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-- Visorphone and Cingular (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=15525)

I'm contemplating buying a VP when I move back to the States. Cingular is the carrier available where I'm going (NC). The rate plans show an additional $6.99 a month for DATA. Is this needed for VP or, like other Visor/Cellphone hookups, can I dial straight into my ISP without paying extra for data services?

I believe you need to pay the extra $6.99 to access the web (or do any other data-related activities). On my cingular plan, you also have to pay for data minutes and cannot use your plan's included minutes - which sucks.

- Steve.

I'm in South Carolina, and I do have to pay an extra set fee each month to access data, but whether I'm browsing, using the cell phone, or transmitting email, it's all taken out of my normal number of minutes.

Do you have to pay the additional $6.99 even if you already have an ISP to dial to?

here's the deal with cingular:

you pay $6.99 just to have data service >activated<. meaning you're paying cingular a thank you fee for the holy privledge to transmit the modem/PPP data from and to your visorphone (or whatever gsm compatible modem you're using).

on top of that you're paying cingular per minute charges when you are connected to another modem - which does not count towards whatever free minutes that you've been allocated for the month.

These fees are all usage fees. Cingular is not an ISP. They do not provide internet access in the traditional ISP sense. You have to find your own place to dial into.

You cannot trick your visorphone or GSM modem to manually dial (voice mode) a modem number and have it act like a modem. Although it'd be interesting to see what would happen if you did that and stuck the phone in one of those old ass acoustic modems that you stick the telephone handle on to.

Cingular does provide limited internet access through WAP service which they call the 'wireless web'. The access fee is much cheaper and I think even the minutes count towards your freebie minutes. However, The data transmission through this 'Wireless Web' is different than with a traditional modem. And of course it's super limited. Plus this service can only be accessed through WAP enabled phones.
VisorPhone is not a 'WAP Enabled' phone like some of the nokias or qualcomm phones are. Sure you can browse WAP pages through Blazer using your visorphone but method of the data transmission is through the traditional modem/PPP protocol.

i hope this clear things up. sorry if i confused things more. it's quarter til 4am. i'm drowning.

Cingular is the provider here in Greenville. My question is, what if I don't have a dial-up ISP (e.g. cable modem), am I screwed?

__________________
"Life is what you experience between racing games"
Galley

I have been able to use the free ISPs Juno and Bluelight. Search for free isp to find the details on how to set them up.

__________________
My Treo has more memory than I do.

some big DSL/Cable ISPs like Earthlink or @home provide dial up service for free or for a small additional charge as part of your subscription. You might want to ask them what options are available to you re: dial up access.

one geeky work around for free dial-up access is to have one of your computers hooked up to your cable modem to act as a PPP gateway. That is hook up a modem to the computer and dial into that.

that's what i've been doing with playing network games on my Dreamcast system. Since i dont have any dial up service and I have two phone lines, I have the Dreamcast dial into my Macintosh (the PPP server software is included in MacOS 8.6 and later) which is hooked up to my cable modem.

the procedure on exactly how to get this set up is a whole nother story....

quote:

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Originally posted by sammich
on top of that you're paying cingular per minute charges when you are connected to another modem - which does not count towards whatever free minutes that you've been allocated for the month.

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Yeah it is a crummy deal.

By the way I think the access fee for modem access is $4.99. The $6.99 price i think is the monthly charge for the 'my wireless web' service, which is just WAP browsing -and that service will allow you to use your unlimited night/weekend minutes.

Weird thing is on the cingular web site, I cannot find >any< reference at all to modem activation/data connection services. It's not in the FAQ, not in the customer service section, not even in the calling plan extra options checklist. Anything internet related on that site all falls under that 'wireless web' plan.

best thing to do is jut to call their customer service line and ask them.

Cingular has not been charging me during data calls at night and on weekends.

How did you set it up?

quote:

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Originally posted by sammich
some big DSL/Cable ISPs like Earthlink or @home provide dial up service for free or for a small additional charge as part of your subscription. You might want to ask them what options are available to you re: dial up access.

one geeky work around for free dial-up access is to have one of your computers hooked up to your cable modem to act as a PPP gateway. That is hook up a modem to the computer and dial into that.

that's what i've been doing with playing network games on my Dreamcast system. Since i dont have any dial up service and I have two phone lines, I have the Dreamcast dial into my Macintosh (the PPP server software is included in MacOS 8.6 and later) which is hooked up to my cable modem.

the procedure on exactly how to get this set up is a whole nother story....

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gadgetgal:
either you're confusing the data access with the' wireless web' promotion or you're extremely lucky. On the cingular web site where they advertise the 'free night and weekend minutes with the wireless web' the fine print below reads :

"Other forms of Circuit Switched Data calls are excluded."

MPM:
There's an checkbox option in the "Answering..." dialog box in the Remote Server control panel to 'Allow Client To Connect via TCP/IP'. If this isn't checked then you're only going to get Appletalk access.

But on top of that, like with any computer that is connected to the internet, the computer (or Visor) you're dialing from has to have some kind of IP address assigned to it. You'll see that if you check the checkbox mentioned above you'll also see an area where you can type an IP address to assign the client computer that's dialing in. There's also an option for the client to choose it's own IP address but it's better to leave that off to avoid confusion.

So all you have to do is find an IP address in the range assigned to you by your ISP that you're not using and enter that in. Typically with home DSL/Cable setups they only assign you one IP address per computer that you have. You'll probably pay extra for each IP number you request. Actually most ISPs dont even wanna give you a permanent address (which is the case if you have PPP over Ethernet).

If you're stuck with one IP address and dont wanna pay the extra dough, there is a way for multiple computers on the same network to share one IP number. This is called Network Address Translation (NAT) or IP Masqurading. In this setup, the cable/dsl modem is directly hooked up to a the nat router computer which has the IP address assigned by the ISP. All the networked computers is hooked up to the nat router. The networked computers use an 'internal IP' addressing scheme. It can get a little confusing, but simply it's like this:

internet/ISP ---> cable/dsl box ---> NAT computer ---> home network (including your visor dialed up)

There are 'internet line sharing' hardware devices you can buy off the shelf that pretty much does the same thing and are easier to set up and manage. But if you have a crappy computer lying around, it can do the trick nicely too.(I use my old 25mhz Mac IIvx as the router and it works great). Another neat thing about it is that you kind of have a internet firewall for a bonus.
The NAT software I use is called IP NetRouter from Sustainable Softworks. There's another one called Vicom Internet Gateway which is a little less techie to set up. NAT is built in to Unix(es) types like FreeBSD and Linux (so i would assume MacOS X too). I have no clue what's available on the windows side.

Anyways, I'm going way way beyond the scope of the topic now.
Check out the excellent IP NetRouter tutorial at Sustainable Softworks web page, it'll will give you more details of how it all works (including NAT and firewall concepts).

I must be extrememly lucky, because I've been surfing and emailing to my heart's content using my ISP (Earthlink) and have not paid one penny over my base monthly price since I got the visorphone about a month after they came out.

Thanks sammich

Thanks for the info. I have one static IP address. I didn't think that you might have multiple IP addresses or a NAT router. Your setup is one of the ways that I came up with to get the Visor onto the Interent via my Mac. I just got really excited when I saw your post and assumed that you were like most people with DSL or Cable modems: one IP address (or PPPoE), one computer, and no NAT router.

Looks like I'll be getting a NAT router soon. Boy, a Mac IIvx - that takes me back. Ok enough off topic...