Experts Online

Another GREAT breakthrough in Windows Mobile networking: unrestricted BT PAN server with the MS BT stack!!

Werner Ruotsalainen — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:03:15 -0500

I’ve elaborated on the approach of WM5 AKU3 / WM6 when it comes to internet sharing and dial-up (modem) functionality via Bluetooth (BT). In there, I’ve told the Microsoft folks to decouple at least the server (Network Access Point, NAP) functionality of their BT PAN (Personal Area Network) implementation so that you can connect to a Windows Mobile phone running the MS BT stack even when it doesn’t have an active (mobile) net connection. Again, as with the other hacks of late (true DUN and true Wi-Fi access hack) it was hackers and programmers that implemented this; namely, XDA-Developers user mrpotter, in THIS thread.

The hack is really useful if you need BT PAN functionality. And, you will need it in several scenarios – for example, remote controlling a media player on your desktop PC; remotely accessing its desktop; playing multiplayer games; chatting, speaking over Bluetooth etc. Now that the BT PAN functionality is decoupled from the Internet dial-up access, you can use it on phones that don’t have the latter (because they don’t have a phone card inside, you haven’t subscribed to a cellular Internet plan or don’t want to use any to keep costs down), which is pretty much similar to the case of the Widcomm BT stack. (The Widcomm BT stack has always been vastly superior to the MS one but, alas, almost all current models contain the latter and there are pretty few models that you can “hack” the Widcomm BT stack on.

Compatibility

It’s compatible with all WM6 MS Smartphone (WM Standard) and Pocket PC Phone Edition (WM Professional) devices. It seems it is NOT compatible with WM5 AKU3 devices (that is, late WM5 devices with already Internet Sharing on them). It’s not compatible with non-phone Pocket PC’s either.

Installation, Usage, Hacks

Just download the wm6btpan.exe file from the home XDA-Dev thread (EXE file mirrored HERE), put it anywhere on your phone and start it. After this, any BT PAN-capable client will be able to connect to it, assuming you’ve configured them to receive static IP’s until you reset your phone. (Note that you’ll be able to connect to it even when it’s suspended.)

Dial-up Networking news: much easier and, now, Smartphone-compliant BT DUN/Wi-Fi dial-up access

Werner Ruotsalainen — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 07:21:17 -0500

Lately, several "hacks" and enhancements have been released for enhancing the Windows Mobile platform. Windows Mobile devices used as modems are pretty common. Currently, as of version 6 of Windows Mobile, the official ways you can use a WM-based phone are pretty limited.

Another long-awaited breakthrough: dial-up Internet Sharing over Wi-Fi!

Werner Ruotsalainen — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:26:02 -0500

Anyone having read my tutorial on the new Internet Sharing utility in Windows Mobile 5 AKU3 and later versions (including, of course, WM6) knows that it’s not possible to use a Windows Mobile device as a GPRS / EDGE / UMTS / HSDPA etc. cellular modem via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth DUN or, with some exceptions, even infrared, “only” over BT PAN and USB. This means a lot of devices can’t connect to the Net if they don’t support either BT PAN (or USB with desktop Windows operating systems). While the BT DUN hack published some months ago certainly helped the situation (allowing for connections via the far more widely supported, “traditional” Bluetooth DUN), it still didn’t let for using the Windows Mobile Phone Edition (“Professional” in WM6 parlance) device as a modem with clients connecting via Wi-Fi.

XDA-Developers hacker fluxist has just published a tutorial on his latest finding, which, at last, allows for accessing the Net using a Windows Mobile device via Wi-Fi.

I've thoroughly expanded (also with screenshots) the tutorial and tested it with some other Pocket PC's. The results are as follows:

A subtle difference between WM6 and previous OS versions: no “Extra dial-string modem commands” and no Port Settings tab any mo

Werner Ruotsalainen — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:14:10 -0500

Anyone having read my previous articles on the Connectivity Framework of Windows Mobile knows (for example this or this) knows it might be pretty important to be able to

pass (for example APN) parameters to the (either cellular or landline) modem you use from your Windows Mobile device (this is what the “Extra dial-string modem commands” is for)
issue pre and/or post-dial commands

This isn’t really an issue on Windows Mobile Pocket PC phones because, most of the time, you’ll want to use their internal GPRS / EDGE etc. modem to connect to the Net and not an external one. However, there may be cases, even with Phone Edition models, when you MUST use external modems to connect to the Net:

you need to use a 56k landline modem (for example, at a hotel) as opposed to cellular ones (via either infrared or Bluetooth). You might end up having to pass additional initialization parameters to the modem in order to make it work.
the built-in modem is just too slow for you. For example, you only have a GPRS-capable Windows Mobile phone. The external modem (any other, recent, non-low-end (smart)phone) you’d like to use, on the other hand, is capable of both much higher speeds (EDGE, UMTS or even HS(D)PA) and either Bluetooth or IrDA connectivity. In this case, you’ll also want to prefer using the external modem instead of the internal one because of the much higher speed (at least over Bluetooth – as opposed to standard infrared - , particularly the fast(er) version, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, which is no slower than current HSDPA downlink speeds).
And, of course, I haven’t even mentioned non-Phone Edition Windows Mobile Pocket PC’s, which, now that HP has announced their new Windows Mobile series, particularly the HP 200, a pretty nice WM6 upgrade to the HP iPAQ hx4700, seems to be all the rage again with some power users not necessarily needing a built-in phone. (And I don’t even mention the, otherwise, illegal WM6 upgrades for some previous-generation VGA Pocket PC’s, which also revives some older non-phone devices and makes them a decent alternative to even the latest ones.)

In all these cases, you might end up having to using external modem commands, in addition to supplying the plain (pseudo) dial-in number. So far, you could both enter the extra string:

The new dial-up networking model of the WM5 AKU3 – a must if you use your WM phones as modems

Werner Ruotsalainen — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:52:56 -0600

UPDATE (10/10/2007): Yet another breakthrough: BT PAN without an active Internet Sharing, with several clients connecting at the same time!
(End of update)

UPDATE (09/27/2007): Another long-awaited breakthrough: dial-up Internet Sharing over Wi-Fi!
(End of update)

UPDATE (07/28/2007): Problem fixed for many Pocket PC's; see THIS.
(End of update)

UPDATE (04/19/2007): the Microsoft WM folks have just published an article on the PAN vs DUN issue. It's HIGHLY recommended. Also, you may want to check out PPCT and Just Another Mobile Monday.

UPDATE (03/16/2007): now, with the brand new, 10.4.9 Mac OS X version, AKU3 can be used for dial-up. Please see THIS for more info. Also, there's a tutorial on making AKU3 dial-up work under Unix / Linux HERE.

The original article is as follows:

Now that there already are some AKU3 devices (mostly MS Smartphones) on the market (for example, the HTC Dash (see for example this excellent Smartphone Thoughts review), and I, as I know quite much about Bluetooth, network sharing (I’m the author of the one and only POST-capable, free HTTP network sharing proxy for the Pocket PC) and connectivity issues of Windows Mobile devices, have been receiving a LOT of related questions (see for example this), I have decided to update my well-known Use your Pocket PC Phone Edition as a modem for your other Pocket PC's” tutorial so that it contains AKU3-related information and to also explain why dial-up connections in the latest, AKU3 version of WM5 behave completely different from earlier operating system versions.

This article will be of extreme interest to anyone using their Microsoft-based phones (let them be either full Pocket PC’s or “just” MS Smartphones) as cellular (GPRS / EDGE / UMTS / HSDPA etc.) modems because it explains everything about this subject, including the changes over the old model.

1. The most important changes, connectivity-wise

There are major changes in the connectivity model of AKU3 when it comes to serving clients that would like to use a Windows Mobile phone as a modem via either Bluetooth or infrared. In the following two subsections, I elaborate on both connection forms.

1.1 Bluetooth: No BT DUN profile any more

In AKU 3+, the Bluetooth DUN (Dial-up Networking) profile is no longer supported at all, only the PAN (Personal Area Network). Now, it’s via BT PAN’s that cellular-only network connections are shared and you have no access to DUN functionality any more.

This means clients discovering AKU3-based Windows Mobile phones will NOT see as modems, unlike with operating system versions prior to AKU3. This means that instead of seeing this (Microsoft BT stack) and this (Widcomm BT stack), you will see this (with the MS BT stack as clients) and this , this and this (three Widcomm-based clients (iPAQ 2210, hx4700 and the Pocket Loox 720)).

The latter screenshots, in essence, show you won’t be able to use Windows Mobile phones with Microsoft BT stack-based clients as the latter have no BT PAN support at all – along with a lot of other types of devices. That is, not so many “client” operating systems (“client” refers to devices that would like to use Windows Mobile phones to access the Net) support the (quite advanced) BT PAN profile as the “traditional” BT DUN dial-up method.

In the following subsections, I elaborate on the PAN compatibility issues both desktop and handheld OS’es. After that, I elaborate on other, related issues like port forwarding and convenience issues.

Everything you need to know about USB networking in WM5 - UPDATED!

Werner Ruotsalainen — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 05:06:25 -0500

I’ve just updated my article on the USB networking model of WM5 originally published here with the latest AKU2.2+-related information.

To summarize the changes for people that aren’t interested in the technical details: in the latest, AKU 2.2 (or later) WM5 upgrades available for many HTC (i-mate, Qtek, T-Mobile, Cingular etc.) Pocket PC phones and some unconnected PDA’s like the Dell Axim x51v, it may be preferable to deactivate the, by default, enabled "Enable advanced network f

Windows Mobile Network Analyzer PowerToy for WM5-based Pocket PC’s and Smartphones released!

Werner Ruotsalainen — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 02:57:24 -0500

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=081c6401-49d4-4506-a03b-c41bc76c2f51&DisplayLang=en

Up to now, it was pretty complicated to track down networking errors on the Pocket PC. I’ve been following these tools on the Pocket PC quite closely (example here) but haven’t really found a tool that would work on current PDA’s with as many connection types as possible. The vast majority of them are Wi-Fi only and, in cases, outdated; some examples:

New (50.56) version of great bandwidth usage reducer tool Toonel is out & other welcome Toonel fixes

Werner Ruotsalainen — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 00:22:42 -0500

http://toonel.net

Biggest news of the month (in addition to Opera Mobile): native PPC version of great, FREE bandwidth usage reducer tool Toonel h

Werner Ruotsalainen — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 04:12:57 -0500

Please read the new tutorial at http://smartphonemag.com/blogs/menneisyys/ConfigureToonel54.asp

Reducing your Internet Bandwidth Usage Tutorial - in Russian

Werner Ruotsalainen — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 11:45:49 -0600

http://4pda.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=8568