One of the things I like my most about my T-Mobile G1  is that I can tether the mobile phone to my laptop and use my mobile phone’s Internet connection to browse the web.  Tethering isn’t anything new, but most cell phone carriers simply won’t allow it.  They want you to go buy their expensive AIR cards and then pay an additional $50 – $75 per month for service.

Graham Stewart, from Boulder, Colorado created a very nice little Android app to tether the G1 to a laptop (or any computer for that matter).

Here are the instructions to get everything set up:

• Install the app on your android phone, by clicking here (from your T-Mobile G1 phone browser of course)
  You might have to change your settings to permit apps that don’t come from the Google Market by going to your home screen and choosing MENU > Settings > Applications > Unknown Sources.
• Turn USB debugging on on your phone.
  On your G1 go to the home screen, press MENU > Settings > Applications > Development, then enable USB debugging.
• Follow the instructions here to install the Android driver – you’ll need to do this on Windows & Linux but apparently not on the Mac.  If you’re using Windows Vista x64, read this!)
• Download and install the Android SDK for your computer platform. Alternatively, if you are on Windows and don’t want a 100 meg download, just get the ADB utility from here. (I recommend just the ADB Utility)
  

To get on the Internet, you’ll need to do a few things.

1. Open a cmd prompt (Press the windows icon and type cmd in the search bar). You need to navigate to the directory that contains the adb.exe file.  In my case, I just downloaded the ADB utility (see above) and not the entire Android SDK platform.  I unzipped the ADB utility into a folder called “Android” on my C: drive.  Now in the cmd prompt you’ll type cd C:\Android

Now you need to type: adb forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080

If all goes well you should receive something that says “Daemon started successfully” (and then the window will appear to close).  The program is still running in the background so whenever you’re done using the Internet you should close it.  Press Ctrl+Shft+Esc to open the Task Manager.  Under the Processes tab, close the file called adb.exe to exit the program.

Tip: I created a simple shortcut on my desktop (right click on your desktop and select New Shortcut) to skip having to open the cmd prompt and enter the forwarding command each time.    If your adb.exe file is located in a different folder than mine below, just change the path to match yours. Here is what my shortcut looks like.

C:\Android\adb.exe forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080

I also changed the icon of the shortcut to a cell phone because I’m cool like that.

2. Using Firefox is the best way to browse the web using this tethering app.  You can use Internet Explorer but I’m not making a tutorial for installing the proxy program with IE.  IE is scary.

Anyways, using Firefox, go to http://www.foxyproxy.com and download the plugin for Firefox.  Firefox should install it and then restart.  Once Firefox has restarted you should see something in the bottom right corner that says “FoxyProxy: Disabled.”  Right click on that and select Options.  Click on the Global Settings tab and then select “Use Socks Proxy for DNS Lookups”.  It will make you restart Firefox again… do so.

Now left click on the “FoxyProxy: Disabled” in the bottom right corner once.  Click on the tab that says Proxies.  On the right, click on Add New Proxy.  Make sure Enabled is checked and then give it a name. I named my connection “G1″ but you can name yours whatever you’d like.  Now click the tab at the top that says Proxy Details.  Select Manual Proxy Configuration and enter the host name (which is localhost) and the port (which is 1080).  Check the SOCKS proxy box and then choose Socks v5.  Click OK at the bottom of the window.

You’re so freakin’ close now!

Now that you have TetherBot installed on your phone, you’ve added the adb utility to your laptop and you’ve configured FoxyProxy in Firefox you should be able to give this thing a whirl.

These are the steps you’ll need to take each time you launch TetherBot

1. Plug your phone into your computer (you should have already installed the driver as mentioned above)
2. On your G1, open TetherBot and press Start Socks
3. Open the cmd prompt and navigate to the folder containing the adb utility. (also mentioned above)
4. Enter this command: adb forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080 (or create a shortcut like I mentioned above)
5. Open Firefox and right click on FoxyProxy: Disabled in the bottom right and select G1 (or whatever you named it)
6. Browse your heart out using your T-Mobile G1.

Using the Port Bouncer

The port bouncer will let you connect to a single port on a remote host. This works well if you need to establish an SSH tunnel to your home machine.

This should work for TCP only vpns (openvpn can be configured in this mode) but it wont work for Microsoft PPTP (because it’s GRE based) or most typical openvpn setups (because they are UDP based).

• Choose Tetherbot from your phone’s menu
• Enter the hostname of the server you wish to connect to on your phone
• Enter the port you wish to use
• Press the “Start Tunnel” button on your phone
• Move to the directory that has the adb utility, using inside the Sdk Tools folder and run

  Windows: adb forward tcp:4444 localabstract:Tunnel
  Linux/Mac: ./adb forward tcp:4444 localabstract:Tunnel

• Now you should have a tunnel connecting from port 4444 on your local host to the port on the host of your choice
• To establish an ssh connection, type something like

  ssh -p 4444 user@localhost

  and you should be routed through to the server in question.