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Use iPhone to dial into a modem

Todd1561

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Hi there,

This isn't the usual, "how do I tether my iPhone to my computer?" thread. What I'm looking to do is use my iPhone 4 to connect to my computer to simulate a land line. I then want to be able to use this "modem" with hyper terminal to dial into an actual 56k US Robotics modem for out of band management of networking gear at a remote location. This is certiainly possible, I used to do it all the time with my Samsumg Omnia smartphone. The problem is the iPhone doesn't register with windows as a modem device that it can use to actually dial phone numbers. Anyone know how to do that? My phone is not jailbroken, but if that's what it takes I'll look into that. Or if it's possible to do all the dialing and interacting directly on the phone to eliminate the computer aspect of the issue, I'll look into that as well. I've heard it's possible to get minicom working on iOS.

Just to be clear, I'm not looking to tether my phone to my computer to use it to browse the web. If you don't understand much of the above we're probably on different pages.

Thanks for your help!

Todd
 
Rough guess, I think you are going to have to setup a *nix box so you can SSH into it from the iPhone. The *nix box is now the gateway to the modem connected to it so you can innate an outgoing connection and monitor all RS-232 communication.

I doubt jailbreaking is going to offer anything easier.
 
Yeah that is all I could come up with for an out of the box solution as well. But I'd likely replace unix and SSH with Windows and RDP since I have a lot of that around. I could use one of my other remote locations with a modem in it, just wouldn't be as clean.

Thanks,
Todd
 
Yeah that is all I could come up with for an out of the box solution as well. But I'd likely replace unix and SSH with Windows and RDP since I have a lot of that around. I could use one of my other remote locations with a modem in it, just wouldn't be as clean.

Thanks,
Todd

The RDP solution requires too much bandwidth in my opinion. The SSH/*nix route makes it possible to do it from just about any tower connection on the planet. Even 1x data speeds.
 
Good point, especially since all I'm looking to do in the end is command line work on a Cisco router.

Thanks
 
OK barring any development on the iPhone front I think my solution will be as follows.

- Hang an old USR modem off the AUX port of an existing Cisco router in one of our other offices.
- SSH into that AUX port which will take me right into the modem itself.
- From there invoke the call to the other modem on the router I want to work on using standard AT commands
- Once done working on the desired router hang up using '+++' and 'ATH'.

I've tested this in a lab and it works great.

A little more hardware involved than I'd like, but at least I'm using an existing router instead of setting up a dedicated server just for this. Plus having a modem on that other router will allow me to dial into that one should anything go wrong.

Thanks for the input!

Todd
 
Good ole Cisco routers and IOS having enough brains to act like a server :)
 
Hello,

I have the exact same issue as you do.

I have :
iphone 3gs, with no jailbreak,
computer (windows seven), running a software that needs to connect to a distant logger (connected with GSM).

I want to use my phone to call that logger and feed the data into my software.

I do not understand how you did it.
Could you give some more details ?

Thank you

Gilles

(if anyone wishes to reply in French, please do as it's my native language).
 
Sorry it's been years since my middle-school French classes, so I'll stick to English :)

I'm not sure if my end solution will work for what you're trying to do. If you require any sort of fancy PPP connection/IP routing/RAS then my method won't work. In other words, if you require anything beyond HyperTerminal to create the initial connection, this won't work.

Basically what I have are two routers, each with a regular old US Robotics modem connected to their serial ports. Each of those modems also have a regular old POTs line connected to them. If I want to dial into router A I first establish an SSH session (just over the internet) to router B and use Cisco IOS capabilities to directly interact with the serial port on that router (which connects the modem) and dial out into the modem on router A. So really the iPhone has been completely eliminated, other than the fact that I can use it as a hot spot to provide internet so I can create the initial SSH connection to router B. But I'm not directly using the iPhone as a modem. My system is only practical because I need to have all this equipment and POTs lines for other reasons, if I didn't I'd be looking into alternative solutions. But short of jail breaking the phone, I don't know what that would be.

I hope this helps.
 
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