Net Access On The International Trip?

lbjay asks: "A month or so ago there was a great Ask Slashdot regarding Internet access while on an American road trip. I'm interested in the inverse -- taking a notebook PC and digital camera on a six-month "World Tour". Destinations include various points in Europe, NZ, Australia, Chile and Central America. In my research so far I've narrowed it down to either hauling around a bunch of phone apapters and a line tester, or purchasing a GSM cellphone, modem and connector kit. I'm really leaning toward the later because it just seems easier and more flexible. The max connectivity speed of 9600kps sucks, but all I'm really looking to do is monitor and update a couple of personal Web sites. I'm sure there's more than a few Slashdotters out there with experience doing something similar. I'd love some advice on how well this setup will work. Details: the notebook will probably be either a Thinkpad 240 or the latest Z505 Vaio running RH6.2. I'm looking at Omnipoint for the global cellular service (Ericsson handset). Modem will be either Xircom or 3Com."

Here are some links

There were articles in TidBits about this recently. The first [tidbits.com] is pretty Mac-centric, while the second [tidbits.com] is more relevant to the question here.

Cheap bags and phone options

I agree about cheaper looking bags - I try to carry laptops in a non-standard laptop back (e.g. a backpack with no logos, and sometimes one that looks quite beaten up. I also put power supplies etc in my main bag, which also looks quite old and valueless and is never locked.

This helps with customs agents and with baggage theft at the airport - if your checked baggage looks like it belongs to a student, it's unlikely to get stolen from. (The only time I had things stolen from a bag was in a hotel in China.)

Online backups of your laptop data are a great idea - consider NetStore and similar if you use Windows, or an ftp site plus pgp if you don't. Makes a big difference to how quickly you can get going again.

A GSM phone is probably a good overall solution to check email; I use a double band (900 and 1800, works in most countries except US and Japan) Ericsson SH888 - sent email from my Palm III in a Hamburg cafe this weekend for extra geek points :)

I also sometimes carry an acoustic coupler - these go up to 28,800 bps now and are good when you have a hotel phone wired into the wall, quite common outside the US. Also, take some telephone socket doublers (US models) as sometimes you can use these to get a connection from the phone end of the wire. Check www.teleadapt.com for lots of road warrior kit, but buy it somewhere else as they are very expensive.

If you have to plug into wired phone sockets, you'll need a panoply of different phone adapters - though some hotels just use US plugs, the cheaper/older ones probably won't. Teleadapt shows you what you'll need.

ISP roaming is a big hassle - if you use GSM this is not an issue as you just call home (go GSM if you can afford it, or go wired if you need more online time). GRIC and iPass do roaming services that are probably well worth the hassle avoidance - you use a single Windows dialler that knows how to talk to all ISPs on the scheme. If you want a single ISP, try IBM Global Network (now bought by AT&T, www.ibm.net), who are good quality and have good coverage - I use them for work travel, but I'm not sure about non-Windows support.

Omnipoint

Whatever you do, be sure to specify that you need a worldwide usage compatible handset. The US GSM frequencies are different from those used in other parts of the world, and the 99.9% of the Omnipoint handsets sold in the US use "worldwide" GSM technology, but US frequencies.

Omnipoint is using misleading advertising at best by implying that any phone you buy from them will be useful anywhere. Unless you specify, and pay extra (a lot extra) you'll get a phone that only works in the US.

It will probably be better yet to rent your GSM handset in the countries you visit.

The worst part is that most Omnipoint salesdroids don't know these facts.

Re:My Configuration

IBM Global Network (it's since been bought by AT&T - www.ibm.net will still link you there) is a great service.

They DO have numbers many places and you can download a text file with the numbers from their site.

Their dialer software only runs on Windows but they include instructions on how to dial in from a Linux box (they use a non-obvious username / password combo that you wouldn't guess by looking at your username).

They also have dialer software for PalmOS and WinCE so Linux might not be far behind!

--hunter

try some old tech?

Is there any reason why you've not mentioned an acoustic coupler? One of our Professors spend some time on his Yacht in the med and pulled his e-mail down via payphones and a coupler. I've no idea what sort of speed you'll get but it might be a lot easer than trying to sort out which of the local mobile companies you want to connect to and I'm fairly sure you'll get better than 9600.

consider Internet Cafes

which you can find in most capitol cities and major tourist areas. You can rent a system for perhaps a dollar or two an hour. This sure beats carrying a laptop around and they have already solved the "last mile" problem for you.

Offloading the digital camera would be a problem, as the system is unlikely to have a PCMCIA interface. While a Sony Mavica would work everywhere using floppys, they are a bit bulky.

I suppose a RS-232 interface from the camera to the computer could be established on an ad-hoc basis, however those drain batterys rapidly.

Re:GSM Data, Global ISPs and CyberCafes

I'll second sdelmont's recomendations, with some clarifiers.

Avoid getting a cellular capable modem if you are going with the GSM option. Most GSM phones have a 'modem' built in, I put modem in quotes because what they are offering is a modem-like interface (ATDT+44171...) to the pure 9600 baud bitstream of GSM. Sometimes you can get 14400, but only in civilised countries :-) Any attempt to run a cell capable modem over GSM will result in 1200 or 2400 baud connections, quite a waste of bandwidth.

I swear by nokia phones right now, the 6150 is the best 2-bander on the market. You can do PPP connections through the IR port, but its best to get the serial port cable, do a quick search on the web for how to get the cable without paying for the windoze software.

There are 2 GSM phone regions, US/Japan, and everywhere else. So buy your phone at your first stop outside the US, don't even think of renting the cost will kill you. In some countries you have to buy a service plan with the phone, so shop around on the web before leaving. Best idea is to get a service plan from a cheap country, either norway or england. It might be impossible to get service in some countries without having a provable permanent address there (france, UK, germany).

The best thing about getting a GSM phone with an international roaming account is that you will have a phone with you at all times so you can give that number out to your family and a select few friends. Although the caller pays the first hop, if you are in another country besides the one of your service, you will pay the additional roaming hop, and that runs about $1/minute.

Avoid the 'no bills' pre-paid GSM cards you will see all over europe. None of them currently offer international roaming, so when you move on you'll be screwed. Most of them don't even allow the phone to be used in data mode. The nice thing about the pre-paid cards is that they have created a used phone market, and you can sell your GSM phone for 50%-75% of its original price when you are done with it.

Cybercafes are your best bet for most of the updating your website, at least for the text bits. The cost per hour is going to be a lot less than any dial in land line or GSM option. And you will have the leisure of filling out your hour by reading some /. stories. Some of the more clued in cafes run DHCP and have a few ethernet connections for travelers with their own laptops, and charge you the same per hour. Print out and laminate all the options for pump/dhcpd before leaving the house, know your tools. AND REMEMBER, don't log in as root on your home box from a cybercafe!

There are a lot of options for keeping connected when going walkies (walkabout for the antipodeans) so don't just restrict yourself to some cool but very expensive gizmo. And test your connection options before leaving, from a few cybercafes and libraries, you will learn that many machines will not have telnet or any other connection software except a filtered web browser.

the AC

Re:I guess the question is:

I travel 40+ weeks each year, and I've always got my laptop with me. 'Course, its how I make a living :-) I sometimes carry other equipment, cameras, signal analysers or radios.

The one big advantage to traveling with a digital camera is that you will take tons of pictures of things you wouldn't waste film on. Especially if you can store hundreds of them to your hard disk, and email them to the friends you were thinking of when you saw the shot.

Customs agents the world over have the highest incidence of brain spasms you will ever see. Logic and common sense go out the window whenever they are presented with something out of the ordinary, and it can be a real hassle getting your equipment back. Twice in the last few years I've had my equipment seized flying into Paris, and once into Heathrow. It takes a lot of work over a period of days or weeks to convince the idiots to give back your equipment, and they will usually tack a on import duty. Less bureaucratic countries will just seize your stuff until you pay a random import duty 'ransom', which you can usually do in just a few minutes. Computers are starting to be accepted, but any accessories, especially digital cameras and mini-disc players, get snagged. You have to provide proof that the same camera is available for retail sale in the country, so avoid the latest and greatest.

Carry your expensive stuff in a battered looking small backpack, similar to a book bag. This hides the fact you have something heavy (==expensive) to attract thieves. DO NOT carry your equipment in heavy duty protective cases, especially Zero Haliburton or Pelican. Those cases attract a 100% response from the drug agents, and the dogs are often trained to sniff out drugs sealed inside those style of cases, so they sound just on visual and you will get strip searched. After a few times when it takes you 12 hours to cross a border and your friends crossed in 12 seconds, you will toss the expensive case.

My best suggestion is to travel with a cheap old laptop that you don't care if it gets stolen or smashed. Because on a 6 month trip, I'd say the odds of it returning in one piece are pretty low. Don't risk a brand new vaio. And buy the occasional disposable camera with a flash, for carrying to the beach or disco or other places where a valuable camera would be gone in an instant.

The disadvantages of traveling with a ton of film is that they all go through x-ray machines repeatedly. A few times and you can't see the fogging except in controlled tests, 10 times and the fogging is slightly noticible, 30 times and you will have trouble recognising half your shots. Just buy film during the trip, and get it processed locally and then mail the negatives back home. You can give away the prints to the pretty girls you meet along the way :-)

the AC
So funny you would mention Kerouac, had a long discussion about him this weekend.

My Configuration

Well the company I travel for gave the the following configuration.

Running on an Omnibook 900 I have a 3Com PCMCIA modem with an X-Jack plug. To connect to all
the jacks they gave us universial phone adapter.
It's got about two dozen parts that drop into
this quick adapter. It's really small and easy
to use. As for the line test they make them as
small a ink pens.

We use a service on our Win NT laptops call
IBM Global Dialer. IT's you basic ISP but
has number for almost everywherein the world.
I haven't been on a trip yet were I haven't
had a local number. I don't know if it runs
in linux but you might be able to connect to
it with the standard dialer.

____
.sig not found

Dial: AT&T Global, iPass, GRIC, AOL. GSM Mobi

Remember that having GSM voice doesn't necessarily mean that a country or region has GSM data, and you'll pay by the minute, but it does go pretty much everywhere outside the US.

• AT&T Global Networks is the former IBM Global Network. (shameless plug for my employer). Directly provided IP dial service in most major locations, about 1500 POPs worldwide, about 1000 outside US. Fancy dialer if you're using Win9x, but you can also download the phone number list for Linux, etc.
  
• iPass is an international partnership of ISPs - you dial into a local ISP, and your ISP will bill you some hourly surcharge. The surcharge may depend radically on the particular package your ISP obtains from iPass, and your ISP may also charge a monthly fee for access to it, so if you've got more than one ISP, check their offers.
  
• GRIC is a different international partnership of ISPs, similar to iPass.
  
• I've heard AOL offers some international dialup as well, but I don't know the extent.
  
• Does Equant offer any dial service to the public, or only its members? It's tied in to an airport-industry partnership, and some part of the company provides network services worldwide, generally concentrated near airports (which may or may not be local calls to the major metropolitan areas.)
  

Well, there's Iridium

Although Iridium [iridium.com] is defunct, you wouldn't know it from their web site. Except for some fine print mentioning an "urgent message", the site looks just as it did before the operation went bankrupt. You can look at the latest handsets and even send messages to Iridium subscribers from the web site. Hey, 2400 baud, worldwide!

I guess the question is:

why? Why not eschew the obfuscations and have a trip that is actually a vacation, rather than a trip away from the office. Doesn't anyone read Walden Pond by Thoreau, or The Dharma Bums by Kerouac anymore?

Take a rugged Nikon FM2, a 35mm lens and about 6 dozen rolls of Kodachrome 64. Leave computer at home. Enjoy the trip.

Advantages: get away from office. Customs easier to clear with a camera rather than gizmo electronics. Bill for film cheaper than new laptop. Not a fragile. Hard to fry camera on crappy phone line/power line. Don't have to diddle with power adapters. Weighs less. Can be carried on board. Picture quality much better, archival.

Disadvantages: Hardcore email withdrawl (lasts one week, but traumatic. Opium withdrawl supposedly more intense, but doesn't last as long. Your decision...) Arriving home to about 765,000 urgent email messages. Have to spend boo kou bucks on film processing. Have to scan film in. Won't end up with "so I'm at the airport and this guy whips out an uzi cuz he thinks my laptop is a bomb" stories. Can't say "my computer has been around the world".

I opt for the less is more approach however.

World Tour

You might want to check www.nomadabc.com. A Danish Hong Kong based female fund manager did a 2 year world tour on a motor cycle with a portable office while writing a book. There is a section on her use of technology. It might make some interesting reading even if you don't know her personally as I do.