{"id":3701,"date":"2011-08-17T22:24:29","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T19:24:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vaxxi.net\/log\/?p=3701"},"modified":"2011-08-17T22:26:14","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T19:26:14","slug":"android-reverse-tethering-on-mac-os-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vaxxi.net\/log\/android-reverse-tethering-on-mac-os-x\/","title":{"rendered":"android reverse tethering on mac os x"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone knows what tethering is: using your mobile phone’s data plan to get Internet on your laptop. Well, here’s the concept of reverse tethering<\/strong>: you don’t have a mobile data plan or a WiFi connection available for your smartphone, but you have a WiFi connection available for your laptop. Therefore, you want to use your laptop’s WiFi internet connection<\/b> to get internet on your Android phone<\/b>. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When might this be useful ?<\/em> you might ask. Well, here I am in a hotel room where my phone can’t connect to wifi (either a CyanogenMod fault or a phone hardware problem). I can’t use the WiFi Internet sharing included in Mac OS X, because the WiFi is already used for Internet. On Windows\/Linux, it’s quite easy to do<\/a>. What about Mac OS X ?<\/p>\n

Well, it seems Android’s reverse tethering is based on a Microsoft protocol (ha-ha, the irony). Although it’s specifications are public, it’s not implemented in Mac OS X at all and probably will never be. You could try AJZaurusUSB<\/a>, which makes your USB device appear as a network interface to Mac OS X. It’s easy then to use Mac OS X’s Internet Sharing to give Internet access to the device connected on USB.<\/p>\n

For me, AJZaurusUSB didn’t work unfortunately. It installed successfully, but no new network interface appeared. What to do, what to do ? Hmm. We have Bluetooth, don’t we ? Go to Mac OS X’s System Panel, Network, add a new network interface (“+” button in bottom left), choose “Bluetooth PAN” and set up your Android phone. Get the wizard done and press “Connect”. You’ll get a new “Bluetooth PAN” network interface in the left list (it was en2 on my laptop, with en0 being Ethernet and en1 being the Wifi interface). <\/p>\n

Now, go back to system panel and into Sharing. Go to Internet Sharing and “Share your connection from Airport” “To computers using: Bluetooth PAN”. I assume this is the equivalent of masquerading, which could be also achieved on Linux with:<\/p>\n


\niptables -A FORWARD -i tap0 -o usb0 -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
\niptables -A POSTROUTING -t nat -o tap0 -j MASQUERADE
\niptables -A INPUT -i usb0 -j ACCEPT
\niptables -A FORWARD -i usb0 -o tap0 -j ACCEPT
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

And that’s it ! browser will work, email will work, maps will work… except Market \ud83d\ude41 it seems Android applications which access the network are relying on ConnectivityService to find out if there’s a network connection available. Our method doesn’t make ConnectivityService think we’re online. You can read more about ConnectivityService not being notified here<\/a>, unfortunately there seems to be no other solution other than recompiling it. Bummer.<\/p>\n

Seems to be quite an omission from Google, considering even the old Windows Mobile was able to do this. However, in this world of “always connected\/wifi everywhere” (except here :-D) probably nobody will bother to fix this. It seems HTC offered an “Internet passthrough<\/a>” mode for the new devices, but it’s Windows only and requires HTC Sync to be installed.<\/p>\n

References: [1]<\/a>, [2]<\/a>, [3]<\/a> , [4]<\/a>, [5]<\/a>, [6]<\/a>, [7]<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone knows what tethering is: using your mobile phone’s data plan to get Internet on your laptop. Well, here’s the concept of reverse tethering: you don’t have a mobile data plan or a WiFi connection available for your smartphone, but you have a WiFi connection available for your laptop. Therefore, you want to use your…(Continue Reading)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[29,181,139],"class_list":["post-3701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gadgets","tag-android","tag-gadgets","tag-mac-os-x"],"yoast_head":"\nandroid reverse tethering on mac os x<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Everyone knows what tethering is: using your mobile phone's data plan to get Internet on your laptop. 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