Wireless Tethering allows you to connect your computer through the phone and use the 3G (or 4G, EDGE, etc) as your internet connection. Some new phones can do wireless tether without rooting, but often times you must pay extra for the service. If you rooted your phone there are two ways of doing wireless tether. First check and see if you have wireless tethering built into your MOD. Go to Settings –> Wireless & networks –> Tethering. If you only see USB tethering then there are extra steps you must take to enable wireless tethering. See the 3 images below. Note that my phone only lists USB Tethering. If your phone is the same, then continue.
  

Some people I know are also running CyanogenMod and they have wireless tether built in. Why is that? For starters, since the phone is newer than my G1, they have a more up to date wireless card. These cards can be put into AP mode. This is the same style mode that your wireless router at home uses. Some phones that have wireless tether can also put the card into Ad-Hoc mode. This mode is also known as Computer to Computer without an Access Point. However, it seems that you still need the extra software to do wireless tethering. It is kind of hard for me to explain as I don’t have access to many phone to see how they work. Let alone ones that are rooted. With my G1, I can say that the wireless card was not even designed to operate in Ad-Hoc mode. Thanks to the software I’m running I can force the card into Ad-Hoc mode and connect to it with my laptop.

Keep in mind that wireless tethering will kill your battery quickly. Be sure to have a USB charging cable with you as your battery will not last long. Also note that many service providers do not want you to tether without paying extra. Be sure to read the terms of service of your provider before continuing.

If you made it this far you are going to need extra software. Once again, if your phone is not rooted this will NOT work! Head on over to Google Code to download. At the time of this writing I am running version 2.0.2. A later version has been released, but I have not tested it as mine works very nicely. Download the software to your phone and install. If you don’t know how, I can’t help you.

After installing there are several features to the software. I highly recommend encryption and if you want, Access Control. By default the software uses wpa_supplicant to set the WEP key. This is done via a passphrase. If you like the shell (like I do) you will need to use iwconfig to set the key. Below are some pictures of the settings menu in Wireless Tether.
  
  

If you use Access Control, before a newly connected device can access the net you will have to allow it. I don’t have pictures, but if I remember it will be in the notification bar. Just drag it down, select the computer/device and hit allow. Later you can look in the Access Control Panel by hitting Menu then Access Control. Here is what mine looks like (and no, the computer is not actually connected. I just have it set to always allow the machines based on it’s MAC address.

My laptop has a Broadcom wireless card. I’m using the b43 drivers found here. As it turns out there are several problems found with my current kernel version (2.6.28) and the rc.wireless script that Slackware uses. There are two fixes. One is to remove the b43 module and reload it (this is so we can put the card in Ad-Hoc mode) and I have had problems setting the WEP key via iwconfig. With iwconfig you can set the key (default for this software being ‘abcdefghijklm’) by typing:

iwconfig <card-id> key s:<passphrase>

I always got an error. I solved the problem by using another computer to set the key then you can type iwconfig again and see the key. In this case, the key is 6162636465666768696A6B6C6D. If needs be, write down this key so you can use iwconfig to set it again.

Ok. I hope by now you have the wireless software installed on your Android phone and it is running. Note: I have found that sometimes even when encryption is set it doesn’t turn on. Be sure to scan for wireless networks to see your phone and if encryption is turned on or not. Also note that the software has created an Ad-Hoc style connection. If everything seems to be working here is what you do. In the next steps I will have some bash commands, then a note on what each command does. You may need a make changes to it to suit your needs. I turned it into a script I can run on my laptop so I don’t have to type every line in every time I tether.

rmmod b43   -unloads the b43 module
modprobe b43   -reloads the b43 module
ifconfig wlan0 down   -take the card offline
iwconfig wlan0 mode ad-hoc   -set to Ad-Hoc mode
iwconfig wlan0 essid android   -set the essid (be sure to check your configs)
iwconfig wlan0 key 6162636465666768696A6B6C6D   -set the WEP key (may differ!)
ifconfig wlan0 up   -bring the card online
dhclient wlan0   -get an IP address to your phone

Now type ifconfig and make sure you have an IP. If so, try surfing! If you are a hardcore Slackware user you may note that I use dhclient instead of dhcpcd. For some reason dhcpcd never gets me an IP. If this doesn’t work try it again. Sometimes I have to run the script twice, but I always get it working eventually.

I don’t have a problem with Windows 7 on the same machine. Windows will allow you to type in the paraphrase and it works great. If you’re running Linux and using the b43 module there are several things you can try to fix any problems. I hear the 2.6.33 and newer kernel have these problems fixed. Also if you don’t run a wireless script on boot, that may help. Most newer Linux distributions have GUI programs to help you connect to networks. I’m still running an older version of Slackware, and at the time, it didn’t come with those programs.

Now for some more pictures I took of the program. No reason. I just thought I would share.
  
  

I hope this all makes sense. If not you can always ask, if I know the answer I will reply. I would also recommend asking on a help forum or asking Google. Good luck and Happy Hacking!

My laptop runs Slackware 12.0 with a new custom 2.6.28 kernel and there was were the problem was. As it turns out I failed to turn on and modularize certain USB functions, now I’m unsure of what I enabled that made it work.

First, if you think it’s a problem with your kernel check your USB device settings. I use the make menuconfig when I build kernels, if you use xconfig it may appear slightly differently.

Check under Device Drivers –> USB Support. I turned on just about everything and modularized just about every USB device, don’t forget to turn on USB Gadget Support I turned on the top 3 options, they are for debugging and also Serial Gadget was modularized. Click Here to download my .config file. This file is in the root of where you extracted your kernel (usually /usr/src/linux-2.6.28/). Be sure to rename the file from DaijoubuKun.Android.config to .config otherwise you will need to tell your kernel to use that file. Quick note: I know I have a lot here that does not need to be turned on, I like large kernels with lots of modules.

UPDATE!
Put your 50-android.rules file in /etc/udev/rules/ and chmod it to 755!
Also in your kernel build make sure you turn on USB debugging mode!!!

If you think your kernel is OK check out graha.ms. There is a lot of the stuff your going to need to know there.

Now, at this point I’m assuming you visited the link above but your Tetherbot still isn’t working. This may be because the commands google gives may not work in Slackware. I wrote 4 lines more designed in Slackware’s udev style. Below are 8 lines. I’m sure you only need one, but it didn’t hurt me none to use all 8, the bottom 4 are mine. Here is my 50-android.rules

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="660"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="660"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"

I know it’s got to be overkill to have 8 lines in there, so if you figure out which is the one that works post it in a comment and I will edit this to show that line with credit to you.

NOTE: When you plug in your phone you will be asked if you want to mount the sdcard to your computer. SELECT NO! According to rynosaur of androidcommunity.com.

Note, to make things easier copy the files is your tools/ directory (from the android sdk) to /bin. This way you do not need to go to the download directory to run the adb program. You can also copy the libs to /bin/lib

Now run adb devices. You should get some out put like

List of devices attached
HTxxxGZxxxxx    device

If you do then we are ready to go!
If not did you remember to run on USB debugging?
Start the Tetherbot program and hit Start Socks
Now type ‘adb forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080‘. This will forward and thing you send to ‘localhost:1080′ to the phone.

Using nmap I found that Tetherbot uses socks 5 with no authentication. This makes things a bit easier. Once you have gotten this far you are ready to setup your web browser to use the socks proxy. I have done this in SeaMonkey and Firefox (haven’t tried anything else yet) so here are the instructions for FireFox 3.0.x (should stay about the same for future versions).

Go to Edit –> Preferences –> Advanced (top tab) –> Network (lower tab) –> Connection Settings (button).
Select ‘Manual Proxy configuration‘ and put localhost in SOCKS Host and port 1080 in port. ONLY put that information in the SOCKS Host! Do NOT put it in HTTP Proxy! Be sure to select Socks v5 and (this may not be necessary) remove anything in the field No Proxy for:
Here is a picture:

Once you do that everything will go through your phone. I did read that there is a 1GB per month limit on the phone. I do not know if this is true or not. I’m only going to use Tetherbot when I’m doing a service call, I need a file and there is no other way to get online.

Lastly, just as quick bit of info. I live in an area where T-Mobile doesn’t have 3G! It sucks, but I’m told it’s coming later this year. It damn well better with how much I pay every month for this thing. I ran a bandwidth test through the EDGE network (it’s like 2.5G) and below is my speed.

Granted, I only ran the test once, and early in the morning. Plus I don’t think the phone was designed to have these sort of things run through it, but it will have to do for now. P.S. Thanks for the awesome speed test program Speakeasy.

Special note: I could be wrong, but it seems that after you put the required information into 50-android.rules you may need to either restart or run /etc/rc.d/rc.udev restart to restart the udev service. You may also need to replug in your phone, make sure you don’t mount your sd card as it may cause tetherbot to not function properly.

If this helped you in anyway please let me know. If it didn’t help post your problem and I will try to help.