I just bought a new laptop (Thinkpad T500) but the only WWAN cards available built in were for either Verizon or AT&T, which is suboptimal as I use T-Mobile which uses the AWS UMTS bands (1,4,8) instead of the bands used in the US by AT&T (1,2,5,6). Since my Blackberry 9700 supports T-Mobile 3G as well as their implementation of UMA I decided to try to get the Bluetooth DUN working.
Bluetooth DUN, T-Mobile UMA
After much searching, this post got me the closest though recent changes either with the new OS 5.0 on the 9700 or T-Mobile’s network have made some tweaks necessary.
http://pegelinux.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/blackberry-curve-8310-as-bluetooth-modem-on-ubuntu-hardy/
I will not go into all the step-by-step details as it is covered above and elsewhere, but first you need to get your computer to bind to the Blackberry DUN service via Bluetooth, I chose to edit /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf to make this happen automatically, but BlueManager also seems to be able to do the same thing with a much more friendly UI if you want to try that route, anyway you cut it, you need to have the DUN service show up as a /dev/rfcomm# device. Once you have completed that you will want to setup pppd(8) much like the above article suggests.
This resulted in a session that looked like the following for me:
mernisse@mernisse-laptop:/etc/chatscripts$ pppd call gprs
Press CTRL-C to close the connection at any stage!
defining PDP context...
OK
OK
waiting for connect...
CONNECT
Connected.
If the following ppp negotiations fail,
try restarting the phone.
Script /etc/chatscripts/gprs-connect-chat finished (pid 14835), status = 0x0
Serial connection established.
using channel 1
Using interface ppp0
Connect: ppp0 < --> /dev/rfcomm0
sent LCP ConfReq id=0x1 <asyncmap 0x0> <magic 0x5db98b32>
rcvd LCP ConfReq id=0x0 <asyncmap 0x0> <auth pap>
sent LCP ConfAck id=0x0 <asyncmap 0x0> <auth pap>
rcvd LCP ConfRej id=0x1 <magic 0x5db98b32>
sent LCP ConfReq id=0x2 <asyncmap 0x0>
rcvd LCP ConfAck id=0x2 </asyncmap><asyncmap 0x0>
sent PAP AuthReq id=0x1 user="mernisse-laptop" password=""
rcvd PAP AuthAck id=0x0
PAP authentication succeeded
sent CCP ConfReq id=0x1 <deflate 15> </deflate><deflate (old#) 15>
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x1 <addr 0.0.0.0> <ms -dns1 0.0.0.0> </ms><ms -dns2 0.0.0.0>
rcvd LCP ProtRej id=0x1 80 fd 01 01 00 0c 1a 04 78 00 18 04 78 00
Protocol-Reject for 'Compression Control Protocol' (0x80fd) received
rcvd IPCP ConfReq id=0x2 <addr 169.254.1.1>
sent IPCP ConfAck id=0x2 </addr><addr 169.254.1.1>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x1 <ms -dns1 0.0.0.0> </ms><ms -dns2 0.0.0.0>
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x2 <addr 0.0.0.0> <ms -dns1 0.0.0.0> </ms><ms -dns2 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x2 </ms><ms -dns1 0.0.0.0> </ms><ms -dns2 0.0.0.0>
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x3 <addr 0.0.0.0> <ms -dns1 0.0.0.0> </ms><ms -dns2 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x3 </ms><ms -dns1 0.0.0.0> </ms><ms -dns2 0.0.0.0>
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x4 <addr 0.0.0.0> <ms -dns1 0.0.0.0> </ms><ms -dns2 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x4 </ms><ms -dns1 0.0.0.0> </ms><ms -dns2 0.0.0.0>
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x5 <addr 0.0.0.0> <ms -dns1 0.0.0.0> </ms><ms -dns2 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x5 </ms><ms -dns1 0.0.0.0> </ms><ms -dns2 0.0.0.0>
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x6 <addr 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x6
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x7 </addr><addr 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x7
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x8 </addr><addr 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x8
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x9 </addr><addr 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x9
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0xa </addr><addr 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0xa </addr><addr 14.36.76.18>
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0xb
rcvd IPCP ConfAck id=0xb
Could not determine local IP address
Connect time 0.1 minutes.
Sent 186 bytes, received 120 bytes.
sent IPCP TermReq id=0xc "Could not determine local IP address"
rcvd IPCP TermAck id=0xc
sent LCP TermReq id=0x3 "No network protocols running"
rcvd LCP TermAck id=0x3
Connection terminated.
Sending break to the modem
PDP context detached
Script /etc/chatscripts/gprs-disconnect-chat finished (pid 14843), status = 0x0
Serial link disconnected.
As you can see, a number of Naks have been received for things that do not work and the connection fails. Tracking each error down step by step I removed noauth from the peers file and replaced it with user “” to force a null user-name in the PAP authentication. I also removed userpeerdns as it appears that the Blackberry was refusing to give it to me. The final piece was that I was hitting what I assumed to be a race condition, as the Blackberry did not have an IP address to give me yet, it kept sending ConfNak to me until it finished setting up the tunnel to T-Mobile on my behalf… (see inset)
Tunnel List
mernisse@mernisse-laptop:/etc/ppp/peers$ pppd call gprs
Press CTRL-C to close the connection at any stage!
defining PDP context...
OK
OK
waiting for connect...
CONNECT
Connected.
If the following ppp negotiations fail,
try restarting the phone.
Script /etc/chatscripts/gprs-connect-chat finished (pid 15068), status = 0x0
Serial connection established.
using channel 12
Using interface ppp0
Connect: ppp0 < --> /dev/rfcomm0
sent LCP ConfReq id=0x1 <asyncmap 0x0> <magic 0x448e9c82>
rcvd LCP ConfReq id=0x0 <asyncmap 0x0> <auth pap>
sent LCP ConfAck id=0x0 <asyncmap 0x0> <auth pap>
rcvd LCP ConfRej id=0x1 <magic 0x448e9c82>
sent LCP ConfReq id=0x2 <asyncmap 0x0>
rcvd LCP ConfAck id=0x2 </asyncmap><asyncmap 0x0>
sent PAP AuthReq id=0x1 user="" password=<hidden>
rcvd PAP AuthAck id=0x1
PAP authentication succeeded
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x1 <addr 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfReq id=0x1 </addr><addr 169.254.1.1>
sent IPCP ConfAck id=0x1 </addr><addr 169.254.1.1>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x1
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x2 </addr><addr 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x2
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x3 </addr><addr 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x3
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x4 </addr><addr 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x4
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x5 </addr><addr 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x5
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x6 </addr><addr 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x6
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x7 </addr><addr 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x7
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x8 </addr><addr 0.0.0.0>
rcvd IPCP ConfNak id=0x8 </addr><addr 14.34.55.230>
sent IPCP ConfReq id=0x9 </addr><addr 14.34.55.230>
rcvd IPCP ConfAck id=0x9 </addr><addr 14.34.55.230>
replacing old default route to wlan0 192.168.196.1
Cannot determine ethernet address for proxy ARP
local IP address 14.34.55.230
remote IP address 169.254.1.1
Script /etc/ppp/ip-up started (pid 15070)
Script /etc/ppp/ip-up finished (pid 15070), status = 0x0
^CTerminating on signal 2
Connect time 4.7 minutes.
Sent 300422 bytes, received 1437245 bytes.
restoring old default route to wlan0 192.168.196.1
Script /etc/ppp/ip-down started (pid 15112)
sent LCP TermReq id=0x3 "User request"
rcvd LCP TermAck id=0x3
Connection terminated.
Sending break to the modem
PDP context detached
Script /etc/chatscripts/gprs-disconnect-chat finished (pid 15117), status = 0x0
Serial link disconnected.
Script /etc/ppp/ip-down finished (pid 15112), status = 0x0
mernisse@mernisse-laptop:/etc/ppp/peers$
Looking at the phone it appears that it snuck into Modem Mode and I was able to ssh around and perform the speedtest that adorns the top of this post. I used the gprs-disconnect-chat file unmodified from the post I linked to, but modified the gprs and gprs-connect-chat files which you can get by clicking on their names or looking at http://www.ub3rgeek.net/gprs/
Modem Mode, UMA