Android WiFi tether Infrastructure Mode

With the addition of a little bit of elbow grease infrastructure mode on the HTC EVO is officially working. Over the coming days I hope to integrate it with android-wifi-tether and release the first and only application for any Android platform to support infrastructure mode tethering that doesn't cost $30 a month. This application serves as literally a step-in replacement for the Sprint Hotspot application with the complete functionality set, minus the cost. Support for WEP and WPA comes standard out of the box, as well as open functionality. Unlike the Sprint application this method will not impose an artificial limit on the number of users to connect to your hotspot.

How does it work?

While I'm not ready to release the source code, mostly due to the fact the small modifications I made will leak memory like a sieve, I will give you the general overview behind the hack. The Broadcom drivers expose some additional functionality that is related to the wireless access point mode of the device. Using a system call that has absolutely no documentation and the driver from the bravo kernel I was able to build up a call in user-space C that emulates the structures expected by the hidden Android system call.

Really that's all there is to it, throw some timing into the mix and just the right amount of luck and you have yourself a working wireless driver. From the kernel log:

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2 comments

Jun 08, 2010

benkalziqi said...

When do the unwashed masses get to use this? :)

Jul 11, 2010

Francesco said...

Hi, great job. I have 2 android phones. I was trying to offer a wifi connection from the Android Phone 1 to Android Phone 2. But i can't see the wifi network cause it is an ad hoc network or i don't know why. So i was thinking that if i can offer an infrastructure net all should be fine. Could you provide a link to allow the download of your preliminary application???
Thanks a lot!

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