Which Cell Phones & Networks for SSH?

muffinresearch asks: "I've been thinking about picking up a new PDA/Smartphone in the seasonal sales, I am finding a lack of more technical information with regards to being able to use SSH software via GPRS. Now as far as I can see, the Treo 600, and the Sony-Ericsson P900/P910i can all use third-party SSH clients.However what is lacking here in the UK is info on which networks allow access on port 22, and whether this access requires a pay-monthly account or can you do it on a Pay-as-you-go account? I'm reckoning some of you will have useful info on what is working for you as far as phones and networks that do SSH, and your experiences in practice. Happy New Year to all!"

Comments

Idokorro

[innosent]

Idokorro offers SSH clients for most J2ME phones, including the various blackberry devices, and also offers one for the Nokia phones with the flip-over keyboard (can't remember the model number). Try Idokorro

Re:Idokorro

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

1) Idokorro is definitely not Free, and quite expensive too. BlackBerry SSH starting at $195!? He's probably buying his phone for less than that. (Their Mobile Admin software [$1 995] looks pretty interesting, though: Active Directory, Novell administration, SSH, etc. from a BlackBerry.)

2) He can find clients; his question asks which services have Port 22 access, or which have people used successfully for SSH.

I don't. I use Shell-in-a-Box

[Anonymous Coward]

http://shellinabox.com/

Java applet that does a login shell on my box using CGI. (Very cool, check out the page above.) I use SSL to encrypt the connection.

I also have to borrow someone's computer when I do it -- when I'm out and about.

Orange pay as you go

[megan_of_wutai]

The Orange pay as you go GPRS "extra" seems to allow all ports.

I've used SSH and IRC and AIM and others over it with no problem (apart from the hideous latency mentioned by others). This is with a Zaurus SL-5500 and a T68. The guy at the support desk who I asked before I got it said that I wouldn't be able to unless I was contract, he lied :-P.

One thing to watch out for if you use linux is that the networks (at least orange and t-mobile) ignore LCP echo requests, which makes your connection time out after 2.1 minutes unless you tell the pppd to forget about those.

I've had friends who tried O2 pay as you go GPRS and found it to be strictly limited to a port 80 proxy server.

Consider a Pocket PC Phone

[3waygeek]

There are multiple SSH clients for the Pocket PC platform, at least one of which is based on the popular PuTTY Win32 client. Also, many newer PPC phones, such as the iPaq 6315 and iMate PDA2K, include built-in WiFi, which can save you a bit on GPRS costs.

ATT/Cingular & Nokia 6820

[gabe]

I use a Nokia 6820 with ATT Wireless/Cingular. It has a fold out keyboard which is quite nice. ATT/Cingular both have unlimited data plans for around $20/mo. ATT Wireless charges extra for data usage by a device hooked up to the phone (Bluetooth, data cable -> laptop) but Cingular does not.

When I need to use SSH and don't have my laptop, I use MIDP SSH, which is free and "good enough." Ideally I'd wish for a bigger screen only. (From your cellphone: http://www.xk72.com/wap)

I've found mobiledia.com's forums to be quite helpful also.

Downsides

[PapaZit]

My setup: T-Mobile w/ "Unlimited Internet", Nokia 3660, Palm Zire 72 (bluetooth to phone).

I've used both the Symbian PuTTY port and various palm SSH apps. They work, but there are some significant problems:

-Latency is huge (I've seen over 2000ms). You'd better type it correctly the first time.

-Input is difficult, particularly when you need non-alphanumberic characters (pipe, braces, escape, control characters). You'll want to figure this out before you need it.

-For the above reasons, you may want to think about something with a small keyboard. Still, remember that the little keyboard is still going to be short on keys. Figure out how to enter the "missing" characters.

-You don't get a "real" IP address. It's a 10.x.x.x address going through a NAT. Be sure that any firewalls or admin tools can cope with that.

-The battery drain for this is pretty significant. I get about two hours total use. That's fine for quick fixes, but you won't want to stay logged in to watch an hours-long database rebuild.

-Given the odd screen size and intermittent connectivity, screen will become your best friend.

Re:Downsides

[Mignon]

I get about two hours total use. That's fine for quick fixes, but you won't want to stay logged in to watch an hours-long database rebuild.

I was happy as a pig in ssh-it when I learned about nohup(1) for dealing with a similar issue.

Re:Danger Hiptop

[nyquil]

Well, in all fairness, the source for the ssh client is distributed with the SDK; a free download. Anyone techy enough to want to use the ssh client can just sign up for the sdk and install it that way. There's tons of applications you can install from skdr.net, all written by users.

Re:Vodafone

[tengwar]

the latency on the [GPRS] session is way too high for it to be usable.

There's an intrinsic issue with GPRS. GSM is a time-division system with eight slots - the phone encodes voice, then sends it out in a burst during it's slot, and reverses the process to receive. This puts about 1/4s delay in, which doesn't matter for voice unless you're on a conf call with one of the other parties in direct hearing range.

GPRS was a simple, cheap and technically conservative upgrade to GSM to send packet data in unused time slots. This introduces the latency: you have to wait for the slot, and if you have a large packet it will be fragmented into more than one slot. UMTS (3G) on the other hand was designed for data from the start, so no time division.

Another consideration if you are roaming is that your data will usually be tunnelled back to an GGSN (a router) in the home network which hosts the APN you are using. This can add some latency for general Internet use. There is some capability to tunnel to an APN in the visited network, but I don't know of any networks that actually do this as it would require more cooperation between the home and visited networks. More importantly, the APN is the point at which the home network can add "value added services", e.g. optimisation of HTML, so they usually see a justification for looping the user plane data back home, and would prefer to pay for the international bandwidth to do this.

Re:Series 60

[Nestafo]

I am very satisfied with a Series 60 version of Symbian Putty. It works great with my Nokia 6600 by using GPRS services of major Finnish cellular operators.

I can easily use Pine and Irssi in my Unix screen. Actually I've found that using the phone's own mail client is much clumsier.

Small screen of 6600 is surprisingly no problem. The only limitation is slow text input. T9 helps you to input fast normal text, but finding some special characters may take a while. The developers of Symbian Putty have been really helpful and actually added some special key shortcuts after my request.