Bluetooth Connection (tethering) Instability - Nexus 6P Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

My previous phone was a Moto X 2014. I'm evaluating the 6P as an upgrade, and am close to keeping it, save for bluetooth problems.
I am on a grandfathered AT&T Unlimited Data plan, However, technically, te plan does not include tethering, and there is no way to add it to the plan even if I wanted to. I don't use a lot of tethered data, but have sporadic need for it (tethering to my GFs Moto X 2014 which has no data plan). My Moto X 2014 had no problem tethering, but 6P has the Authorization Flag set, and I can't get past it.
I was going to unlock and modify build.prop, but now I would lose Android Pay (which I am not willing to do. But, since my tethering needs are low, I was willing to accept the slow speeds of Bluetooth Tethering, which works without authorization.
However, herein lies the problem. When connecting the two phones (6P and Moto X 2014) by Bluetooth, the Bluetooth connection is VERY unstable. Sometimes, it takes MANY tries to make the connection (with the phones very close to each other), and often, even after making a Bluetooth connection, it disconnects on its own in 30 min. or less.
I'm close to returning the phone over this. I LOVE it otherwise, but I'm unwilling to give up the small amount of tethering that I need (even if I can only get it at slow Bluetooth speeds.
Any ideas on an alternate method (that won't break Android Pay, or a way to make the Bluetooth connection more stable?

Related

USB Tethering with OS X

Has anyone managed to get USB Tethering working reliably with OS X in a way that _doesn't_ require PDANet which is horribly unstable (disconnects every 10 minutes or so).
I've got 3G tethering working fine (ala this thread) but wanted to use wireless tethering so that I can piggyback my desktop (which doesn't have a wifi card) off my SGT.
3G is _probably_ ok, but 1GB costs me NZ$20 (about US$15) so I'd rather avoid chewing through it (Yes, our telecoms data charges are obscene)
Plus WiFi is much quicker as the reception in the office is a bit average.

bluetooth tether issue

Why do some users achieve tether and others don't especially with the same tablet and phone. I had a theory and tested it and was right. For those that have managed to get as far as I did with connecting to your phone and having both Bluetooth icons but not be able to connect here is why. Your on wifi it only tethers on 3g I don't have 4 g by me so can't comment if it will work or not. I tried on wifi and the load bar would move an inch and stop then disconnected from wifi and TA DA it achieved tether. Why I have no idea but it works as a matter of fact I am posting this on my xoom connected to my bionic.
I've been using Bluetooth Tethering extensively. It works really well, but is a little temperamental.
On my phone (HTC Magic with a Gingerbread ROM), the *first* time I connect the Xoom, tethering appears to work but doesn't. So, on first connection, I always disconnect, then reconnect, and then I'm good for the rest of the day. This is most likely a bug in my ROM's Bluetooth implementation, but might be more widespread and might be what's making you think Bluetooth tethering just doesn't work at all.
Also, occasionally, and for no apparent reason, the bluetooth stack on the Xoom will go completely non-functional. All I have to do is disable bluetooth, re-enable it, and re-tether to the phone. Only a few seconds, and I'm back in business.
While a perfect Bluetooth tethering solution would be really nice, these two issues are minor enough that I'm considering not upgrading my now ancient phone until the 3 year contract is up.

[Q] Tethering without a carrier?

Hey, I was wondering is it possible to tether without a carrier. I have a phone already rooting and giving out WiFi on a carrier but I am due for an upgrade. So I would use the old phone as a WiFi dummy, nothing else, while the new phone and my nexus 7 will connect to it. Is it possible? Thanks.
No way that I know to allow it to act as a WiFi repeater. Now, you can connect it to your WiFi and USB tether or Bluetooth tether as an alternative.
SickNastyDrake said:
Hey, I was wondering is it possible to tether without a carrier. I have a phone already rooting and giving out WiFi on a carrier but I am due for an upgrade. So I would use the old phone as a WiFi dummy, nothing else, while the new phone and my nexus 7 will connect to it. Is it possible? Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure I follow the question entirely.
How will the old phone be able to provide data if it's no longer associated with a data plan? The new phone will have the data plan after you upgrade. The old phone will be able to receive wifi, but not cellular data. In that sense as a spare wifi only device, but it won't be passing any cellular data to other devices.
If you are trying to get out of paying for data, you could switch to a regular "feature" phone, and only get wifi on all your devices, but they won't receive cellular data, so they can't tether anything for you. This is the route I went. I run a Windows phone as a no-data phone (not supposed to), an android phone as wifi only, and the nexus 7 as wifi only (though I add the 3g plan to the nexus on a month to month basis).
Now if you're trying to set the old phone up as a wifi repeater, I'm not sure if it could do that or not. It would depend on the hardware involved, but it's unlikely. Even if you did pull it off, what's the point? It's unlikely that it would work well.

Vpn then enable hotspot means att can't see I'm tethered and can't complain?

Anyone agree that its safe to assume if I setup my own private vpn at home I can vpn through that as an encrypted session which will stop att from snooping my data, then in turn if I vpn first then run a hotspot they'd be none the wiser?
Screwbal said:
Anyone agree that its safe to assume if I setup my own private vpn at home I can vpn through that as an encrypted session which will stop att from snooping my data, then in turn if I vpn first then run a hotspot they'd be none the wiser?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would say a resounding NO. They don't care if your data is encrypted or not, VPN will do absolutely nothing to mask the amount of packet data your device is sending/receiving. You most likely don't have unlimited data (if you did before) and will probably be charged per gigabyte if you go over your monthly allowance.
From my understanding, carriers really cant stop you from tethering without a "tethering plan" once your device is rooted. I believe that's why most carriers got rid of unlimited data and moved to the tiered data plans. If you happen to somehow still have unlimited data and generate a lot of bandwidth, once they realize that your using an absurd amount of data without a tethering plan, they will hit you hard with overage charges. I think Verizon charges per kilobyte, not sure about AT&T.
I still have unlimited LTE data with AT&T but know if I hit 5GB in a month they throttle the hell out of me since I've hit it before. The reason I ask is if/when I'd ever use it then it would be more for a light connection like say if the GF wants to use the ipad in the car on a road trip. Or if I get some on call issue for work where I need a connection for my laptop on the go but not as a replacement for any large data transfers.
I just thought part of how the carriers tell that people are tethering would be say if you have an android phone and they start to notice traffic from your device to say Windows Update or the ITunes store and hence the VPN encryption if used day to day would mask any calls later that would be tethering related.
They can't tell if you're tethering plain and simple.
Your phone is sending and receiving the packets so thats all they see, if an app or your phone broadcasts those packets it doesn't matter as your phone is the connection point.
At the end of the day your phone is asking to go to youtube.com if it gives youtube to your iPad all you carrier see is that your phone wants youtube, not why.
The safest way to tether is to always use a VPN on the client that your tethered to your hotspot with. There are some great super cheap VPNs out there that have great bandwidth and good security.
Carriers can definitely tell if you're tethering - this isn't rocket science when you're using packet capturing tools. If you're constantly going to websites with a desktop browser they can see from the browser stats that it's a desktop vs mobile.
The other method is perhaps capturing the mac address off the packet isn't from a mobile-branded device. Since the phone hotspot is NAT'ing all the traffic from your own little private lan to the outside public addressing it *should* only contain the phone's IP and MAC, but depending on the packets it could also contain information from a device within the private lan (mac addresses). I have never tested this but in theory it's possible.
It's one thing to tether a tablet or another phone, most likely seems you would probably not get caught doing that.. but still possible. Tethering your desktop/laptop.. yea you'll get caught.
Like I said, use a VPN and you most likely won't be caught.
I think no need to. ived been tethering since 2010 using rooted phone(or non rooted using foxfi) and my 3gb data plan limit is the same. no notice from att that they detected that I am tethering and sometimes I over 2gb so I pay extra 20 bucks though
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using xda premium
Yes so I have changed cell phones from an LG K425 piece of garbage to a Motorola Razer 2 phone but now I am getting notices that I have gone over my 10 gigs a month hot spot which I haven't EVER gotten in the past almost 2 years or more of service. Guessing the Razer 2 has somehow reported this usage whereas the old LG didn't? Any suggestions or comments about what to do about this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Painful Tether/Hotspot speed

Ive been trying to use tethering to my laptop and its to the point of unusable, im getting 56k speedsi if that while a speed test from my phone im getting 15-30 down and 2-10 up.
I'm using wifi hotspot ive tried both 2.4 ghz and 5 ghz. I have also tried the USB Tether but my windows 10 doesnt like it for some reason. Im on verizon with a shared Data plan that includes the Hotspot feature. anyone have any ideas
Thanks
No idea, but I've tethered to a Windows 7 laptop. Performance was good, so I never bothered to check the speed.
Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk
I am having same issue. I use T-mobile and my OnePlusOne never had this issue. I would go to gym and just turn on my hotspot and watch Netflix without issue in the past. With the MXPE, it's like being on 56k modem. Anyone else having this issue?
I tether almost everyday due to terrible speeds at work. I'm on Verizon unlimited and I do not experience any speed issues. I unlocked but I made no changes for tether as that worked out of the box
I tried Bluetooth tethering which works fine without any issue so it's not exactly a carrier issue. I also verify with t-mobile that they didn't turn of my hotspot feature by accident.
I have the same issue on TMO US. With my Nexus 5, I had fast, dependable tethering. Now with the MXPE my tethering is painfully slow and flaky. Not good at all when on the road.
I'm having the same issue. I just upgraded from a Droid MAXX that had fantastic tethering speeds, and now on my new MXPE it's like being on dialup. Has anyone come up with a solution? I've been loving the phone so far, but tethering is too important to me and I won't be able to keep the phone if I can't figure it out.
I've had this happen twice. A reboot fixed it both times.
I've had this happen more than twice... Hoping the devs can come up with a fix
Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk 2
boricuastock said:
I tether almost everyday due to terrible speeds at work. I'm on Verizon unlimited and I do not experience any speed issues. I unlocked but I made no changes for tether as that worked out of the box
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm on VZW ULDP and mine can be painfully slow at times as others have indicated. Usually a reboot will rectify it. But that's not really convenient. I have it set up to start tether automatically when I start my car (bluetooth connection activated via tasker) so I can automatically get traffic to work or home on my z ultra.
Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk
I had my first tethering session yesterday. I am on Verizon. A customer I was meeting with needed email access on his Surface Pro and there was no free WiFi where we met. I went in and setup a portable WiFi hotspot. We were both quite impressed with the speed. Keep in mind, this is the only time I have tried it but there were no issues.
hello i just got my moto x pure and i was trying to tether everything seems to be ok until i try use internet in my macbook and is not trasmitting data,same thing happened with nexus 6 i found that when lte it stops transfering data,this is so stupid this is an unlocked phone and it wont let me tether?????? wtf........im using simple mobile unlimited 4g LTE ,i was using an Asus ZenFone 2 and tether without issues,thanks.
This happens almost every time I use the hotspot. Rebooting usually fixes it - temporarily. I'm really hoping that marshmallow has better hotspot performance on the MXP
I get this issue... It's not exactly slow speeds, more like a spotty connection. I use Remote Desktop to do my work, which should still technically run smoothly (albeit slowly) on a 56k connection. I am connecting to a Windows NT server, so I am only using 16-bit graphics quality to reduce the strain on my bandwidth. We didn't even have anything that much faster than T1 at that time, so I can't imagine a Windows NT server running slowly on a modem connection. I noticed a couple things that were strange, so I think there may be settings on my phone causing it but I cannot be sure.
The connection fast when I test the tethering at home, but when I am out the connection constantly drops. I cannot even get a stable connection to my server to do any work. This is not when I am in the car moving from cell tower to cell tower, this is if I am at a place without WiFi, such as my dentist's office.
Chrome gets stuck at "Resolving host..." when trying to visit any websites. This would lead me to believe it is a DNS error, however this does not explain the connection instability with Remote Desktop, and using the address's IP address does not seem to fix this, strangely enough.
I am on a VZW grandfathered unlimited plan, using the TruPure ROM. I did not want to move away from stock, but I did it in an attempt to fix my tethering issues. So far nothing has worked.

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