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03 Sep 2010 [06:50 UTC]

Modern Nomads

Make Mobile Devices Work For You

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Sharing your Internet Connection with Windows XP through bluetooth

One of the great things about bluetooth enabled phones is that you can use them as a internet access point for your laptop while you are on the road.

While travelling with a laptop an internet connection can be very desirable. By using your Windows Mobile Phone as a bluetooth access point, you can connect easily to the internet using GPRS or your regular internet service provider (providing your laptop has bluetooth as well of course). Internet Connection Sharing provides an easy way of sharing your internet connection with your laptop (also known as tethering) while the device still is capable of retrieving its own e-mail and RSS feeds.

On your mobile device

This functionality was introduced with Windows Mobile 5 AKU3, devices with older versions of the operating system depend on dial-up networking, which also works great. Please refer to that section when you have an older device.

Please note that your exchange administrator can block this functionality from Exchange 2007 when using a Windows Mobile 6.1 and above device.

Please make sure you first have bonded or paired your device with your laptop.

Please keep in mind that the following you have to do, EVERY time you want to connect to the internet with your laptop. There are no tricks known to us to make this easier or faster.

To fire up internet connection sharing, you start with selecting "Internet Sharing" from your program files.

Starting Internet Connection Sharing

After you have opened Internet Connection Sharing, you can start by selecting the correct communication medium (you need "Bluetooth PAN") and the correct network connection.

Internet Connection Sharing setup screen

You can basically select any kind of network connection you wish to share. This can be any internet connection (for example a GPRS connection).

After selecting the appropriate way of connecting and service, you can press the left softkey marked "connect" to activate the service.

On the PC

On the PC you have to open your bluetooth neighborhood.

Bluetooth settings

After opening the device, you can see the available services:

Available bluetooth services

If you are missing the "Network Access Point" service, you might be have forgotten to activate the service on your mobile device.
If you can see the "Network Access Point" service, it is time to connect it by using a right-click and selecting "connect to Network Access Point":

Connecting to the bluetooth PAN service 

After this, the laptop will connect to your Windows Mobile device and the icon will become green if it is connected.


Comments

I think I'm missing something

by Alexandre, Friday 15 of August, 2008 [00:51:34 UTC]
Great article!

I did everthing described here, but I only got IP 169.254.76.*. Can ping PPC from notebook, so, there is conectivity between then. I can transfer files between then too. But can't access internet. Tryed to force PPC IP like a gateway in TPC bluetooth settings. When I did this I got PPC bluetooth's IP like DNS and routes turned on on PC, but can't access anything with a real IP...

My PPC is a HTC Trinity P3600, with WM 5.1.465 (build 15673.3.3.1)

Can you provide me some tips to help me?

Thanks in advance,

Alexandre

Re: I think I'm missing something

by Jaap van Ekris, Sunday 23 of November, 2008 [23:17:53 UTC]
The fact that you can transfer files generally means that Activesync is active (is also TCP based), instead of the Internet Connection Sharing application....

Jaap
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