Since I know most other Huawei modems work with Macs, I figured that the E181 must work with a Mac too. So, next I headed over to Huawei’s product support pages. I couldn’t find a download for the E181 specifically, but I did find one for the E180 here. The E180 is essentially the same modem, just for other markets. My somewhat educated guess was that the E180 software would likely work for the E181 too. So, I took the chance and downloaded what appeared to include Mac OS drivers. Curiously, the file included an .exe file. Hmm … Well, I inserted the modem in a Windows machine and ran the newly downloaded application. It warned me that I was about to update the firmware of the modem. Sure. A few moments later I was prompted that the software update had been applied successfully.

Next I moved the modem to my Mac running OS X 10.5.7. It automatically detected the modem and popped up a window with a “Mobile Connect” application. I went ahead and installed the app. Once it was done, I opened up the Mobile Connect app and entered in T-Mobile’s APN details, as follows:

 Name:      T-Mobile USA (this could be named anything)
 Number:    *99***1#
 APN:       internet2.voicestream.com
 Username:  voicestream
 Password:  <blank>

Then I hit connect … and voila … I was online. Sweet!

MobileConnect will create a new modem configuration called “HUAWEI Mobile” in your Mac’s Network Preferences. From now on, if you select the “Show modem status in menu bar,” you can use the modem icon in the menu bar to manage your T-Mobile WWAN connection.

Just out of curiosity I couldn’t help myself running a speed test. Although I only had one to two bars where I was at, I was able to get above 700 Kbps down and 250 Kbps up. Not too shabby, I’d say.

A small disclaimer:  The most expensive plan, about $60/month, does NOT include unlimited data. The $60 plan allows for 5GB/month of downloads. That’s probably enough for most people. But do yourself a favor, don’t watch YouTube or Hulu using your modem. It may end up costing you a lot in overage fees if you run over your 5GB/month.

• They don’t make regular backups of their laptops.
• If they have a “corporate” file server, they don’t back that up either.
• They can’t remotely access their file server.
• If they do have remote access to their file server, typically their small business network is not configured in a very secure way.

When I talk to friends and colleagues who operate small businesses, they all seem to have the same problem. They don’t have the knowledge and/or time to set up a good network and computing environment for themselves and their company. They can’t buying expensive and proprietary hardware and software to solve these problems. And, on top of that, they can’t afford hiring a consultant to implement all these things for them.

In order to see if I could solve at least part of the dilemma, for the last few months I’ve been looking for a Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution that meets the following five requirements:

1. Inexpensive
2. Simple
3. Reliable
4. Scalable
5. OS independent

Well, there’s a sixth requirement, secure, but that’s a given. There are countless VPN solutions on the market and many good ones. But, they typically only meet three or four of the five requirements I have defined as necessary to solve the problem.

So, for the past few months I’ve been doing a lot of research on VPNs. IPSec and PPTP VPNs keep on popping up all the time as the core offerings of the large, well-known firms providing VPN products. Fairly recently many of the established firms have also started offering SSL VPN solutions. No matter what protocols are used, for the most part, what they have to offer is technically sound from a reliability and scalability perspective. And there’s certainly no reason to doubt that these products meet the security requirements expected from a VPN. However, most of the solutions are not:

• inexpensive (at least not in the eyes of the small companies I’m talking about),
• simple enough to install and configure for the lay person with almost no networking and security knowledge, and
• they are not OS independent.

Why is OS independence so important? Well, maybe it’s not … yet. However, more and more people I know and talk to, especially in small companies, are getting Mac OS computers; an operating system largely ignored by most VPN product vendors. So, therefore, I believe OS independence is becoming more and more important. Because of that belief I set my mind on finding a solution that will work for nearly all situations, and not just for Windows users. (I mostly work on Macs myself, so that’s a big driver too.)

After a lot of searching, reading, and testing I found OpenVPN founded by James Yonan. As the name suggests, OpenVPN is an open source product and is therefore free to use and distribute. OpenVPN is a so-called SSL VPN, using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to to encrypt all traffic. SSL is the same security technology used on e-commerce websites and what banks use for Internet banking. Furthermore, OpenVPN is compatible with a large range of operating systems, including Windows, Mac, and Linux. It is also very scalable and is being actively used in large installations all over the world. Scalability of course depends on the horsepower of the computer hardware on which it is installed, but for a small company, a simple computer, which may otherwise not be fit for today’s computing needs, can be reused to handle many simultaneous VPN connections. That pretty much covers four out of my five requirements. So, what about simplicity? Well, to be quite honest, OpenVPN is not that simple for the average person with limited computing, networking, and security skills. But neither are the big “brand name” vendors’ solutions. Because it does meet all the other requirements, I believe it’s the best fit out there for small businesses.

For a small business that wants to significantly improve its computing environment, I think it’s affordable and worthwhile to hire a good network/security consultant to deploy a VPN. Once installed, OpenVPN is extremely easy to use and it work really well. Obviously, to resolve all the issues around backup, etc, mentioned above, simply installing a VPN won’t solve all that in one swoop, but it does go a long way towards creating a better environment for the “road warrior” and it does open up the doors to a nice and cost effective setup for centralized file storage, management, and backups.