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Hi,

I'm in the middle of a two-week stay in Spain where I've been able to take both JoikuSpot and a Three Mifi for a spin. Might be of interest to anybody who needs a mobile internet connection when away this summer.

Two of us here needed to have internet access but there's none in the place we're staying. So we went and bought two local PAYG SIM cards with an unlimited data plan. We put one of them in an unlocked Three Mifi (a Huawei E585) and the other one in my N900 with JoikuSpot (latest firmware - stock kernel).

The Three Mifi works beautifully. All you have to do is switch it on and, as long as there's network coverage, it just works. Temporary 3G signal loss isn't a problem - the Mifi will reconnect automatically as soon as you're in coverage again and the connection will resume as if nothing happened. You can leave it switched on constantly, forget about it and know that you'll always have a working internet connection whenever you need it. If you're going away for the day, you can just stick it in your pocket or in your backpack and have a working internet connection with you at all times. In short: very fast, very reliable, no hassle - mobile internet as it should be.

JoikuSpot is another story. In fact, so far it's been a complete nightmare. I'm the one stuck with the N900 and JoikuSpot and I've spent more time so far disconnecting and reconnecting to the wifi network, shuting down and restarting JoikuSpot, rebooting the whole phone, tweaking JoikuSpot settings and tweaking my laptop's network settings than using the internet.

On occasions, JoikuSpot will work. You switch it on, connect to the wifi network on your laptop and the connection works.

More often than not however, JoikuSpot will claim that it's up and running and even show my laptop as connected but the internet connection just won't work. When that happens, disconnecting and reconnecting to the wifi access point will sometimes fix the problem. Most of the time however, this won't work either. You'll then be in for a good half-hour of disconnecting and reconnecting, shutting down and restarting JoikuSpot repeatedly, rebooting the phone over and over again, tweaking every setting you can think of and banging your head against a wall just to get the damn thing to work.

Even when you do get it to work, there are quite a few additional annoyances. One thing that JoikuSpot really doesn't like is signal loss. Whenever you loose coverage, JoikuSpot completely gives up straight away. No graceful automatic reconnection here. So you really want to leave your phone in an area with good reception and not touch it. This isn't so much of a problem though as, as other already reported, the N900 gets roasting hot when JoikuSpot has been running for more than a few minutes. So putting your phone in your pocket or backpack is pretty much out of question anyway.

Another thing that JoikuSpot really doesn't like is running for a long period of time. If you get JoikuSpot to work and then leave it running and come back an hour later, you can be pretty certain that the internet connection won't be working anymore even though JoikuSpot will claim that everything is fine and dandy.

I've tried quite a few thing to get JoikuSpot to work better:
- Setting the SSID to a hardcoded string instead of the N900's wifi MAC address
- Setting JoikuSpot to use a specific wifi channel instead of picking one automatically
- Changing the DHCP lease from the default 25 minutes to the maximum of 60 minutes
- Configuring the laptop to use DHCP with a static IP address (outside of the DHCP address range)
- Configuring the laptop to not use DHCP at all

None of this helped unfortunately.

It's worth mentioning that all the gear we have is Apple stuff (2008 and 2010 MacBook Pros, iPad, iPhone 3G and 3GS, iPod Touch 2G). So the connection issues I've listed might be specific to Apple products - or not but I've no way to verify that.

The conclusion of a week away with just a Three Mifi and JoikuSpot is that if you want to get things done, need a reliable internet connection and want things to just work, JoikuSpot really doesn't cut it (at least with a MacBook Pro). The Three Mifi on the other side is surprisingly good - you'd even at times forget that you're not on your home broadband connection. Well worth the £50 investment.

If anybody has a trick to get JoikuSpot to work properly, I'd be most grateful to hear it as it's getting really frustrating.

Cheers

Thanks.

One thing I don't understand is standby. Ideally I just want to power the MIFI at home and not touch it again at all till it needs recharging. Is this possible?

I know it only has ~ 5 hrs of continuous usage. So say I left the device on all day, could I connect to it while it is in standby? Without physically pushing a connect button on the MIFI?

How will it disconnect from active usage once I stop browsing? OR do I have to always end it to stop the battery dying?

If you leave it switched on, it'll work until the battery dies (which is about 5 hours). No need to touch anything (at last in my experience). If you're at home, you can just leave it plugged it to the mains so that the battery doesn't die. It uses a mini-USB plug for charging so finding in-car chargers shouldn't be a problem either.

EDIT: thinking about it, we've got so many wifi devices out here that there's probably at least always one of them connected to the Mifi. So that's maybe why it never goes into standby. Things might be differently if there's no device connected for a certain period of time. I'll see if I can try to disconnect everything from the Mifi and see what happens then.

mehdiE: Have you tried Mobile Hotspot? It is free and open-soruced.

I am not sure but my experience is that many things not designed specifically for apple products have problems to work. I don't think this is the case here though. As Joikuspot seams to be unstable overall.

I have similar problems over Bluetooth using an N900 and MacBook. The connection works for a random duration, then stops working without any indication. I first try reconnecting, then powering off Bluetooth on both sides, then restarting the MacBook. Restarting the N900 may or may not be doing anything.

I don't know if these issues are related, but unfortunately it means you probably won't be helped by trying Bluetooth. Thanks for saving me the trouble of trying JoikuSpot

I had similar issues with Bluetooth DUN as well. Then I read somewhere that some carriers do not play well on the N900 when both the phone's internet connection is on AND trying to share it using DUN.

It seems counter-intuitive, but the following creates the most stable BT DUN connection.

1. Disconnect from any internet connection
2. Turn off automatic searching for connections
3. Initiate DUN from client device

Turning off the phone's data connection lets the bluetooth DUN client have complete control of the phone's GPRS modem, apparently.

Good luck.

sorry for offtopic posting...

For me using N900 as Bluetooth modem for my MacBooks works ONLY if I do not use my N900 online in any way. But as pure DUN modem it works nice and reliable. And very easy to configure (on the Mac side).

I found that Joikuspot works (somewhat) better if you keep the 3G connection hot by leaving a ping running. Very wasteful of data allowance and batteries, but it helped for me. In this mode, the wall charger can *just* provide enough power to maintain the battery (but not really charge). Device gets very hot.

For those living outside UK, Three Mifi is actually Huawei E5830 or E585.