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Subject : LUG: Mobile Ethernet

From : Jeffery Mewtamer <mewtamer@gmail.[redacted]>

Date : Mon, 02 Oct 2017 11:55:38 +0000

Good Morning,

So, here's my situation:

I live way out in the middle of nowhere northeastern North Carolina,
but I recently spent a week at the Rehabilitation Center for the Blind
in Raleigh and if things go well, will be spending more time at the
center in the near future.

The center doesn't allow clients to connect their own computers to the
center's Ethernet, and while they offer Wi-Fi, I've never gotten the
hang of setting up Wi-Fi under Linux, and not all of my devices have
wireless nic's to begin with. The center's computers are all Windows
machines, and as I've been a full-time Linux User since the XP days
and I'm dependent on a screen reader, in addition to the usual hassle
of an unfamiliar OS, I'd have to deal with unfamiliar assistive
technology to use the center computers, and as you might expect, the
technology people at the center have no idea how to assist a blind
Linux user.

So, I spent 5 days without Internet followed by 3 days catching up,
and without a solution, a longer stay at the center might mean a month
or two of only having Internet access 1 day a week. Ideally, a mobile
Internet modem I can plug into the ethernet port on any of my
machines, power off USB, and get Internet anywhere I have a cell phone
singal would be great, especially if the device can be bought outright
for a low price and I can buy bandwidth on an as needed basis instead
of signing a contract and having to pay a monthly fee even when I
don't need to use it.

My cell phone provider offers something that might do the trick, but
they're plans cap at 10GB, which might be a bit anemic even if I put
off large downloads until I'm at home. I'm still researching my
options locally, but I figured that since I'll be using the service
mainly in the Raleigh area, it might be a good idea to find out what's
offered there.

Also, anyone know any means to either have Firefox track how much data
it uploads/downloads on a day-by-day and perhaps site-by-site basis or
to have my system record such for all internet activity on an
application-by-application basis so I can get a better idea of just
how much mobile data I'd need. Or a means to ensure Firefox isn't
wasting limited bandwidth loading images I can't see anyways(or
forcing it to only stream audio from sites like YouTube if that's
possible)?

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