[xubuntu-users] Connection issue with Sprint 4G Mobile Hotspot

[Peter Flynn]

On 12/30/2012 08:21 PM, Charles Collins wrote:
> I am a new convert from Microsoft Windows, and have 12:10 Xubuntu
> installed.

Welcome aboard!

> The problem is with the wi-fi connection to our 4G Sprint Mobile
> Hotspot.  Sometimes it works fine, but most of the time I get a
> screen when attempting to access a web page that says:  This Web
> Page is not Available.  The server at www.xxxxxxxx.com can't be found
> because the DNS look-up failed.

That is possibly indeed the case. Mobile hotspot backend support from 
ISPs is notoriously poor. I get this error occasionally, even though my 
ISP (UPC) is otherwise reasonable.

What may be happening is that they are failing to provide a reliable DNS 
service their end, so when your browser tries to find the IP address of 
www.xxxxxxxx.com in order to send a request, your ISP's DNS simply fails 
to supply it, or doesn't respond in time.

In the case of very well-known sites (eg Google), this simply shouldn't 
happen, as the data should be cached by their DNS.

In the case of less-used or very remote sites, it *is* possible that the 
lookup simply takes too long, so the server times out, assuming the 
lookup has failed. In these cases, trying again in a minute may well fix 
it (in between times, the lookup has finally completed, and the DNS will 
have cached the address).

Somewhere in your hotspot configuration is the setup for where it 
connects *to*. This should be accessible on http://192.168.1.1 or 
whatever equivalent default local network it's set for: they should have 
provided setup documentation which tells you this. Visit the address 
with your browser. Look for the section on "remote" or "server" 
configuration, and there should be the address of Sprint's server that 
your hotspot connects to, a bunch of other config stuff, and one or two 
DNS addresses, which should automatically have been set to one (or two) 
of Sprint's DNS servers.

As a test, replace the first one of the DNS addresses with a suitable 
address from the list of free DNS servers here:
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/tipstricks/a/free-public-dns-servers.htm
and see if that makes any difference. Don't change anything else. You 
may have to restart the wireless service and your PC in order to force 
it to use the new address. If that proves to stabilise the problem, 
leave it, and perhaps email Sprint support :-) to explain that their DNS 
is failing. If it doesn't improve things, then the fault lies elsewhere 
and you may have to call Sprint to fix it. Good luck with that :-)

> And it continues with suggestions which I have tried.

Those are usually useless, IMHO.

> A friend helped me do the conversion from Windows, and is pretty
> adept at finding his way around, but this has him stumped as well.
> The wireless connection shows to be fine, and the whole time I'm
> having this trouble, my wife is surfing without any problems on her
> computer that uses Windows.

In that case, you could check NetworkManager to see if the wireless 
config is correct, and perhaps make the replacement of a DNS address 
there in your PC instead of in the hotspot. NM has a reputation on some 
network cards of having timing problems; as Ric suggested, switching to 
a different network management system may improve this.

///Peter