Last year I got an HTC Sensation, with which I’ve been very happy (well, except for the ol’ dust-under-the-screen issue, but I can live with that for now). However, I could never get its WiFi hotspot app to work. Till now.I’d spent quite a while googling around, but not found anything. I even tried contacting HTC support, who couldn’t help either, except for suggesting their tried and tested fall-back of a hard-reset, but I’d already had to do that earlier and knew it wouldn’t help.
I should say at this point that I’ve actually been very impressed with HTC’s customer service. I’ve contacted them several times now with questions, and they’ve always been very quick to respond and as helpful as possible (including that time I had to hard-reset when I spent the best part of ¾ of an hour in their instant-messaging help).
When I contacted them about this, they let me escalate it to their … higher level support (?) as I offered to do some detailed diagnosis for them (I know a bit about networking). Although they haven’t gotten back to me yet; I’ll have to report this solution back to them.
Anyway, back on track.
The symptoms are that you can turn the WiFi hotspot on, and a second device connects fine over the WiFi network this creates. However, that device can’t then access the Internet.
A bit of poking around shows that the Sensation doles out an IP address on the new WiFi network OK, and sets up DNS properly. The client can then lookup names (such as www.google.co.uk) & can ping the Sensation, but can’t ping (or otherwise access) the rest if the Internet. The Sensation refuses to route any packets between the client and the ‘Net (DNS is done via the ‘phone so it’s always a point-to-point job).
I even managed to check that the ‘phone’s Linux kernel was configured to route correctly. But still no joy, so I gave up for a while (with such a decent browser, I didn’t now need to access the Net from a laptop or netbook through the ‘phone anyway).
But recently, I had another idle google for an answer, and found someone who had posted a fix for their HTC Desire which had had the same issue. I’m afraid I’ve lost the link to that blog, so I can’t give them credit, but a fresh recent google now shows that (now I know what I’m looking for!) it’s mentioned in quite a number of fora.
The solution.
Essentially, it seems to pertain to Orange, whom I have my contract with. I don’t know whether they’ve mucked up something in their SIM setting or what (I have a stock Sensation, not an Orange one), but I’ve not found mention of this issue with anyone but Orange.
The HTC WiFi app requires that you have an Access Point Name called “Consumer Broadband”. I was missing this, and without it the app doesn’t crate an Internet connection for the WiFi network to connect with (why it still lets DNS work I don’t know).
You need to go to Settings, Wireless & Networks, Mobile networks, Access Point Names. I only had Orange Internet and Orange MMS listed there initially.
If you don’t have one called Consumer Broadband, you have to create one. If you have one, check its settings as below. These are the only settings I had to set from the default after its creation:
- Name Consumer Broadband
- APN orangeinternet
- Username Orange
- Password Multimedia
- Authentication type CHAP
The other default settings (some were pre-filled) I left blank or what they were. If you already have a Consumer Broadband APN, check its settings against the ones above.
And after that, I started up the WiFi hotspot, tried my laptop … and wa-hay, Internet access!
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