kishorebhargava

People often wonder what I carry in my laptop bag, its heavy and it has many things in it. Not uncommon to find more than one phone, several power adapters, cables of all kinds, USB, Network, retractable…the list goes on. But what surprises some, is the fact that they find me carrying a WiFi router in my bag. Obviously, in the interest of weight and my shoulder I would not carry a regular router, but actually a pocket router. Have had a little D-link router in my bag for many years. Its great to just plug into somebody’s office LAN and create your own little WiFi cloud.

My recent problem however, is that there are some places where I manage to find myself and not find a LAN or any form of connectivity. Its rare but it does happen. One such place is our little apartment in Goa. No wired broadband in our area, so no wired connectivity. Its for situations like this that I have my data card. I have been using a Reliance Broadband Netconnect for quite a while and have generally been happy with it. The thing I dislike the most about it, is no “unlimited” scheme. At least, not an affordable one. On my last few visits to Goa, I used the older Reliance data card and cried at its performance, but when I was there recently, I was pleasantly surprised to find the new broadband ones working fine and fairly decent speed as well.

But this brings me back to why I have a router in my bag. Hmmm…let me see how many devices do I carry which have WiFi and need access to the Internet? My notebook, one sometimes two phones, a Nokia N810 Tablet and a Palm TX. Now thats just me, when I add Jyoti’s devices — a netbook, a smartphone and an iPod touch, and then add Kabir as well, fortunately at this stage only an iPod touch. It all adds up. A minimum of nine devices all wanting Internet access.

I could very easily share my connection from my notebook, but it creates a dependence on my machine having to be on and the router all the time. Not that it ever gets switched off, but all the same. I started the hunt for a router which would be small, allow a wired connection but more importantly allow a 3g (EVDO) modem to be used as well.

Anindya Roy, ex PC-Quest told me he was using such a device, in fact, he even mentioned that he was able to listen to Internet Radio while driving around. On checking what he had, I found he was using a HAME – HM433R+ I promptly went out looking for it and managed to get one very efficiently delivered home.

EK Wireless seems to have several products that do stuff like what I wanted and dealing with Elliot Stechman has been a real pleasure. Two quick messages exchanged, bank information was provided, money transferred and device delivered. Came in from Mumbai to Gurgaon with no issues at all.

Setup of the device was trivial, took less than 2 minutes to have the device up and running and connected to the Net. Simple web-interface the only additional information it needed was my Reliance number/password. I am yet to test the router out with my Airtel wired broadband.  Sadly, I do know that it is an either or. It will not bond and balance both a wired and 3G connection. However, Elliot did mention that some of the other products they have do support multiple connections. Including, multiple 3G modems.

In the meantime, I know my next holiday in Goa is not going to be a complete holiday! With connectivity easily available its going to be a shift from home base Gurgaon to home base Goa! As a quick test this afternoon I had at least five devices connected and happily using the Net in no time at all.

Happy Surfing!

Cheers…Kishore
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PS: Did I mention, they shipped a car adapter as well as a USB power adapter.