Is Tethering Through A Mobile Phone Possible?

[Andrei0427]

Ive managed in the past to utilise the N900 in order to act as a USB wireless modem for my laptop when Im in dire need of battery life, I was thinking and wondering if this is possible with the Pineapple? Having this convenience will greatly improve concealing the device as SSHing to the pineapple can easily be done, and providing internet makes it all the better!

I have already attempted this but had no luck getting the usb0 interface up <I dont even know what its called xD> Although my N900 has the capability to set a default GW, and its own IP address to the usb0 interface, in addition to echoing '1' to ip_forward. Has anyone managed or has the knowledge to accomplish this task?

I know for certain that it's easier than having a 3G modem attached to it config. wise. All I need to know is how can I at least ping my phone through it's 172.16.42.42 IP from the pineapple, although further guidance is appreciated :).

Regards,

Andrei

[l0rdr4t]

I've been investigating this today... Certainly this tethering in general works in vanilla OpenWRT (which pineapple is based on). I'm coming across multiple road-blocks in finding the information readily (I'm a bit of a newb) but from what I understand, once the usb device is detected and using the appropriate driver, usb0 will become an available network interface.

What I can't seem to get working is loading the usb-net drivers - based on other forums I've read, the following lines should show in the dmesg/logread prior (but are missing for me):

usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_ether
usbcore: registered new interface driver rndis_host

I've install the opkg packages for cdc and rndis, but these do not seem to load as drivers for me. I'm running Pineapple MK4 1.1.1 + opkgmanager. If I make any progress, I'll post it here...

ref: https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=146421

Edited April 15, 2012 by l0rdr4t

[l0rdr4t]

Pretty sure I'm getting somewhere on here - appears the drivers that opkg/opkgmanager module download are for a later kernel... I found an old repo for the 2.6.39.4 kernel and installed three packages and restarted - I have a usb0 interface! Not completed tested yet but should have results soon. Excuse me for dumping the info here in sub-par condition (hope someone else can use it).

opkg packages installed:

• http://carme.pld-linux.org/~cactus/bin/ar71xx/packages/kernel_2.6.39.4-1-a54d7162f51c0799f2c52de03db91a8f_ar71xx.ipk
  
• http://carme.pld-linux.org/~cactus/bin/ar71xx/packages/kmod-usb-net_2.6.39.4-1_ar71xx.ipk
  
• http://carme.pld-linux.org/~cactus/bin/ar71xx/packages/kmod-usb-net-cdc-ether_2.6.39.4-1_ar71xx.ipk
  

Note that this is for *nix/MacOS-style tethering (not Windows) - and back to testing.

[Andrei0427]

Thanks for the information! I do not have that much knowledge regarding the OpenWRT platform and how it works as regards treating USB devices.

Just a question.. once you have the usb0 interface, did you give it an IP, defaultGW on both the phone and pineapple? And if so are they pingable with each other?

If you achieved this step I imagine a couple of iptables rules and it should work. Not forgetting ip_forwarding of course :)

Thanks again, would really like to see this idea work as it would eliminate the laptop in it's usage.

[l0rdr4t]

Was having troubles assigning an IP address - don't have the logs here with me now, but it got as far as showing me the MAC address. I guess that tells me the driver might be OK... but I'm just not sure right now.

More info when I get it.