3G Modems

[Darren_Coles]

Considering vPro/AMT is designed for remote support, and most people that require this type of help are road warriors with 3G enabled laptops, did Intel not think about this mass market. Especially considering that 3G is becoming the favoured mediam for data communication.

Has anyone been able to get vPro working over a 3G modem, if not is there anyone at Intel who can help with this problem.

We currently run i5 terminals all over Australia that are 3G connected, and wanted the funtionality of the remote boot and service across the 3G network, only to find it is not possible. Are there any tools to reproggram vPro ???

Any help would be appriciated..

Darren Coles

[Jeffrey_R_Intel]

Darren,
I'm sure this is not the answer you want, but the remoot boot over 3G is not currently part of the vPro solution. 3G is used for the Anti-theft feature - sending out a poison pill, but that's all for now. I'll run this by our product team to see if they have any future plans that they can share on this topic.

Jeff

[Darren_Coles]

Quoting Jeffrey Rott (Intel)

Darren,
I'm sure this is not the answer you want, but the remoot boot over 3G is not currently part of the vPro solution. 3G is used for the Anti-theft feature - sending out a poison pill, but that's all for now. I'll run this by our product team to see if they have any future plans that they can share on this topic.

Jeff

Hi Jeff

Thank you for answering.

I knew that from all my research, but was hoping that Intel had some form of SDK that would allow reproggraming of the kernal and loading additional Linux drivers.

Considering the amount of 3G enabled laptops worldwide, this feature would be a valuble support asset. As a company this is a feature that is dessparately required to monitor and support our network, and would be prepared to pay for this feature to be included. Or assign resource to work with Intel to get this done.

I don't imagine this would take a lot of work, other than drivers and enabling USB wake up in the BIOS. As most Sierra Wireless modems have a power on state even when the operating system is down, ans also have a built in OS and SDK.

If you could put me in touch with anyone that could help, I would very much appriate it.

Cheers
Darren Coles
Dynamic Visual Systems Pty Ltd
5-7 Cleg Street, ARTARMON, 2064 NSW, Australia.
0420 908 356

[spiritwarrior54]

Darren, I am not familiar with the VPro, however I do believe a may have a solution that may be suitable to your needs for 3G usage. I have been running Linux for many years now and am currently running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Studio Edition. It can be installed right on top of MS Windows without the need to reformat or even repartition. This version of Linux can run within a standard 32 bit or 64 bit Windows environment and can even be installed and un-installed just like any other Windows application. The only difference is that it is a complete Operating System and can even dual boot along side of Windows as well as run within Windows. It can also be uninstalled just as easily. It can communicate with the Windows OS by way of installing a program called wine and when installed, will recognize the PNP 3G modem and help set it up. It will take a little getting used to as it installs programs by way of packages instead of programs that are compressed into zip files, but there is plenty of documentation as well as a well-established community of users that are more than willing to share thier knowledge. There are hundreds of thousands of programs for the Ubuntu Linux OS and best of all, it is FREE! It has a user friendly GUI and you can download a program called Sypaptic Installer which makes installing a Debian package a breeze. It has a minimal of coding which makes it very compact and uses less resources than Windows so it wont be a drain on your system resources and there is even a server edition which is already in use on thousands of servers worldwide. Best of all, you can keep your favorite Windows software. You may want to try downloading a Live CD or Live DVD version first, it comes as an ISO image which you can do a burn at once on CD/DVD, pop it in your CD/DVD tray, reboot and select to run as a Live CD/DVD without installing so you can take it for a spin before you install. It will run within the system memory and when you take it out of the tray, reboot and you are back in Windows without having made any changes to your system until you are ready to commit to an install. Have a good time and when in doubt pop it out, reboot and put it in and try again. That ought to make you feel like 16 all over again. (LOL) So happy hacking and have a safe experience and you dont have to commit to the relationship with Linux until you are ready and then you wont need to reboot.
By the way, I am writing this post on an Ubuntu Linux 12.04 Studio Edition Laptop dual booted with Windows Vista and using a 3G wireless Hotspot modem from Cricket Wireless, The laptop is an Acer Aspire with 1Gig memory and Intel Graphics Accelerater and Intel processor. During this post I ran an average usage of 22% system resources so the setup is not only easy, its efficient.