Browse the web from a tethered phone

[Manacit]

Install the app on the G1 check
Install Android driver on PC check
Setup browser socks: localhost port:1080 check
Run adb forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080 check

At this point it seems that everything is set up correctly. The browser still does not connect to the web. If I put an ip in the address bar the page will load fine. It seem that DNS resolution is not happening. Any suggestions?

BTW for anyone not getting adb to run correctly, I assumed that since I could see the device in my explorer that it was working......wrong! Make sure to install the android driver. Hope this helps

You'll need to change the dns settings in about:config (see two posts earlier, I have a screenshot).

 

[pdms]

Yeah, I forgot to mention, I am trying to do this in ie7

 

[DaveCC]

Got the SSH port tunnelling to work great, pulled some stuff down from my home machine over 3G ... AFAICT the bandwidth limit was my home cable modem, an scp transfer maxed out at around 512kbps. Seems to support multiple connections just fine.

The browser I have (Ubuntu 8.04, Firefox 3.0.3 20080925 build) appears to simply not work with SOCKS ... I tripped over the DNS issue first and tried hitting my home machine by IP address, no luck doing that either.

I saw an earlier post that suggested FoxyProxy as a workaround, going to give that a try.

Graham - this is awesome work dude!

One UI suggestion - from the version I just downloaded at 9:30 pm CST Nov 7 (MD5 is a5ad2b1280df621335977eab0f0dc3d5) there is no visual indicator in Tetherbot as to whether the SOCKS service and port forward are active or not. This is on T-Mobile USA, build TC4-RC29 115247

Now for some thinking out loud ....

If it's possible to have a data connection between the laptop and the Tetherbot app, and it's possible for Tetherbot to make outbound network connections, then it should be possible to create a VPN-like tunnel from the laptop into Tetherbot (using e.g. the interface on Linux) and use Tetherbot as a general NAT'ed Internet connection from any piece of software without needing it to use SOCKS.

Doing this might mean implementing some form of packet inspection / NAT on the phone side. I got to thinking about dirty hacks with iptables, but it feels like there should be a more standard way to do this, with off the shelf open source code that would do the heavy lifting ... pppd seems the obvious choice on the laptop end, but I couldn't find a promising Java implementation of the PPP protocol on a quick Google.

If I get a chance I may play a little too

Once again, awesome start!

Cheers,
Dave

 

[l3wis]

I got this working with limewire also just setup the same way you setup your broswer. Also my colleague and I are making a program to run so you will not have to go to the command prompt and type anything. I will post after it is done.

I know the Foxy is awesome after 2 many fails with Firefox I though why not use a proxy App and Foxy came in handy

 

[l3wis]

Got the SSH port tunnelling to work great, pulled some stuff down from my home machine over 3G ... AFAICT the bandwidth limit was my home cable modem, an scp transfer maxed out at around 512kbps. Seems to support multiple connections just fine.

The browser I have (Ubuntu 8.04, Firefox 3.0.3 20080925 build) appears to simply not work with SOCKS ... I tripped over the DNS issue first and tried hitting my home machine by IP address, no luck doing that either.

I saw an earlier post that suggested FoxyProxy as a workaround, going to give that a try.

Graham - this is awesome work dude!

One UI suggestion - from the version I just downloaded at 9:30 pm CST Nov 7 (MD5 is a5ad2b1280df621335977eab0f0dc3d5) there is no visual indicator in Tetherbot as to whether the SOCKS service and port forward are active or not. This is on T-Mobile USA, build TC4-RC29 115247

Now for some thinking out loud ....

If it's possible to have a data connection between the laptop and the Tetherbot app, and it's possible for Tetherbot to make outbound network connections, then it should be possible to create a VPN-like tunnel from the laptop into Tetherbot (using e.g. the interface on Linux) and use Tetherbot as a general NAT'ed Internet connection from any piece of software without needing it to use SOCKS.

Doing this might mean implementing some form of packet inspection / NAT on the phone side. I got to thinking about dirty hacks with iptables, but it feels like there should be a more standard way to do this, with off the shelf open source code that would do the heavy lifting ... pppd seems the obvious choice on the laptop end, but I couldn't find a promising Java implementation of the PPP protocol on a quick Google.

If I get a chance I may play a little too

Once again, awesome start!

Cheers,
Dave

Nice post

Well i was working with Socks and i would get everything to work but Firefox just wouldn't take Socks by it self so after trying and trying i figure out that with the Help Of FoxyProxy it would go online. So i was excited to be the first one to figure out how to to get around Socks

 

[l3wis]

To get to about:config, type it in the URL bar of Firefox, then type dns in the search bar at the top of what normally would be a website.

, That's what I had to do to get mine work, changing it in tools/options/advanced/network/settings sounds like it would work too.

AHH no more Foxy help

 

[mechanicalmind]

well, pork and beans, this is finally what we've been waiting for!

I have successfully installed the tetherbot. i didn't find out about the dns settings till after i installed FoxyProxy, so i didnt bother with it...i guess i just want easy of transition from office (wifi/LAN) connection to mobile.

so yea thanks for all your hard work, Grhamsz, and heres hoping there will be no data caps from Tmobile! presently, verizon, and att (and sprint?) have a 5GB limit for their EVDO cards. if you go over...WHAMMO, from $.25 to $.50 (att) PER MEGABYTE.

anyway, i can't seem to get my email working... i thought that a proxy didn't affect port 25? i cannot connect to my SMTP server either... something dumb i'm forgetting?

as far as speeds are concerned: in my area i'm getting: 3G 40kb/s down and 20kb/s up which is of course terrible, but i guess acceptable. compared with the folks at www.inetworktest.com i guess this sucks. However, the same webpage will take 20% longer to load on my laptop than it does on the G1 ! wft?

another problem i'm having is that the G1 is sucking my laptop dry with power consumption... anyone know if theres a way to turn off the charging from USB temporarily?

 

[DaveCC]

I have my laptop online now with a full internet connection via an SSH tunnel and my home server. I was going to post a followup, but I hit the forum server with a traceroute -T and they must be paranoid because my home IP is now blocked :-!

I get a steady 512kbps which seems to be limited only by my cable modem upstream, since using the browser on the phone at the same time does not affect bandwidth. It does however increase jitter.

This is way better than the $9.99 a day allegedly high speed 802.11 in most US hotels. My travel kit is now complete!

Will post detailed tunnelling instructions for Linux newbies once I get online from another location.

 

[DaveCC]

P.S. I hope I'm not the only one who finds it amusing that this is thread 8080 ;-)

 

[bllshy]

I just tried and get "application install unsuccessful" i set usb debugging and checked unknown sources. i have updated my phone a week ago, dont know exactly what i updated. i talked to level three tmobile folks two weeks ago about buying an unlocked touch diamond from Best Buy and tehering it to 3g and they told me they were not going to let any laptop data tethering by any phone. at that time you couldnt take the sim card from my g1 into my dash to tether on edge and now that has changed where the g1 sim works with a dash although only edge speeds of course

 

[pdms]

Hi, have you tried this?

I was getting the same error so i rename it and uploaded to a different server here it's http://www.zshare.net/download/5096090498935c7b/
download it using your G1

This was the only one that worked for me

 

[divinehawk]

Two comments from me:

1> I had to "decompress" the TetherBot.apk file. The web server appears to be compressing it. So I renamed it to TetherBot.apk.gz and ran gunzip (7zip or winzip could work too).

2> Are you going to post the source code like you did before?

Thanks and great work!

 

[DaveCC]

Update Nov 10: according to Wikipedia, there are tun/tap drivers for OS X and Windows (2000 and up) so the same technique should be applicable. I've sent an email to Graham suggesting a way to eliminate the need for the remote Linux server and build the tunnel endpoint into Tetherbot

I haven't seen it posted elsewhere, so here's how to do it for folks who are running Linux and not that familiar with networking (if you are running BSD on a laptop, you are by definition a major geek and already know how to do this

NOTE:

- You'll need a Linux server you can SSH into from the internet, and where you have root access. This server will act as a tunnel endpoint.

- You'll also need to be running Linux on your laptop.

- Most of the commands below have to run as root

1. Install Tetherbot and configure adb on your Linux laptop

2. Make sure you have the "tun" tunneling network driver and iptables firewall modeules loaded on both laptop and server. You may want to edit /etc/modules.conf to have this loaded at boot time. The one-time commands are:

sudo modprobe tun
sudo modprobe ip_tables

3. Configure Tetherbot's port forwarder to send connections to your Linux server's SSH ... hostname myserver.com and port 22

4. Configure your Linux server's SSH to allow tunnelling by adding the following setting to /etc/ssh/sshd_config

PermitTunnel yes

5. Hook the laptop to the G1 with the USB cable, and use adb to port forward:

.../tools/adb forward tcp:2222 localabstract:Tunnel

6. SSH from the laptop to the server using the port forward:

ssh myuser@127.0.0.1 -o Tunnel=yes

7. The SSH client on your laptop and sshd on your server will each create a tunnel endpoint network interface called tun0 ... you can see this with the command ifconfig -a

8. Configure the tunnel endpoints with private IPs from a suitable non-internet range ... I like 172.16 because it's not used by many home or corporate networks or wireless points.

a. on the server ....

sudo ifconfig tun0 172.16.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.252

b. on the laptop ....

sudo ifconfig tun0 172.16.0.2 netmask 255.255.255.252

9. Configure the server to forward and NAT traffic for the laptop ...

sudo echo 1 >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
sudo iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING 1 -s 172.16.0.2 -j MASQUERADE

10. Configure the laptop to use the tunnel as its internet connection

sudo route add default gw 172.16.0.1

and you should have a full internet connection usable with every app, just as if you were behind a NAT router anywhere else.

Clearly, the tunnel setup needs to be scripted, once I get to doing it myself I'll post my scripts.

 

[Minigig]

Letting you guys know , I am at this moment traveling to Chicago from San Diego. at this moment im just past Baker in the middle of the desert. only on G not even edge and getting 120 Kbits down. enough for browsing the forums and light surfing with ads and flash off.

I'll Update as I move through different states and report speeds and if I ever lose any service.

So far.

I was getting 3G for 30 minutes past downtown San Diego. Which I was getting 800 Kbits to 1.5 Mbits. Then edge until yermo which is just past the cultural check station. I was getting 340ish Kbits until the desert then it when from 180 to 230 Kbits.

140 to 90 west of vegas on the 15 just gsm. speeds are normaly around 100kbits but they change all the time as low as 40 to about 120 is the high.

 

[Unitas]

Just updated to the SOCKS version. Again, excellent work, Mr. Stewart.

Also thanks to those who figured out the about:config setting, and setting up a batch command, that's really helpful.

I'm not terribly concerned with the speed, only that I have access as even my old RAZR could tether yet the same feature was obviously not designed into the G1. This was quite a refreshing surprise.

 

[pdms]

Stewart, post your paypal so we can should a little appreciation!

 

[DunDead]

This has been a frustrating error but after a couple of weeks I finally got it installed. Now I just need to check out the tethering in my PC at home. )

this is how I did it

1: go to Settings->Applications->Development, Turn on USB Debugging. (I know this has been stated several times but I am a step by step person)

2: Download the Tetherbot program
http://graha.ms/androidproxy/Tetherbot.apk

and the ADB Program
http://graha.ms/androidproxy/AdbWin.zip

Unzip the ADB program to the root of your C:\ Drive

3: With the recent updates mounting has changed on the g1 it is not automatic any more. Plug your g1 into the usb in the notifications tap on the USB connection and select Mount

4: On your PC open your g1 (sdcard) in folder view and copy the tetherbot.apk to the sdcard

5: from the command prompt got to the root of c (C:\) and type in this
adb install <the sdcard drive letter>:\Tetherbot.apk

for example if the sdcard mounted on drive F the it would look like this
adb install F:\Tetherbot.apk

I hope this helps people having the same issue of application install unsuccessfull

 

[dschach]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I got it sort of working with foxy proxy and the auto config settings. Still something is not quite right. Some pages load ok. Others begin to download and then get stuck 3/4 of the way. Sometimes refreshing gets the page to load but often the page times out. I am running firefox on a lenovo laptop runnning windows vista enterprise.

 

[grahamsz]

Update Nov 10: according to Wikipedia, there are tun/tap drivers for OS X and Windows (2000 and up) so the same technique should be applicable. I've sent an email to Graham suggesting a way to eliminate the need for the remote Linux server and build the tunnel endpoint into Tetherbot

Awesome work figuring that out!

I sent you a response on the NAT thing. I simply don't think the APIs expose the packet level interface that we'd need. I can see ways to sort of fake it, but i'm not sure about how we'd deal with TCP congestion control and such.

 

[Mystech]

My phone was updated to RC30 this morning and resists all attempts to install Tetherbot.apk whether it be from on the phone itself or via Windows XP with adb and command line.

Anyone else experiencing this or hear anything about the app being intentionally or unintentionally broken as a result of updates?

 

[metallic9900]

My phone was updated to RC30 this morning and resists all attempts to install Tetherbot.apk whether it be from on the phone itself or via Windows XP with adb and command line.

Anyone else experiencing this or hear anything about the app being intentionally or unintentionally broken as a result of updates?

Mystech,

Go to this link on your phone and download it.
http://www.zshare.net/download/509035068d8b7b04/
That's how I got mine to install to my phone. Make sure you have enabled third party apps. to download outside of marketplace. If you want to download the tetherbot app. to your desktop then upload it to zshare.net yourself, you can do it that way yourself then type the link in on your phone where you uploaded it too..

 

[DunDead]

Mystech
I just installed it on RC30 this morning, did you try my previous post?

 

[jj224]

Aside from getting online, how can I make sure that I have a connection between the phone and my laptop. Can't get online and can't ping any IP address from cmd.

 

[l3wis]

Mystech,

Go to this link on your phone and download it.
http://www.zshare.net/download/509035068d8b7b04/
That's how I got mine to install to my phone. Make sure you have enabled third party apps. to download outside of marketplace. If you want to download the tetherbot app. to your desktop then upload it to zshare.net yourself, you can do it that way yourself then type the link in on your phone where you uploaded it too..

Looks like everyone is using my upload jeje.

 

[pdms]

Hey l3wis, Why does your upload work and the others don't? Is the signature better or are they blocking the file name? Next stop, learn java so I can write a few apps for this thing.