In the month of March my router definitely died. For 17 years I stayed true to the Motorola SB5101 that had been installed when I put the Internet in my house, mainly because it was an easy way to get rid of the neighbors who wanted to share the Wifi.
However, everything comes to an end and the device decided not to work anymore. It had already stopped working with the network connection, and luckily, Linux recognized it without problems when connecting it as USB, which Windows did not. But, the day came when the lights went out.
My experience without Internet
Of course, that "without Internet" must be taken in a relative way. With the "Hotspot and Connection via Android mobile devices" option, any mobile phone can be used as a modem on the PC. You only have to take into account three factors:
- The intensity of the signal.
- The microUSB connection.
- The data plan.
signal strength
It is obvious that, if the signal does not reach the phone, it is difficult to establish the Internet connection. The intensity will depend on the telephone model and the provider's infrastructure. In my case I have two mobile providers for two different smartphones. Tuenti (Movistar Argentina) on a KC 516 with Android 11 and Claro (Argentina) on a Samsung J2 Prime with Android 6.
The connection with Tuenti was often cut while Claro's was more stable but slower.
The microUSB connection
If the microUSB input is very worn out, the phone will not exchange data with the computer and only the battery will be charged. This can be temporarily fixed by changing the cable or trying different positions (Usually making the part where the connector is higher than the other end.
The data plan
A desktop computer downloads much more data connected to the same site than a mobile phone. Tuenti's 6 GB data plan flew by in less than a week. And, with the price of Claro's prepaid data plans, continuous use isn't even worth considering. It should be clear that the time and use of connections should be severely restricted unless you want to spend a fortune.
Among the things you should rule out are:
Updates
Depending on the number of packages to install, updates can consume a lot of your data plan. It's best to stick to the security updates and leave the others for later.
Another alternative is to download the package from another computer and install it manually. Distributions like Debian and Ubuntu they have pages from which to download the programs from which to highlight the programs and their dependencies.
Also, if you have access to a computer with the same version of Debian or Ubuntu you can do the following:
Download the package with:
sudo apt-get install --download-only nombre_del_programa
The downloaded program is saved in the folder /var / cache / apt / archives. From there you must copy it to a flash drive or CD and from this to the personal folder of your computer.
You install the program with
sudo dpkg -i nombre_del_programa.deb
You may need to repeat the procedure with the missing dependencies.
Multimedia playback
Although some service providers have promotions for which data from the main plan is not consumed with certain services, you will always end up consuming them. There are many programs and browser extensions that allow you to download YouTube videos on another computer to watch on your own. I use VideoDownloadHelper.
To reduce the data consumption of a web page, an interesting alternative is txtify.it which converts articles on a website to plain text. Just paste the text of the article into the window and all non-text content will be removed.
And one day the connection returned
Testimonials from people who found the light by abandoning social networks are in fashion. Since I generally limit my interaction with them (Most of the time, I'm human after all) to business, I can't say my productivity has increased exponentially from not using them. In fact, quite the opposite.
Now I have a Wifi router, and I added a new free software to my list of essentials. KDE Connect it allows me to interact between all my devices connected to the same network. Guess what? The equivalent Windows app, Microsoft Phone Companion, doesn't work on Android 11.
Internet or no Internet, free software is better.
Hello, I also connect my pc to the phone to have internet, I have no other way, I would suggest you install a proxy where you control what comes out of the pc and you close sites that only spend data. I use squid for that, Regards