USB dongles for mobile broadband : Data communications for laptop computers

Sammanfattning: Today a growing number of people need to work on laptops with wireless Internet connection. There are two common wireless Internet access solutions: wireless local area network (WLAN) via hotspot, and high speed wide area cellular network via mobile broadband device such as 3G/4G Universal Serial Bus (USB) dongle. USB dongle was the pioneer product in 3G/4G market, and it is still a popular device in many countries. Mobile broadband can offer both high speed access and mobility. Technically mobile broadband allows Internet connection as long as your mobile transceiver can access your cellular network operator’s network. However, in practice the data rates experienced by a user via mobile broadband are not comparable to the data rates that are available via WLAN. Moreover, mobile broadband has been implemented according to multiple different standards. Hence, in order to provide a user with locally optimal service requires that user must make use of heterogeneous networks. Furthermore, the variety of networks gets increasing due to the emergence of various 4G networks. The aim of this thesis is to explore how heterogeneous networks could be exploited to provide a user of a laptop computer with locally optimal service, while hiding the complexity of this heterogeneous service. The research focuses on the implications of integrating multiple network interfaces into a single USB dongle. Our research shows that multi-mode USB dongle is still needed in market, though there are competitions from smartphones and mobile WiFi devices. We point out that the PPP (Point to Point Protocol) based USB dongle should update to Ethernet USB protocols such as RNDIS (Remote Network Driver Interface Specification) or USB CDC (Communications Device Class) protocols. Furthermore, we suggest a USB dongle should be able to work as a WLAN access point to share Internet with other mobile devices, and it should also work as a WLAN client which can join other hotspots. If hotspot operators can authenticate USB dongles by SIM cards, then users can easily access a great number of hotspots belong to these operators.