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I've got a TI LM3S Cortex-M3 Development board with USB host. I've done quite a bit of TCP/IP programming through the Ethernet and using SPI/UART GSM modems, but I was wondering the feasibility of getting web access through a USB 3G 'dongle'.

From my brief bit of research, I can see most of the modern modems support this through CDC-ACM and/or RNDIS but having only 256k flash and 96k of RAM am I being a bit too ambitious? So far I've only found commercial libraries for this and I haven't looking into the complexities of doing myself.

Should I just be looking at ARM9 and Linux?

Tim
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    I would expect you can do it with a fair amount of work to understand a "computer" solution such as the linux drivers and replicate that in a "microcontroller" context. But as a pricing check, the rasberry pi folks say they are about to ship a $25 arm linux board, a price I've yet not seen anyone beat with a usb-host-capable module of any sort. In volume production you probably would pay less for a lower end arm solution such as you proposed, but do your expected quantities justify the engineering effort to make it work? And do you need it today or can you wait a month or two? – Chris Stratton Nov 10 '11 at 16:40
  • Yeah, I've been keeping a keen eye on Rasberry Pi. At that price point with a couple USB ports and $10 extra for Ethernet there are so many options. – Tim Nov 11 '11 at 15:22
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    If you can get hold of a dongle with straight serial access rather than serial-over-usb, this would be much easier to handle with a microcontroller http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/30870/is-it-possible-to-connect-an-embedded-device-to-the-internet-through-a-usb-inter – Toby Jaffey Aug 02 '12 at 16:22
  • http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/30870/is-it-possible-to-connect-an-embedded-device-to-the-internet-through-a-usb-inter – Toby Jaffey Oct 01 '12 at 15:16
  • This is clearly old and abandoned, and within the scope of the question Toby linked, so let's close it as a duplicate to stop it from percolating back up in the queue again. – Chris Stratton Aug 17 '13 at 15:17

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I think You can use a 3g modem with it along with a powered usb hub and a linux Shell script Sakis3g. I had Sucessfully installed sidux on a cheap China tab[arm a10 1GHz, 512 Mb DDR2 with a micro usb host] and useing a 3g modem with it via this method & working pretty good for me.

Arnab
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    The ARM Cortex M3 in the question does not run Linux - see the order of magnitude smaller memory size mentioned. One might be able to learn how to talk to the modem from reading its linux driver, and reproduce that in a small embedded program. Or a different board could be used which does run Linux, perhaps either literally a tablet or based on a tablet chip. – Chris Stratton Jan 19 '13 at 05:23