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Which Cell Phones & Networks for SSH?

Posted by Cliff on from the GPRS-and-port-22 dept.

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!"

7 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Idokorro by innosent · · Score: 3, Informative

    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

    --
    --That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
  2. what you need.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    ..is a voice-to-tcp converter. How quickly can you recite IP headers btw?

  3. Series 60 by Kris_J · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There's a puTTY client for the series 60 mobile phones, and it certainly works over Australia's Optus mobile network.

  4. Ping Times by BrookHarty · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My pingtime is 600ms over GPRS and 200ms over UMTS. I've seen it bounce upto 2000ms with boats on the water in NY and not loose a ping.

    Myself, I'm using my UMTS Motorola A845 phone as a usb modem, I can still take calls while I vpn and ssh out. Gives me about 3 hours combo surf/talk time before I need to charge, so I leave it plugged in at my desk while I do both.

    Nice thing, no matter how much filtering IT does, I just route out over my phone connection... BTW, jerks are filtering some slashdot urls.

    Also, While those GPRS phones are only Voice or Data at once, UMTS lets me do both at the same time, I dont have to quit my data session. I havnt tried the bluetooth, but been wanting to see how my pocketpc can ssh out while im on the phone.

    UMTS is great, glad that its starting to go nation wide. DO and VO products just are not what you want.

  5. Re:ugh. by phoenix.bam! · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Opinions and personal experience of hundreds of people on one page?

  6. Experience of ssh over gprs worldwide by sl956 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am a heavy user of ssh over gprs (or gsm where gprs is not available):
    I usually don't need/want a laptop when I am traveling so I initially went the PDA+cellphone way.
    I have used my old Zaurus SL-5000D with a bluetooth CF-card and a triband SonyEricsson cellphone (T68i, then T630) to ssh into my european servers from Europe (UK, Italy, NL), the US (NYC, LA), Asia (HK, Cambodia, Thailand) and even from Japan, using a rented blutooth-enabled cellphone.
    It has always worked flawlessly. I never had any problem with blocked 22 port or anything like that in any of these countries.
    I considered the Treo 600 very seriously, but I will stick to my current PDA+cellphone solution. In Japan the Treo would be as useless as my Sony-Ericsson. But it is a lot easier to rent a simple bluetooth-enabled cellphone and use my usual PDA than it would be to rent an integrated local smartphone with an ssh client.

    For the networks questions, there are more problems : if the cost is not important (company paid for instance), just use the roaming partners of your cellphone company : the big european players (Vodafone, Orange, T-mobile) usually try to have at least one partner allowing data in every country (be it over gprs or gsm). But it is expensive, and the costs are very difficult to predict. So if you want to optimize, you have to buy pay-as-you-go plans in every country, being careful to choose plans allowing data. You usually have to pay a premium for data but it is a lot cheaper than simply roaming.
    The biggest problem then becomes to choose the right simcard from you (huge) collection depending on the place where you are. It can sometimes be tricky like : So I am in Cambodia near the Thailand border and I don't have any Cambodian pay-as-you-go plan. Choices are using my 12Call simcard because i am not far from Thailand and I can see their network from here, or using my SmarTone simcard, roaming through a local network to HongKong, or simply use the local roaming partner of my european network. Which one would be the cheapest??? The answer, found by trying, was using my HongKong pay-as-you-go plan (SmarTone). Please don't ask me why. :-)

    Just my two euro-cents.

  7. ATT/Cingular & Nokia 6820 by gabe · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    Gabriel Ricard