Thoughts on the AT&T Microcell

(that's not Kelly's microcell, it's just a hotlinked picture)

At my old house in Youngsville the cellular phone coverage was less than stellar (seemingly for all cell phone providers). AT&T seemed to perform slightly better than Verizon in the back reaches of Franklin County but that wasn't saying much. Kelly recently purchased an iPhone 3Gs and she loves the phone but the coverage was lacking as it always had been. If you stood perfectly still in the master bedroom you could reliably connect a call but isn't mobility the point of having a cell phone?

Enter the AT&T Microcell. Essentially a microcell is a 3G cell "tower" made by Cisco intended to be installed in AT&T customer homes. The microcell connects to your existing Internet connection and when connected your AT&T phone talks to the microcell which routes the traffic from G3 to IP (over your Internet connection) and sends the call across the Internet to an AT&T facility where it is processed in much the same way that "normal" cell connection is processed.

So, how does it work? Turns out pretty darn well. Kelly called to let me know she had picked up a microcell from the AT&T store. When she got home she connected the microcell to an existing Linksys switch located directly downstream from the firewall (in this case a Soekris Net4501 running M0nowall if anyone cares). The device flashed a couple lights and that was about it initially. The installation document said the next phase of the installation would take about 10 minutes and if all went well the device would be ready to use in about 90 minutes.

90 minutes later Kelly called, she had full 5 bars of 3g connectivity and the voice quality was crystal clear. But this was next to the microcell itself so a high quality connection was expected. Kelly then wandered around the house, yard, into the street, in fact all the way to the back fence all the time with at least four bars of 3g connectivity except for one isolated incident when she dropped down to two bars and her voice broke up, but only momentarily. She later went back to the same spot with no negative effect on voice quality.

In short, the microcell rocks! But I have many questions and I'm going to do have to do some troubleshooting in order to find out, and I hope to do this next week. First and foremost what devices are on the back end of the conversation? Is the data between the microcell and the backend device encrypted? Does the microcell support IPv6? Does a persistent connection exist between the microcell and AT&T back end equipment? It seems there would have to be. Otherwise in a true "dead zone" how would an incoming call connect and the phone ring? The microcell is behind a firewall (of course) so it's not like the AT&T back end devices could reach out and initiate a connection therefore a persistent connection must exist. Right?

So far, from the single test, what I can say is the microcell rocks. Even though I have superior connectivity at my place in Durham I may end up purchasing one for myself just to tinker and toy with the device, see what makes it tick, etc. I'll keep you all posted.

Two weeks

It's been about two weeks since my last blog post, and that's a bit rare for me to let as much time go by between posts. In reality I've been quite annoyed over the last two weeks, especially annoyed over the last week. But there is a bit of good news, and we'll open with that.

The Good: my job has been retained at my employer and I have survived the latest round of job cuts. I haven't been doing much singing and dancing about this, especially at work and that's because this was a deep cut and a lot of really good people lost their jobs, and this includes several people I could call my friends. It's a difficult position to be in, really. I want to be excited but I feel so badly for them at the same time. Had I lost my job, well, that would have completed the Great Circle of Crap for 2009 with everything that's happened in my personal life (and it would have likely dictated that I would have had to leave the area in search of employment). But thankfully this has not come to pass and I'm going to start at the current company for the for as long as they'll keep me.

The Bad, or really, the annoying: One of the Philadelphia crew came down for a visit and I met him at a local pub one evening. For reasons that I can't yet figure out my credit card (actually my check/ATM card) was given to another patron who left with said card and did not return it. Luckily I only had to deal with that single erroneous charge but I had to cancel my card all the same. This left me with no access to an ATM and only a credit card to purchase anything with. This was very annoying. I now have my new check/ATM card but NOT my new PIN hence if I need any cash it's a trip to the bank, and forget about getting any cash on the weekends! It's like a trip back to the 80's I tell you. ATM access is something I just take for granted! My credit card has a PIN but I have no idea what it is, in fact I purposefully forgot what it is because it's just such a costly way to get cash. Back when I was married (well I'm still married, but I'm not living at home) I could just get Kelly to get some money from the joint account. No such luck these days! Anyway, I hate to gripe about something fairly minor but it really has been an inconvenience.

Next annoyance: lack of money. I had two unexpected rather large expenditures over the last couple of months and it really took a bite out of my cash reserves. I'm now in a spendthrift mode of living and hoping to make a fair chunk of change with some extra overtime, at least that's the goal. We'll see how well that works with the company currently complaining about the amount of OT money they are paying out. In fact one of the Philly managers told me that the extra work I'm doing above and beyond, at night on my own time should be comp "pay" not OT. And technically this work isn't OT at all. Basically how it works is if I work an extra two hours after normally working hours on projects that are not part of my job description I get a decent chunk of change. if I do that three times a week for a month it works out not to be equal to an extra paycheck but it's close, and it's a fantastic way to build the bank account back up. With that in mind, and the fact that I'm still not making what I was in 2001, I think it's a good deal for both me and the company. I'm a cost-effective employee to begin with and the work I'm doing won't get done otherwise as the other members in the group (some) have no interest or technically can't (a couple others).

*****

Ok, this just in. I should not let two weeks pass before my next blog post. I'll likely ramble on pointlessly as I have just done. Lesson to me, less pain for you.

give me land, lots of land

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above,
Don't fence me in.
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love,
Don't fence me in.
Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze,
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees,
Send me off forever but I ask you please,
Don't fence me in.

Just turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle
Underneath the western skies.
On my Cayuse, let me wander over yonder
Till I see the mountains rise.

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses
And I can't look at hovels and I can't stand fences
Don't fence me in.

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies,
Don't fence me in.
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love,
Don't fence me in.
Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees
Send me off forever but I ask you please,
Don't fence me in

Just turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle
Underneath the western skies
On my Cayuse, let me wander over yonder
Till I see the mountains rise.
Ba boo ba ba boo.

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses
And I can't look at hobbles and I can't stand fences
Don't fence me in.
No.
Poppa, don't you fence me in

Of Twitter and Tweets

If you are not on Twitter I think you should be. Why? It's fun. Follow some famous people you have heard of and read thoughts and opinions (generally) unfiltered by agents, publicists, and the like (though I'm sure quite a few "stars" have people tweet for them). But where else, where else I ask you, can you see a picture of Danny Devito with a piece of the Berlin Wall tied to his foot with an iPhone cable?

The Worst Internet Proxies

I know the location of the most poorly implemented Internet proxy servers in the known Universe. For fear of reprisal I can't say where they are located.

Time Warner and Me

Still a happy customer