USB / MiFi Mobile Broadband Devices And CentOS 5 (32-bit)

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Has anyone had any experience with the NetZero Stick? The NetZero site says that it is ‘Linux’ compatible, but gives no detailed information (eg distributations, kernel version, driver name/version, etc.).

I am running a stock CentOS 5.11 kernel (2.6.18-398.el5) on my 32-bit laptop
(IBM Thinkpad X31, with a non-PAE processor, so upgrading to CentOS 6 is not an option, and no, I don’t want to install Ubuntu on this machine). I don’t have any flavor of MS-Windows installed.

My other options are the NetZero Hotspot (a MiFi device) or Virgin Mobile‘s Netgear Mingle Mobile Hotspot (another MiFi device). NetZero does not list Linux as a supported O/S, nor does Virgin Mobile — I am not sure what that means, since the MiFi device are pretty much just like a typical (wired)
wireless router, except instead of a Ethernet uplink (eg to a DSL or Cable Modem or something like that) it has a celluar uplink. I am *presuming* that these MiFi devices are configured via a web interface (eg http://192.168.1.1/
or some such with some default username/password).

One thought on - USB / MiFi Mobile Broadband Devices And CentOS 5 (32-bit)

  • I have no experience with that MiFI device, but I have used some other brands (including a Huawei e5, which I happen to have on a shelf right here). All of the devices that I’ve seen to date work like any standard wireless router. It shows up as a wireless hotspot that you can connect to with your laptop, phone or whatever device that you happen to have.

    You can configure it (password, etc) by logging into it with a web browser; it looks just like any other wireless router.