If you're a Telenor mobile broadband user in Sweden, Norway or Denmark I suggest you continue reading this blog post.
Admitted, this blog post is about a very geeky, nerdy and technical issue with Telenor's mobile broadband connection client, known as "Mobilt Bredbånd" (at least to Danish customers, for many others its known as HUAWEI Mobile Partner). As a matter of fact, it's so nerdy, that my girlfriend gave me the "what-the-h*ll-are-you-babbling-about"-look when I told her last night what I was doing (what I don't do for you guys!). However, even though it's nerdy and all that, you should read it to know the very tangible effects is has on the computer you're using Telenor's connection client on. Normally blog posts should be kept short and concise, I know, however, since the subject is so technical I've divided this long blog post into three sections. Here we go...
Introduction - what is this about and why should you care?
Ok, I'm going to give it to you straight away. No need to keep it back: The Telenor "Mobilt Bredbånd" connection client writes to a set of log files on your computer. The writing frequency is about once every 10th second when you're offline and every second when you're online. On top of that, the Telenor connection client also reads (in my opinion) excessively from the so-called Windows registry. It doesn't matter if you don't know what the Windows registry is or not, just trust me on this one, it's not a good thing.
Why is this important? Well, first of all, let me tell your that the content of the log files are technical and do not, as far as I know, contain any personal information. However, file access is normally considered a "heavy operation". I mean, think about it: Once every second. That's 3600 writes every hour. This is, in my opinion, very important in the context of your hard disk's life span and well being. It also slows your computer down. You might not notice it when you're using it on a fairly new computer. This issue is very similar to the logging issue I found with 3's connection client, and the difference in system performance while using that client with and without logging every second was significant, and could especially be seen when running on batteries. And that's what you do, when you're out and about, writing blog posts on nice cafés, right? [Artistic break, while sipping coffee on nice café]
The logging issue i found with 3's connection client was actually the very reason why this blog started. Oh, I remember the days.... at the time, I was very annoyed of being in the hands of a telecommunications company that was also taking on the role of being a software company, and it annoyed me that they had released software with such heavy logging. On a side note, I'm still a bit annoyed, because although 3 has released two updates to the software since then, the logging issue has not been rectified and therefore their customers need to change it themselves by following the guides on this blog.
Telenor customers however, need not to be as annoyed as I was and am. This test of the Telenor's connection client is based on a request from Telenor themselves to test their software, which, in my opinion, shows that they care and want to know the reality of things. Kudos!
The techincal stuff
Now, there's a huge difference from the 3 issue and this Telenor logging issue. Telenors "Mobilt Bredbånd" connection client writes to 4 different logs files! They files are...
ATRecord.txt
Callbalk_trace.txt
Func_trace.txt
trace_0.txt
... and can normally be found under C:\Program Files\Mobilt Bredbånd\Log. There's also a file called log.txt, but it doesn't seem to be called very often.
When you're offline, the client writes to the files ATRecord.txt and Func_trace.txt every 10th second or so. When online it also writes to Callbalk_trace.txt, and even reads from a file called RunInfo.ini. When you're online, they're written to every second or so. View my logging of Telenor's connection client's file and registry access here on Google Docs or download Excel file for Excel 2007 (301,12 kb). Note the three sheets, “File access while offline”, “File access while online” and “Registry access” (while online).
Because of the several files the Telenor connection client writes at least 7200 times every hour.
Here are some sample log files...
ATRecord.txt (468,11 kb)
Callbalk_trace.txt (172,12 kb)
Func_trace.txt (100,55 kb)
log.txt (284,00 bytes)
trace_0.txt (68,97 kb)
... and RunInfo.ini (275,00 bytes)
Conclusion
So now what? What to do, what to do. Well, unfortunately, as a end user you cannot do anything yet to change this behavior. As a reference, my history with 3 was several months of correspondance with 3 and BirdStep Technology, who are the suppliers of 3's software. It ended with me getting a description to a very technical workaround, that are the base of the guides on this blog. In this case, there's a few things that leaves me very positive about the prospect for (1) a technical workaround and (2) maybe an update that solves the problem where it is:
* In this case Telenor's software supplier is HUAWEI. It's a skinned application and seems fairly structured in the way it is built (file wize).
* The golden key seems to be the file RunInfo.ini, where, as far as I can see, there are settings regarding logging levels. A workaround could maybe be made possible by letting the Telenor customers know what settings they can set and with what values to minimize the logging themselves.
* The possible workaround above does only target the technical customers. However, as my investigation was initiated by Telenor, they've come across as being interested in the well-being of their customers computers, and might provide an update to target all customers. A suggestion here could be to release it with lowest possible logging as default and allow customers to change the logging level from inside the application itself.
That's it for now. Thank you for reading this far. This blog posting has been forwarded to representatives of Telenor. Stay tuned on progress via my RSS feed and on Twitter.
If you want me to check your connection client (O2, Vodafone etc.) let me know.
ProcessMonitor output sanity checked by Björn Johansson.
Are you affected?
You might want to check if you are affected by the logging problem or not. I suggest you try out our new free Mobile Broadband Logging Monitor tool.
