10 August 2010

My MiFi vs. My Use Cases

So I've been using a MiFi thingy (take a 3G phone, remove the voice functionality, and turn it into a wifi router) and it generally works fine but I am still baffled by it's modes of operation. It has 3 buttons. One to toggle power, one to toggle the wifi routerness, one to toggle the 3G connection to the internet. So it can be in these modes:
  1. off
  2. power on, but not connected to the 3G network and wifi OFF
  3. power on, connected to the 3G network, but wifi OFF
  4. power on, wifi ON, but NOT connected to the 3G network
  5. power on, connected to the 3G network and wifi ON
When you power it up, it goes to state #2! Sometimes it then automatically goes to either #3 or #4. It seems nondeterministic. Additional button pushing gets it to state #5. Sometimes the wifi bit turns itself off, for no apparent reason. But what I'm really wondering is what are the use cases for states 2-4?? I only ever want it to be in state 1 or 5. I can't for the life of me figure how any of the other states could be used.

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