grahamsz

I'm pleased to announce a very quick, hacked together proxy server approach which should let you browse the web (just the web, not the whole internet) from your PC via your tethered device.

I've tested on Windows & Linux and there's no reason (that I can see) that it wont work from a mac.

However, this is highly experimental and somewhat tricky to set up. It's also my first ever Android app and was built from scratch in the last few hours.


http://graha.ms/androidproxy

Let me know how you get on! I'd love to see how it performs on a 3g network.

ScoobyDooby

Hi,

I can't get the app to install on my G1, all I get is "application install unsuccessful". No other error messages. I have enabled the option to install non marketplace apps.

Any thoughts?

grahamsz

My phone made me save it to the SD card and then install it from there. It doesn't do anything very unusual, perhaps you need the USB Debugging thing turned on too.

Someone over on t-mobile forums got it to work but said it was still pretty slow, even on 3g

Manacit

I've tried to get this working - but I don't seem to be able to. When I plug my phone in there is no "proxy" application, I've tried reinstalling it twice and nothing shows up, there's nothing in the application manager either. No errors or anything when installing but I can't find anything.

on another note, if nothing shows up, will this have a negative affect on my phone? Just wanna make sure because I don't see a way to un install it.

Last edited by Manacit; 11-01-2008 at 07:26 PM.

ScoobyDooby

Yeah, I'm a tad concerned about that too. It appears that it may have overwritten an existing file (or so it warned me upon installation), so I'm curious what exactly it did...

grahamsz

Hmm, the impression i have is that the application is entirely self contained. There's nothing unusual about the way the app is designed. It's really quite a simple app that doesn't do anything it's not supposed to do.

Manacit

Yeah, I got the warning too... This is starting to worry me a bit. OP: any chance you can tell us how to remove this, or at least release the source?

grahamsz

Sure, here's the source:

http://graha.ms/androidproxy/proxysrc.tar.gz

In testing i've loaded and unloaded it dozens of times and never seen any such warning - does anyone have the exact text?

atek3

Hey Graham, I'm connected to the forum right now on my laptop through my G1. I must say, impressive work on short notice. As far as speeds, it's very very rapid in throughput, but the latency is bad... i'm getting approximately a ping of 300 ms.

Also, not every webpage works, for example, when I try going to "facebook.com" it takes me to:
http://ww23.rr.com/index.php?origURL=http://www.facebook.comhttp//facebook.com/

"Sorry, we couldn't find www.facebook.comhttp"

Right now t-mo is down so I'm using a wifi connection (phone) with the wifi disabled on my laptop.

jj224

Haven't gotten my phone yet, TMO says it's in the mail. Really Glad to See Somebody is working on this problem. Thanks

Manacit

I would like to sincerely apologize for suspecting you - after I upgraded my phone to RC29 and re downloaded the app, it worked like a charm aland didn't tell me it was going to overwrite android system like it did.

Edit: I'm posting this from my phone tethered to my laptop - it works, but it is _really_ slow (on EDGE). Thanks for this though, in a pinch it would work Sorry again for suspecting you.

Last edited by Manacit; 11-01-2008 at 11:14 PM.

jj224

what kind of speeds are you getting?

grahamsz

No worries, although its good to know i didnt break your phone.

i get decent speeds on wifi (2mbit or so) but on edge it seems to be several times slower than it should be. my gut feeling is that the debug bridge is only forwarding 1 connection at a time, then it has to wait for that page component to come back before getting the next image.

if i get time tomorrow then ill try a straight port bounce and use ssh to tunnel my traffic, that should put less stress on the phone but will need people to have a home server to connect to

grahamsz

I think the overhead of creating connections is very high. I also got good throughput on my home wifi but also noticed the latency. I've got a few ideas on how to improve it, but it's most likely going to involve either software on the PC that collects the different requests and forwards them through a single connection to the android, or to simply provide a conduit for some kind of vpn software.

The latter is probably easier, but it'll require that you have some server to connect to on the other end

grahamsz

Thanks!

Right now it doesn't appear to support https which i think does cause issues for facebook.

How did you measure the latency? typical ping tools won't work because they wont run the ICMP packets through the proxy. It'd be nice if we had lower level network access to the device because they we might be able to build a NAT implementation, as it stands the best it can do is relay traffic.

I do concur that the latency is awful. I need to do more digging and find out where that bottleneck is. I *think* it's a limitation of the android debug bridge but we can likely work around it somehow!

Minigig

I used it in southern san diego with 3g and I get 1.5 megabits down and 300 kilobits up. on some sites I have to refresh a few times for it to come up right but a connection is made it works great.

atek3

i used speedtest.net

I got 1500kpbs down and 150 kpbs up which is good... but the latency as I said before, sucked

Manacit

you could try setting " network.http.max-connections-per-server " in firefox to 1

obijohn

grahamsz, you should also post about this on xda-developers forum (lots of exciting development going on there with the G1). There's a thread about working on a tethering app, and someone posted a link to your Proxy app. The link to the thread is http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=430038

grahamsz

Thanks!

jdaddin

I updated to the RC29 and am still getting the message about the application install was unsuccessful. Any clues?

grahamsz

I'm unfortunately still on RC19 and can't test this problem.

Someone on xda-developers was able to use the adb utility to actually install the proxy app. Try "adb install Proxy.apk" from a directory on your PC that has the proxy installer.

jdaddin

That did it! The adb app loaded it right up. I too am replying using my G1's connection. Thanks!

porear

Excellent work Graham! Thanks for the app.

I first tried it browsing my laptop with my phone connected to my home wifi and the page load speeds were impressive. Unfortunately when I subsequently tried turning off the wifi on the phone and went to Edge, the pages would not load at all. However, the browser would simply hang instead of going to an "unavailable" page.

I tried stopping and restarting both the adb forward and the proxy app on the phone after switching to Edge, but with the same results.

I am in the Houston area. Anyone else here had success with Edge tethering? Even a slim chance there is packet sniffing going on to find headers that the network could use to identify tethering and block?

porear

OK nix the silly sniffing hypothesis. I got connected via Edge, although its about as painful as visiting mom and pop on the holidays and their 56K.

I had restarted the laptop, so apparently just killing and restarting the adb.exe process was not good enough to reset the forwarding app on the PC side. Any insight into this, or a more direct method to truly shut down the adb forwarding daemon? Thanks

wizang

This method was the only way to successfully install for me. I am running rc29. When installing via the normal method I would get the system overwrite warning and then an unsuccessful installation... I seriously don't think anything went wrong, but I'll knock on wood anyway.

The connection is really uneven for me, going from pleasantly fast (considering), to gut wrenchingly slow. I'm unable to keep it stable enough to get a proper speedtest done before it times out. I'm on the Portland, Oregon 3G network.

This app is somewhat cumbersome at the moment, but its a great sign of things for the future! Thanks so much for you work on this, and any future development to come.

travisjb

First, thank you for building this app !

I too was unable to install the app directly on my production G1... have enabled USB, enabled 3rd party apps etc

So, I tried to install it by connecting the G1 via USB to my winxp machine and running command "adb install Proxy.apk" from directory with both adb and your proxy.apk... but it tells me that "error:device not found"

How do i get adb to 'find' the G1 ?

THANKS !

l3wis

I Don't get this part.

Move to the directory that has the adb utility, using inside the Sdk Tools folder and run Windows: adb forward tcp:8080 localabstract:Proxy
Linux/Mac: ./adb forward tcp:8080 localabstract:Proxy


When i run the adb application it exits right away..

digitalman2112

Graham,

First, thanks for building this - what a great way to use the existing adb.


Second, I have it installed and running and like others have noticed a need to hit refresh a few times on large pages. After reviewing the source, I'm wondering if the ProxyThread timeout threshold is being reached (looks like 20 seconds which is pretty short for 3G / EDGE).

This should be easy enough to test, my suggestion would be to allow the user to set the timeout when they start the service - this would allow a custom threshold that might be appropriate given wifi testing, 3G service or EDGE service.

Anyway, just a theory, I'm happy to test & provide results if you make such a modification.

Thanks again,
Ian

Kesey

Works great on the Mac. Seems like I'm getting 3G, but didn't run any speed tests. Nice work.

l3wis

How do you run the adb application??

Unitas

First I'd like to say excellent work on this app. This functionality is exactly what I need from this phone.

But

It's not working for me.

I loaded the drivers for the dream, set the G1 to debug mode.

The proxy app installed fine. (*There's in installer app in the Market that's good for this. Just save the app (proxy) file to the root directory of the G1 in windows and run the installer app on the G1. It should find the file immediately.*) I ran the proxy app on the G1.

I started the daemon at the command line with the appropriate settings, got the notification that the daemon was started successfully.

I set Firefox to the proper proxy settings.

I open a tab, even restarted Firefox, and there's no connection. It's a no go. Thanks for the work you've already put into it, any help would be appreciated. I've quadruple-checked my settings but perhaps there's some silly setting that's I'm missing.

Thanks in advance!

P.S. for those wondering how you shut down adb.exe on your laptops, ya gotta go into the task manager-->processes to kill it.

l3wis

...............

Last edited by l3wis; 01-07-2009 at 01:38 AM.

atek3

go to start-> run...
type cmd
hit enter
then type
cd\
then type
cd (directory you put it in)
then type
adb forward tcp:8080 localabstract:Proxy

l3wis

Works but i can't connect i this this error

Proxy Server Refused Connection

Firefox is configured to use a proxy server that is refusing connections.

The browser is configured to use a proxy server, but the proxy refused a connection.

* Is the browser's proxy configuration correct? Check the settings and try again.
* Does the proxy service allow connections from this network?
* Still having trouble? Consult your network administrator or Internet provider for assistance.

Unitas

Just wanted to update, I got it working, although I'm not exactly sure what I did differently this time than last time.

If I can figure out what kept me from connecting before I'll be sure to post it. Thanks again for this app. Even with the limited capability, any internet access at all is better than zero.

l3wis

Okay i got it 2 work

atek3

it seems really picky about the order you do stuff. Here's what I do.

1) turn phone to USB debugging mode
2) plug into USB
3) click "don't mount"
4) turn on proxy app
5) run adb.exe
6) adjust proxy settings in Chrome
7) surf internets

atek3

parrothd

Works great, however needs https support.. (any site using https doesn't load, mail.yahoo.com, loging.facebook.com, etc, etc)

Last edited by parrothd; 11-05-2008 at 11:57 AM.

DougN

As many on the blog lists are stating, I am also unable to get past the installation of the Proxy.apk on my new G1 phone. I enabled USB debugging and Allow Unknown Sources. It downloads, is visible, but returns a message 'Application Install Unsuccessful' and does not show as an app. I even used the terminal program and issued the command 'adb install Proxy.apk' after cd-ing to the downloads directory where the file is listed.

Kernel is 2.6.25-01843-gfea26b0
android-build@apa27 #6

Build number:
kila-user 1.0 TC4-RC28 114235 ota-rel-keys,release-keys

Can you check your version and let me know what I might need to do to get this running?

Doug.

grahamsz

I just got the googlephone update and it doesn't work for me. I'll try to investigate this tonight.

dschach

First, thanks for writing this app and sharing it.

I have RC29 and the app installed for me using the instructions at http://graha.ms/androidproxy/. However, I am unable to browse with IE7. The browseris set to use localhost and port 8080 but no connection. Has anyone got it working on IE?

I think there is a typo on your instruction page. It says

"It looks like the latest google update have stopped by application installing. It seems to be unrelated to what the application actually does and rather something amiss with the installer. If you download the proxy application to your PC, you can install it using the adb tool below
adb install Proxy.apk"Shouldn't the install command beadb install Proxy.zip

grahamsz

I just launched a new version of my proxy app - now called Tetherbot

http://graha.ms/androidproxy/

I've switched to Socks because it seems to be a bit more flexible than http and now surfing the web is much more tolerable on EDGE. It also means that https now works and it should work with quite a few other applications as long as they support socks proxies.

I also added a straight port bouncer which makes it really easy to open an ssh tunnel to a linux machine somewhere and route your traffic through that.

Feedback is very welcome!

Graham

l3wis

Wooohooo!!!! Cant get to the page we get a time out networks..

grahamsz

First make sure you clicked on the Start Socks button on the application, it should give you a brief message on screen letting you know the service started.

Then try the following from a dos window

telnet localhost 1080

It should connect and then disconnect you again if you hit return.

Finally make sure your phone has internet access - try bringing up your browser. I spent ages beating my head against the wall before realizing t-mobile were down.

l3wis

NOO i meant we cant access http://graha.ms/androidproxy/

grahamsz

Hmmm - i think the internet might be broken. I can get to that site, but can't reach any of the servers on the east coast that i maintain. Hopefully it'll be accessible again soon.

l3wis

Ummm weird.. I'll just try tomorrow cause im looking damn forward for this new app

l3wis

Okay so I'm working with sockets. I don't get any error such as Proxy Server Refused or nothing like that. But when open a page all it opens is a blank page no content at all. Am i doing something wrong?

Last edited by l3wis; 11-06-2008 at 03:25 AM.

grahamsz

So if i'm reading that correctly the basic tunnel worked and you were able to connect through to another socket, but you can't get the socks server to work in firefox?

Try unplugging your phone and seeing if that causes firefox to report a connection issue - it certainly should. When you replug it, you'll need to rerun both the adb commands.

Other than that, i'm not totally sure - it just seems to work here. You might want to make sure that you are on Socks v5 in your firefox settings.