General Questions

• What is Pulse?
  Pulse is a Dialup Networking Service for the RIM Blackberry that uses Bluetooth to communicate with contemporary Power and Intel based Apple computers. Pulse was the recent winning entry of Alex King's Tethered Blackberry Modem bounty. The product is under development and is slated for release in mid-November. An updated version of Alex's FAQ appears below.

• Does it give you a direct connection to the internet?
  Like other mobile apps like Verichat, this will use a proxy server. The proxy server will be open source and will be downloadable from our website. Customers that are not interested in providing their own proxy service can subscribe to an extremely low cost proxy service through our exclusive partners at Austin Web Development.

  Is there a free trial?
  Yes

  How much does it cost?
  The pricing is $50/license. (Wynn: your copy is already paid for, so please contact us so that we can get it to you!)

• What does the 'debug' setting actually do?
  The debug flag causes Pulse to dump data transfer statistics to a remote debugging session. This is something we use that should probably just be removed from our production code. During regular usage 'debug' does nothing expect degrade performance.

• How do you connect the BlackBerry to the laptop?
  The BlackBerry is connected to the laptop via Bluetooth (no USB cable). The solution creates a Bluetooth modem profile on the BlackBerry, which is present when you pair the laptop and the BlackBerry. USB support will be added to Pulse over the next month (upgrades will be free to registered users).

Performance Questions

• How fast is Pulse?
  Pulse is fast. We don't really know the upper limit, as every system we've run on has been limited by its Bluetooth or network connection.
  How fast is Pulse compared to USB tethering?(NEW)
  An 8700g and a Mac Book Pro running Pulse can reach 210 kps down and 70 kps up, which is almost twice as fast as the same phone and laptop running under Windows (Bootcamp, not Parallels) using RIM's USB tethering.
  

  My 8700 runs at 115k tethered under Windows and only runs at 68k with my Mac! WHAT is the DEAL!? (UPDATED!)
  Evidently something happened to the 8700 series Blackberry (including the 8703e's) in the last round of Blackberry OS updates. Installing the latest update from T-Mobile (4.1.0.346) appears to cripple your Bluetooth speeds and result in performance in the 60 kps to 70 kps range). For T-Mobile users, if it is possible to downgrade to 4.1.0.284 we suggest that you do so.
  
  Based on what we have seen of the Pearl it is likely that the forthcoming 4.2 Blackberry OS update will resolve these issues.
  

Pulse says it's download rate is like 1.5k! What gives?
Version 1.01 of Pulse only shows you the average bandwidth over the time that it has running (the longer you don't do anything, the lower it gets). We will provide a more intuitive bandwidth measurement in the next update. In any case, we think that a more accurate and less biased measurement can be obtained from Bandwidth.com's Speed Test.

Is Pulse limited to 5 open socket connections, like some other products?
No.

Compatibility Questions

• Does Pulse work with Windows?
  Yes, Pulse works just fine with Windows computers, too.

• Does Pulse work with Linux?
  It should, it is basically a standard Bluetooth modem. Of course, Linux users know that Bluetooth can be a bit of a challenge at times so no promises there.
• Which Blackberry models work with Pulse?
  See Compatibility and Benchmarks
• I own a Pearl, should I get Pulse?
  No. The Blackberry 8100 (Pearl) comes with its own dialup networking service built in.

Proxy Server Questions

• Why does Pulse use a proxy server? Does this mean it's not doing real dialup networking? (new!)
• Pulse uses real dialup networking, but it is external to your carrier and RIM. Pulse uses a proxy because the Blackberry and the Blackberry Internet Service are both closed platforms. There are definitely techniques that would allow us to eliminate the proxy, but not without significant cooperation from RIM. Check out this article for more information.

Can I run my own proxy server?
Yes, the license will include your own proxy server (that can run on a Linux server as a daemon).

Will there be a proxy server I can sign up for?
Yes. If you don’t want to set up your own proxy server, there will be a service you can sign up for. The cost for this will be around $5/month or $40/year. Corporate accounts will also be available.

Miscellaneous OS X Questions

The Internet Connect screen doesn't always keep the supplied password intact. I have to reenter it manually. What's up with that?
Internet Connect won't remember any changes that you make in its dialog box unless you explicitly save them when you close it. In order to make permanent changes you need to actually go to System Preferences/Network/Bluetooth/Configure and make the changes there.

Sometimes the Internet Connect dialog takes a really long time to break the connection. What can I do about that?
Go to the "Connect" menu at the top of your screen and select "Disconnect." It will force the disconnect immediately.

Sometimes I will see two dialogs come up when connecting to the internet with Pulse. The first says "Internet Connect: Could not connect to the internet" and the second says "A Bluetooth serial failure has occured. Failed to open an RFCOMM serial channel. Check if authentication needs to be enabled in your device." Is something dead!?
Odds are good that nothing is dead. If you've been able to connect with Pulse before, just try stopping and starting Pulse to force it to rebuild it's Bluetooth connection.
On the other hand, if this is your first time trying to connect, or you've never been able to get it to work, you may want to make sure that your computer has permission to make a Bluetooth connection to your laptop.

© 2012 Brain Murmurs, Inc. All rights reserved.