I was visiting the London office of a large internet company today and was planning to demonstrate CODA to them, so was a little distressed when I arrived to discover that their corporate internet connection was down, and they had no connectivity!

It all worked out well, though, because somebody in the group had recently bought a Netgear MBM621 - a 3G-to-ethernet router.

We plugged the CODA kit and my laptop into this, and It Just Worked (tm). What's more, the performance was remarkably good. It would be interesting to see whether it worked well outside the confines of central London, but in this situation, it was a real godsend.

This type of device could be a game-changer; exhibition centres often charge exhibitors phenomenal amounts for internet connections at their stands, for example. That little scam may not be viable for much longer.

Netgear call this little box a 'modem', but it's more of a router; it does DHCP and NAT, and the only downside I could see was that it only has one ethernet port, so you need a switch if you're plugging in more than one device.

Well worth investigating if you need to set up an impromptu network somewhere.