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Cell phone USB modems and port number issues Network
This is a tiny hint that hopefully will save the rest of you some time. I have been using a Motorola cell phone (V300) to connect to the internet via GPRS -- it's actually T-Mobile's Internet Service, which is quite a bargain at $20 per month for unlimited usage.

The thing that is important to remember is that when you configure your cell phone with Internet Connect, it saves the OS X USB modem device string literally from the first port you plugged the phone into. This means if you plug it into the second port later and try to use the phone, it will appear to be working (i.e. the phone appears on System Profiler), but it will refuse to actually make a network connection. The way you can tell is to open Console and look at system.log. You will see references such as pppd[240]: Device '/dev/cu.usbmodem1B11' does not exist.

If you open Terminal and look in the file system, you can see that you have plugged the phone into the wrong port: in my case, I will have a file called /dev/cu.usbmodem3b11 (note the 3 instead of the 1). The way to solve this is to unplug the modem and put it in the original port; then the modem will be at /dev/cu.usbmodem1b11 and all will work again.
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Cell phone USB modems and port number issues
Authored by: chris_on_hints on Aug 11, '05 11:14:52AM

I wonder whether it would be possible to duplicate the original file to create a copy for each possible USB port? you could set up on the first port, then plug into the others and spot what appears in the system.log...

might be worth trying?

in fact, setting a range of hard links might be best, so that in reality there is only one file, just with multiple references to it...



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Cell phone USB modems and port number issues
Authored by: _merlin on Aug 11, '05 07:52:00PM

Bad idea. devfs is maintained dynamically and things change as devices are connected and disconnected. It'd be far too easy to screw things up.



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I've been wondering about that for a long time
Authored by: randydarden on Aug 11, '05 08:42:27PM

I couldn't find any explanation why my Sprint PCS phone (Sanyo 4900) only worked in one USB port, and not the other (on an iBook). Thanks for explaining this!

Now the only problem I have is remembering which port works.



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