Hurricane Ian, SHTF, and internet... Tethered VS Cellular

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thewanderlustking
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Hurricane Ian, SHTF, and internet... Tethered VS Cellular

#1 Post by thewanderlustking »

First off thank you Ador for the help and advice the other day! Let me tell you when you have a few oddball Toughbook related questions, it sure is nice to have a lifeline! ESPECIALLY one that I could reach without internet.

I am here in the midst of the aftermath of hurricane Ian, and realizing how important and useful having the internet can be. I needed to try and determine yesterday what road conditions in North Port were so we could go rescue Mum. Trees had fallen and she was blocked in her house with dwindling supplies, almost no food, no electricity, no backup plans, and not even running water... Sarasota had time to prepare as the more paranoid of us started in when a direct hit on Tampa was forecast. The cone was wide enough we knew we were still going to get pounded.

Then it shifted to a direct hit on us, but we still had time. And then with maybe 12hrs to landfall, it shifted South to the much more vulnerable Myakka area. They were completely unprepared. I was BAD here. In sheer size, this was one of the largest hurricanes reported. Charlie would have fit in just the eye of Ian. It was MASSIVE. When I zoomed out on the radar, you could see the tail of storms off of is extending all the way up the east cost, past Canada, and almost to the tip of Greenland. BTW I used the app MyRadar for this. It was awesome and with constant map updates that never seemed to be more than 5 minutes old. It was very reassuring to see where the storm was.

Anyways we were pretty well prepared, and while Sarasota got POUNDED, our preparations meant the house essentially came out unscathed. We got to Mum in apparently the very narrow window of 5-6hrs where things were almost manageable. The flooding was so bad. There was 7-8 miles in and out where it was over a foot deep. The closer we got to her hose, the worse it got. A block away it was a rushing current and easily 3' over the top of a little bridge crossing over a canal that runs behind her house. I had to do an emergency u-turn in our little Subaru and find another way in.

We were only there for maybe an hour doing some quick emergency clearing and cleanup so she could actually get out. This is when things got really dicey. The information I had said the road we had come in on was impassable, but that another road out wasn't. Local PD showed up as we were leaving, said a whole section of road was washed out with a river flowing over it where Google maps said was clear. The last part of how we had come in was pretty bad too, so they told us the other road out of the neighborhood was passable. It wasn't, and I watched 2 cars stall out so I had to do another rolling u-turn and then went back the way we had come in.

It was really bad getting back. A lifted truck decided to stop right in front of us as we are crossing another flow, to f-ing roll down his window to talk to somebody forcing us to stop in flowing water at least a foot deep. And everyone was driving retarded like that the whole way back.

Anyways we got her and her doggie home safely. Now the real chaos begins... -=sighs=- It was peaceful lol.

During the ordeal one thing I was longing for was stable internet. Currently I am on the Getac B300 and tethered to my iPhone. That actually is working fairly well. But yesterday tethered to the CF-31, didn't go well. The CF-31 is on W10, the B300 is on a broken W7 (it is screaming at me that it "might" not be genuine lol). Oh well apparently I am no longer connected. I have to constantly fiddle with the connection to keep it alive.

But I am definitely experiencing the "use case" for having a ruggedized laptop in s SHTF scenario. While I am fully powered up on a generator now, this B300 has over 9hrs of battery life. The CF-31 is pretty awesome too!

Here is where my real questions and lack of experience in this lie though.

1) The Tethered vs Cellular scenario. I would imagine the speeds to be comparable. But I also suspect that I will REMAIN connected with cellular where the tether drops out if I do something like write a long post... Or sit on Google Maps hoping to keep them live, but not actively doing other online tasks. If the cellular experience utilizing the Gobi or Sierra cards these all have is vastly improved on this current situation, I am probably sold on doing it!

2) Limited use... Realistically, I only "want" this in a very few scenarios. Maybe 2-3x a year. Power outages or internet ones are not uncommon in Florida. There might be once every 5-6yrs where a want becomes a potentially lifesaving genuine NEED. I am probably okay with some sort of limited pay as needed plan. The question is, can a burner style smart phone plan from say Walmart actually be used??? I get the whole different sizes of sim cards portion of it, but I don't know if the plan itself can be utilized.

3) How, transferable is a sim card? Can I swap one card into another laptop? Physically, easy. But will this work on the software side of things? I suspect this Getac and the CF-31 should be new enough to get the cards to work on multiple carriers. Ador was saying I could configure the CF-31 card in that manner. I need to see about my CF-19.

My plan WAS to put this Getac on Linux or W10. I defiantly have to at least fix windows on it. It is already blazing fast, and the processor is socketed so it is easy to even upgrade it significantly more. My CF-31 "ToughMac" attempt stalled. This would be a MUCH more powerful candidate to use, but the CF-31 is likely going to be easier. Plus I can readily get parts and already have extra HDD caddies... Cellular support is oddly written into OSX, but there are no WWAN hardware options

Whatever. I think the actual question here is:

4) Is the internet browsability vastly effected by W7 vs W10 vs Linux? For that matter would I even be able to easily use the cellular on linux? I suspect that out of the box uncontrolled, W10 is a MASSIVE background resource hog. If getting it under control is all I need to do to make it feel like this W7 machine...
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ADOR
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Re: Hurricane Ian, SHTF, and internet... Tethered VS Cellular

#2 Post by ADOR »

Glad I could help what little I did, I tried to pay attention to those older threads even though I never used WWAN personally, I usually just sold my internal cards to other members that needed a cheap card. I did play with the GPS on some of the WWAN cards but never really got in-depth with it as most of my units already had a factory or modded Dedicated GPS unit in them already.

I even picked up one of these years ago to do some testing on but never really got that far into it.

https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Express- ... B07FJXNLLT

On some of the older Toughbooks you are limited on cards, so I was thinking internal USB PORT with that usb adapter, then also hoping to use the slot like that for a extra internal USB SLOT.
CF-28 MK2,Mk3 / CF-29 Mk3 / CF-30 MK2 / CF-25 Mk1 ATI / CF-19 MK3/Mk3/Mk5 / CF-U1 Mk1,Mk2 / CF-M34 Mk7/Mk3 / CF-17 Mk1 / CF-07
Voodoo Envy M355 / M360 / M515 / M780 / U703 / Voodoo Hexx / Voodoo Idol / Voodoo Rage F1 / Voodoo Rage F1 / Voodoo Rage F1 "signed case" / Voodoo Omen
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thewanderlustking
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Re: Hurricane Ian, SHTF, and internet... Tethered VS Cellular

#3 Post by thewanderlustking »

I have tried a few of the Amazon and eBbay special cards! I guess I am lucky now in that the WWAN cards are already installed. I am just not sure it is worth it. I am currently tethered to my phone. It "sorta" works ok.
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Not sure how to get the movie window player without uploading it to YouTube.
And even this much is barely happening lol!
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mklym
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Re: Hurricane Ian, SHTF, and internet... Tethered VS Cellular

#4 Post by mklym »

You will get better results with the built-in card than tethered to your smartphone. I have a CF-31 Mk3 with a Sierra MC7700 that came from the factory with it. I don't use it much, but when I do use it, the result is like a home conn from a few yrs back. I have had better results with the Aircard than with some WiFi networks I had access to.
As I don't use the Aircard regularly, I don't have a 'data' SIM, I put the SIM from my cell phone into the CF-31, boot up the unit and input the Access Point Name (APN) for the network. Customer service for your cell provider should be able to give you the APN info and anything else you need to know to connect, or go buy a data SIM (SIM that is tied to a dedicated cellular data plan).
I should say that I use Linux so I am not sure about windows, heard that the conn manager handles the cell cards okay, no idea about Mac.
Best of luck.
CF-29LTQ,CF-31SBM,CF-52youngGUN,

Life's Journey is not to arrive safely at the grave in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways totally worn-out shouting 'Woo Hoo! What a ride!

Motorsports - the only real sport. If it doesn't have a motor, it is just a game.

There is always something waiting at the end of the road, if you are not willing to see what it is, you probably shouldn't be out there in the first place.

thewanderlustking
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Re: Hurricane Ian, SHTF, and internet... Tethered VS Cellular

#5 Post by thewanderlustking »

That is exacty what I was after. I guess it is worth ding then. ,Awesome on the Linux bit! What flavor and release are you using???

I hadn't though about the SIM card swap idea too deeply. I tried it before and got a card stuck. I have an iphone with the small sim. I think I can get an adapter, the throw away bit from my local cell store. The phone is a pain to get out of its case, and the card is annoying to pop out also, It would probably be more practical to clone the SIM... I can turn the WWAN slot on/off easily enough.
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mklym
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Re: Hurricane Ian, SHTF, and internet... Tethered VS Cellular

#6 Post by mklym »

I use a Debian based distro called MX Linux and am using MX21.2 64bit. You can find it here:

https://mxlinux.org/

It may not be the flashiest, but it is stable and they have a great group of devs.
There are a few desktop managers you can choose from.

It sounds like getting another sim for the CF-31 would be the most convenient and you would be able to leave the sim in the Toughbook.

You don't need to turn it on or off. You select which network conn you want to use with the network manager. Your choices would be ethernet cable, WiFi or WWAN, depending on location of course, and select which method you want to connect with. The cell card will not connect on its own, same as the WiFi will not, so don't have to worry about running up your data unnecessarily, or turning it off.
CF-29LTQ,CF-31SBM,CF-52youngGUN,

Life's Journey is not to arrive safely at the grave in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways totally worn-out shouting 'Woo Hoo! What a ride!

Motorsports - the only real sport. If it doesn't have a motor, it is just a game.

There is always something waiting at the end of the road, if you are not willing to see what it is, you probably shouldn't be out there in the first place.

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Rob
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Re: Hurricane Ian, SHTF, and internet... Tethered VS Cellular

#7 Post by Rob »

Lol, for SHTF I've built two MASSIVE radio networks on 300'+ tall communications towers.... ZERO internet needed ;)

See my signature for links. ;). This is what I've put all my extra money into the last 3 years! :)
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~Cell: (630)/300-8877~
~Owner - Toughbooktalk~
~Fully rugged Toughbook user since April 18th 2005~
~FZ-40ACAAHKM - Primary Toughbook / Workstation as of 7/29/22
~Win10 Pro (Win11 DG), Intel Core i5-1145G7 (up to 4.4GHz), vPro, 14.0" FHD Gloved Multi Touch, 16GB, 1TB Samsung SSD, Intel Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth, 4G EM7690, GPS, Quad Pass (BIOS Selectable), Mic and Infrared 5MP Webcam, Standard Battery, TPM 2.0, Emissive Backlit Keyboard, Dual Batteries, USB A + HDMI + Serial X-PAK, Shoulder Strap, Flat~
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ADOR
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Re: Hurricane Ian, SHTF, and internet... Tethered VS Cellular

#8 Post by ADOR »

Has anyone heard from Springfield? I think he is down in Florida isn't he?
CF-28 MK2,Mk3 / CF-29 Mk3 / CF-30 MK2 / CF-25 Mk1 ATI / CF-19 MK3/Mk3/Mk5 / CF-U1 Mk1,Mk2 / CF-M34 Mk7/Mk3 / CF-17 Mk1 / CF-07
Voodoo Envy M355 / M360 / M515 / M780 / U703 / Voodoo Hexx / Voodoo Idol / Voodoo Rage F1 / Voodoo Rage F1 / Voodoo Rage F1 "signed case" / Voodoo Omen
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mklym
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Re: Hurricane Ian, SHTF, and internet... Tethered VS Cellular

#9 Post by mklym »

Last I heard Springfield was in Florida, but that was years ago. Don't know if he is still there or if he moved.

Maybe Rob can use his razoo comm setup to get a hold of him and see if his is okay.
CF-29LTQ,CF-31SBM,CF-52youngGUN,

Life's Journey is not to arrive safely at the grave in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways totally worn-out shouting 'Woo Hoo! What a ride!

Motorsports - the only real sport. If it doesn't have a motor, it is just a game.

There is always something waiting at the end of the road, if you are not willing to see what it is, you probably shouldn't be out there in the first place.

thewanderlustking
Posts: 86
Joined: Wed Feb 15, 2017 11:52 pm

Re: Hurricane Ian, SHTF, and internet... Tethered VS Cellular

#10 Post by thewanderlustking »

mklym wrote: Wed Oct 05, 2022 6:19 am I use a Debian based distro called MX Linux and am using MX21.2 64bit. You can find it here:

https://mxlinux.org/
I might have to give that a tryout!

I am still playing with the Getac B300, and LOVING IT! I now have Ubuntu 22.04 on it. For whatever reason Amazon wasn't displaying correctly on it on W7Pro. Works fine on Ubuntu. Anyways that's what I am actually on right now in fact. I think the keyboard feel nicer than the Toughbook ones. Keys are a lot more 'clicky" and seem to have a lot of travel without the force of the panny backlit. On the Panasonic chiclet style, I drop lot of letters, so far I don't seem to drop any on this. It s louder than my Macbook keyboard, but I think it is the closest I have come to how nice the Macs feel.

Getac doesn't seem to put as much thought and care into their drivers, integration, and factory software. Good for running on Linux as there is much less to interface. But the user experience isn't as "polished" as a Panasonic. I am actually really tempted to try Hackintoshing it. But a Toughbook is just more amusing for that haha. Anyways it is a super nice laptop. Oddly it has CRAZY runtimes on Windows like 8-12hrs. But on Linux it says I only have 3hrs at 49% battery.

Interesting. Not sure if any of my Toughbooks have the smart card readers, but this Getac does. And it looks like the smart cards and sim cards have the same interface. Blank sim cards are actually in a smart card package and then you break them out. That is a rabbit hole, wow... I can start off with some simple adapters. I think I will start there and se if I can get my original sim working first.
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