Getting properly working Internet access with a RAZR v3 and T-Mobile

Motorola's RAZR v3, when used in conjunction with T-Mobile's wireless network, can provide Internet access to Mac OS X through a Bluetooth link.

However, users working with the service have experienced a number of problems with stalled downloads, inability to access certain Web sites (Google's Gmail for instance), and more.

One reader, Kumu Kahi, writes:

"Been toying with T-Mobile Internet access and have hit a few snags. First of all, they say you have to have at least 3 bars of signal strength in order to establish Internet access, but I notice that a 2-bar signal works fine, and with one bar the access just gets really slow. I live where the signal wavers between 0 to 4 bars in one spot back and forth.

"However, I can't get on Gmail ("not a secure connection" is the report from Safari) and the WAP (browser on the phone) gets a nice Google graphic but that is all, while the XHTML browser gets a bare bones search page that does not return results and i can not access any google page so i have to use Yahoo to search.

"Also, it seems i cannot download long podcasts easily and am often interrupted (from traffic shaping?) [Ed.- for more information on traffic shaping practices, see this MacFixIt article]."

Fortunately, there is a three-step process that should allow proper access to Google Gmail and prevent many of the interrupted download events described by Kahi.

1. First, download and install the appropriate generic modem Scripts from Ross Barkman's excellent resource.
2. In order to alleviate problems with Google Gmail, change the MTU settings with this small patch.
3. Use Unlockupd, which works around a bug in Mac OS X's lookupd (a system daemon that provides networking routines and performs other functions). Apparently the T-Mobile connection is prone to triggering this bug.

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