How to share a wired Internet connection with an Android phone?

Question

I have been trying to share my wired Internet connection with my Android phone. However I could not succeed in doing this. Has anyone of you ever succeeded? Operating systems that I use are as follows:

• Ubuntu 10.10
• Android 2.3

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible. I have Ubuntu 11.04, NetworkManager 0.8.4, Android Nexus One phone running Cyanogenmod 7.

As described by Roman, right-click on the NetworkManager icon and choose "Create new wireless network". I chose to leave the connection wide open (no WPA, no WEP). My phone was able to see the network right away and I connected without trouble. The bridging was automatically done so I could browse the internet without configuring anything extra.

The reason why you having trouble with the above method is because stock Android 2.3 doesn't support ad-hoc networks. To be precise, Android's wpa_supplicant does not show ad-hoc networks. There are a number of ways to fix this. Google around and go hunting in the xda-developers forums. You will probably need to do some hacking on your phone that is beyond the scope of this answer.

My personal recommendation: if your phone supports Cyanogenmod, you can install it to get ad-hoc support and other hackish delights. You will need to root your phone, which may or may not be to your taste.

Another alternative is to try "Infrastructure mode". After setting up the ad-hoc wireless network as per above, click on the NetworkManager icon, choose "Edit connections". Hit the wireless tab and Edit the ad-hoc network you just created. Under Mode, choose "Infrastructure". I am unsure if this will work for you since I don't have a stock Android phone to test with. My thought is if ad-hoc mode is the problem, then the another mode might be the solution.

Good luck!

Answer 2

Please check out this link and tell me if it's roughly what you're looking for.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessAccessPoint

If it looks like it is (or is close to) what you're looking for let me know.
I'm interested in doing this myself, only with the slight modification of directing traffic through ppp0. Which is a tethered connection.
Perhaps we can tweak these instructions to do what we need.

Edit: This looks as if it would work best on a dedicated machine (essentially making it a router). I'm still looking through the configurations, but this might cause some problems for a laptop that you would use the wireless to connect to various locations.
Also, there appear to be a couple of steps involving a Windows machine we maybe able to forgo.

You'll also want to see this. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/MasterMode

Answer 3

Assuming you also have a wireless card in your computer: In Network Manager, click the menu and 'Create New Wireless Network...'. Later, you would be to see the network in your Android.

Answer 4

You can create a wireless network from your computers wifi menu. Right click on the wifi icon in the taskbar and click create new network. Fill out the options then connect to it from your phone. Make sure your computer is also connected to the wired network cable. The cable should be automatically bridged to the wireless from my understanding, and it should all work fine.

Answer 5

First of all as we all know stock ROM of Android i.e. the one which comes with the phone does not support ad-hoc mode (surprisingly), and even Ice-Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) won't support ad-hoc mode.

So, we need to create an access point using Ubuntu to which any android phone can easily connect. In Windows you can use Connectify to do that and it works perfectly well but with Ubuntu you may have certain problems, depending on whether your wifi-card supports access point mode (master mode) or not.

Now, even if your wifi-card supports access point mode, the next problem is whether the driver of your wifi-card supports AP mode or not, if it does then the problem is solved and if does not then you have three options:

1. Wait till the driver receives an update for AP mode. (many wifi-card drivers are still in staging stage)

2. Buy a wifi-dongle and make sure it supports AP mode on ubuntu.

3. Use Windows, where Connectify will do the job for you.

If you are interested you can post the name of your wifi-card driver so that I can help you further. Use this command:

lshw -c network

Answer 6

I tether with Android via USB tethering. You can also use Ubuntu's "broadband connection" feature that's in the nm-applet as well, but it's slower.

Answer 7

I found a good tutorial that I hope that helps, because I have been practicing and successful. in the tutorial we do not use ad hoc mode

http://www.reality-life.com/wireless-connection-ubuntu-for-android-without-adhoc/

Answer 8

I found a working solution to share my Internet connection with my phone via USB reverse tethering, but my laptop uses a wireless connection for it:

Internet -> Wireless -> Laptop -> USB cable -> Android phone

So if that would be possible for you, or if you have a second ethernet card for your pc, you should check out the 'Reverse Tether Trial' app from the play store.

1. Connect your pc with the Internet as usual
2. Connect your Android phone via USB to your pc
3. Activate 'USB-Tethering' in Androids 'Settings'
4. Create a new wired connection in Ubuntus network manager as described here
5. Start Reverse Tether and follow it's instructions
6. Browse on your phone :)

Answer 9

This works for me

• Ubuntu 12.04
• Android 4.0.4

Install hostapd

sudo apt-get install hostapd

In simple words, hostapd allows you to create software wifi access points allowing decent amount of configuration options. In rest of this post, I will show how to create a software access point in Linux using hostapd and share your internet to the devices through it

After installing hostapd install dhcp server

sudo apt-get install dhcp3-server hostapd

Then, open a text editor program, for example gedit Copy the following into it.

interface=wlan0
driver=nl80211
ssid=YOUR_SSID_NAME
hw_mode=g
channel=11
wpa=1
wpa_passphrase=YOUR_PASSWORD
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=TKIP CCMP
wpa_ptk_rekey=600

Please change to fill in the name of your network after ssid=, as well as the password after wpa_passphrase=.

save the file as hostapd.conf in your home folder

Create a new ad-hoc wireless and connect it.

Now, Open terminal and type:

sudo hostapd hostapd.conf

Turn on your phone wifi and find your ssid.

Source from HERE

Answer 10

Does your laptop have Bluetooth? If it does, you can use Bluetooth tethering.

Here is a link for instructions. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4145133 Or you can use 'Blueman': http://blueman-project.org/