Internet Connection Sharing through WiFi with Ubuntu PC as a gateway

The Problem

I have Ubuntu installed on my notebook computer(from now onwards, I will call it host computer in this post) which has a wired ethernet connection to a broadband internet service provider. I want to have a WiFi network broadcast in my room using my host computer so that any other notebook(guest) or smart phone with WiFi capability in the vicinity can connect to the broadband internet with host notebook working as a gateway.

The solution 

I had this problem from long ago since I wanted my broadband to be shared on my Sony Ericsson P1i. and I searched whole of the internet to find a solution but none actually worked.
Today after some fiddling I finally made my P1i to hook to the broadband with Ubuntu notebook working as a gateway.

This tutorial I am presenting has been tested on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx and works perfectly fine. I can't guarantee it to work on earlier distributions because I myself had seen funny characters in WiFi network search list in P1i on 9.10 Karmic Koala and it never worked for me.

So, lets proceed.

1. Turn on your notebook's WiFi if there's a dedicated switch to turn it on. On my Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Si 3655 notebook, WiFi can be turned on using Fn+F1 key combination.

2. Click on the Network Manager icon(which looks like ) in the notification area and click Create New Wireless Network...

3. In the dialog box that pops up, put the network name as anything(I put WLAN). Set Wireles Security as WEP 40/128-bit key. In the Key box, enter any five digit number(I entered 31323). Click Create.

4. Now right click on the Network Manager icon and click Edit Connections... In the Network Connections dialog box that pops up, go to the Wireless tab. Click WLAN(or the network name you had provided) and click Edit.

5. In the Edit WLAN dialog box that opens up, set the Mode as Ad-hoc. Make sure the Connect Automatically checkbox is checked and in the IPv4 Settings tab, and Method is set to Shared to other computers. Now click Apply.

Your network is ready!!! Congrats!!! But thats only 50 percent of the hurdle complete. You might have reached this far several times using other tutorials and how tos available on the net. Lets proceed through to get the configuration details for the client pc/notebook/smart phone.

6. Open a terminal(for eg. by pressing Alt+F2 then typing xterm and pressing enter). In the terminal type ifconfig and press enter. Scroll down tothe place where wlan0 is written. Beside that, in the second line you will see three things viz. inet addr, Bcast and Mask. Note these things somewhere safely. In my case inet addr is 10.42.43.1 and Mask is 255.255.255.0. No need to note Bcast.

7. Use the following manual configuration details for the client system:

IPv4 Addr: 10.42.43.2(for a yet another machine use 10.42.43.3 and so on...)
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
DNS Address1: 208.67.222.222
DNS Address2: 208.67.220.220

After doing all this above you may notice that the client computer connects to net successfully but the host computer isn't able to access any website. Thats because the network manager blanks the DNS records set in /etc/resolv.conf

To solve this, type

sudo gedit /etc/resolv.conf

in any terminal and there append

nameserver 208.67.220.220
nameserver 208.67.222.222

and save the file. Afterwards you will be able to surf the web on gateway computer as well, normally.

You may notice that the network manager blanks out /etc/resolv.conf every now and then and you've to manually edit it and add nameservers. This is a very common problem faced by GNOME users. To get rid of this just type the following command in terminal and press enter.

chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

Now I am going to explain how did I connect my P1i to this network to use the broadband internet.

1. Turn on Wireless LAN 

2. Touch Scan for scanning for new networks You will see the newly created network WLAN listed there with a lock icon.

3. Now go to Internet Accounts by tapping More in the WLAN page and tapping Internet Accounts.

4. There tap More>New account>WLAN

5. Fill in the details as shown in the screenshot and create the connection.

6. Now in the Internet Accounts tab highlight WLAN and tap Edit, then tap More>TCP/IP>IP Config and fill in the details as shown in the screenshot. Similarly fill in the details for the DNS address. Press Done and come back to Wireless LAN. There scan for networks. You will notice a yellow star beside th network name WLAN. Hit the Connect button after highlighting WLAN.

7. Cheers!!! You are now connected to the internet. Open web browser and test your connectivity and enjoy.

ACID3 Browser Test

You browse the web. There are several browsers to choose from. Everyone has his/her own taste. I like Opera. Someone likes FireFox. Someone else loves the shiny new Google Chrome. Someone sitting elsewhere likes sticking with the good old IE. The availability of myriads of browsers make it difficult for the web developers to code sites because different browsers differ at some part or the another of standards support. So, the geeks, the leaders of the web technology decided to unify web standards and Web Standards Project was born. They worked and designed tests for the browsers to measure the extent of standards supported. ACID3 is the latest in the series. Click the link to benchmark your browser. Following are the scores of some top browsers tested by me on my PC and phone.

Desktop Browsers

Opera 9.63 - 85/100
IE6 - 13/100
Firefox 3.0.0.5 - 71/100
Opera Kestrel Beta2 - 100/100
Opera WinGogi - 99/100

Mobile Browsers

Opera 8.65 on P1i - 38/100
Opera Mobile 9.50 beta2 fingertouch - 73/100
Ozone - 93/100

I'm attaching some screenshots at the end of this blog post.
By the way, Opera have released a specially designed browser codenamed WinGogi that they claim, passes ACID3 by 100/100. It can be downloaded here . I tested on my PC, but it scored 99/100. May be, due to some connection blues. They claim WinGogi to be the first browser that passed ACID3 by 100/100. Source is here. On the other hand Apple claims that WebKit is the first browser engine to pass ACID3 by 100/100. Source is here. lol Whatever... By the way, Opera 10 Kestrel Beta 2 on my PC reached 100/100.

Ok, here are the screenshots.

Ozone on P1i

Opera Mobile 8.65 on P1i

Opera 10 Kestrel

Opera WinGogi

Firefox 3.0.0.5

IE6

Opera 9.63

P1i - Opera Mobile 9.50 - SMS glitch

After the release of Opera Mobile 9.50 beta 2 Fingertouch, I've been using it a lot on my P1i for browsing for hours. I notice a strange behaviour in my P1i when I've browsed the web for long through it. My phone doesn't notify me of any SMS sent to me. Neither with the tone, nor with the icon in status bar. When I restart the phone, the new SMS is displayed. I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't turned my phone off one night before going to bed when I was too tired. In the morning when I booted the phone back I got two SMSes that were sent to me three days ago. lol! I generally didn't use to turn the phone off for weeks. Whenever necessary I used to set it in flight mode. But now I do that every night before going to bed.
Well, a probable reason I guess is that the new Opera Mobile is a RAM hog, and when the RAM goes too low while web browsing, the phone shuts down the SMS client process that listens for SMSes, in order to free up some RAM. Whatever may be the exact reason, it should be fixed by Opera.

Opera Mobile Finfertouch for UIQ3

On 6th of this month Opera released the second beta of Opera Mobile9.50 for us UIQ users!!! Contrary to the popular feeling that UIQ is dead and Opera too will ditch it. The new beta is great! I felt some improvement in stability issues and speed in loading large pages. They also changed the logo. Earlier it looked like the power key!! And the best thing of the new beta is the new Fingertouch technology. According to Opera's official blog:

Today we introduce Opera Fingertouch, a technology designed to make interacting with the Web easier and simpler on touch-based devices. Opera Fingertouch provides visual feedback when you hit a Web link, and assists you when you come across multiple links or other selectable elements in close proximity to one another.

Here's a video released by Opera officially about the new jargon:


I tried capturing the screenshot os fingertouch in action on my P1i but it didn't work. The screen capture apps weren't able to capture the display area of the browser. Only the address bar came. I tried two different apps TOSC(the Open Screen Capture) and CS(Capture Screen), but same result. I'm attaching a screenshot anyways.

YouTube/FLV and Padissimo on P1i

The latest Core Player 1.30 has built in support for streaming youtube videos! And, you can even play FLV videos stored on your memory stick too! Yeah!!! Go get it from imserba forums. For streaming YouTube videos smoothly you need at least 3G or WLAN to be working really fast.

Another cool app has been released by CPS(CellPhoneSoft) for P1i and the like(M600). Ever missed the D-Pad on your P1i? Padissimo fills that void!!! Download and install it from here. Launch it, then just long press 0 to hide the screen d-pad. Now use 2, 4, 6, 8 and 5 keys as d-pad anywhere in menu or web browser. To disable d-pad(especially recommended when you are on opera mini), just long press backspace key.
Enjoy!

Ozone for UIQ3

And finally, what I was waiting for my P1i is out!!! Yes, the bestestestest mobile web browser for the UIQ3 platform is out!! It is called Ozone and can be downloaded from their site http://www.o3mobi.com/
Before Ozone, we the forgotten UIQ users had only 3 native options apart from the java based rocker Opera Mini viz. the built in Opera 8.65, @Web and Opera Mobile 9.5 beta. The 1st one is too crappy and renders pages weirdly. Especially I hate the automatic link highlighting and text highlighting with a contrasting colour on some themes in Opera 8.65. Then came @Web, based on Apple Webkit engine promising big things. But, it fell like a dead monkey. It is pretty medicore at UI, features, user friendliness and more. Then the biggest fuss maker for WM phones, landed to UIQ - Opera Mobile 9.50. But, it sucks at speed and stability. And it is pretty heavy on resources. I remember once while surfing through Opera Mobile I had opened heavy sites on four tabs and it had eaten up the whole 75MB free RAM of my phone. I got a call but could not receive it because of no RAM!!! I had to take out battery to reset. Damn you Opera!!!!
And finally today I read about Ozone on UIQblog.com. Downloaded and installed it right away. The peculiar thing is that it identifies itself as Apple iPhone's user agent. So, I directly opened Orkut on it to experience the iPhone version of Orkut on it. And guess what? It rocks!!! It rules!!! Although P1 has a resolution of 240*320 and iPhone has a hefty VGA screen, but Orkut looked pretty on P1. I had to scroll horizontally, but it was a nice experience. Google guys have designed Orkut for iPhone pretty intuitively and aesthetically appealing and later sprinkled decent user friendliness on it.
Earlier I was jealous of Nokia fanboys having better browser(Safari) on their Symbian 9 series phones. But now Ozone comes to the rescue and it beats Safari as well as Opera Mobile hands down!
My verdict on Ozone: The best mobile browser ever made for Symbian OS.
Plusses: very stable, fast, intuitive, user friendly, fast page rendering, low on resources, free
Cons: Its an alpha version!, seems to fail to load Orkut's desktop version

Current UIQ browser scores out of 100(My opinion)
1. Opera Mini 4.2 - 99
2. Opera Mini Mod 2.06 - 95
3. Opera Mini Official 3.2 - 94
4. Opera Mini Mod 3.x - 93
5. Ozone 0.9 - 87(Native UIQ app)
6. Opera Mobile 9.50 - 81(Native UIQ app)
7. @Web 2.0 - 65(Native UIQ app)
8. Opera Mobile 8.65 - 54(Built in)
9. Tea Shark - less than 40(failed)
10. UCWeb - less than 30(failed)

Please note: This is my opinion based on the browsing experience on my favourite sites on my P1i that I use regularly. It doesn't have any connection with any other individual, company, site, platform, phone. And the opinion can differ user wise. Please don't flame me with comments if your opinion differs. You stay happy with your opinion and me with mine :)