercury, among others, provides). Managed security services delivered by SecureWorks, IBM, and Verizon fall into this category, as do such cloud-based anti-spam services as Postini, recently acquired by Google. Other offerings include desktop management services, such as those offered by CenterBeam or Everdream.

6. Service commerce platforms
A hybrid of SaaS and MSP, this cloud computing service offers a service hub that users interact with. They're most common in trading environments, such as expense management systems that allow users to order travel or secretarial services from a common platform that then coordinates the service delivery and pricing within the specifications set by the user. Think of it as an automated service bureau. Well-known examples include Rearden Commerce and Ariba.

7. Internet integration
The integration of cloud-based services is in its early days. OpSource, which mainly concerns itself with serving SaaS providers, recently introduced the OpSource Services Bus, which employs in-the-cloud integration technology from a little startup called Boomi. SaaS provider Workday recently acquired another player in this space, CapeClear, an ESB (enterprise service bus) provider that was edging toward b-to-b integration. Way ahead of its time, Grand Central -- which wanted to be a universal "bus in the cloud" to connect SaaS providers and provide integrated solutions to customers -- flamed out in 2005.