[[!meta title="Bluetooth tethering via PAN with Windows Mobile and Ubuntu"]]
[[!meta date="2010-11-08"]]
[[!meta author="rohieb"]]
[[!meta license="CC-BY-SA 3.0"]]
[[!img defaults size=x200]]

I was on the train today, needed some of the [Boost][0] manuals, and had
no internet connection. So I wanted to use my phone (an old HTC Prophet
with Windows Mobile 6.1) as a network access point to browse over
GPRS/EDGE. As I found out, it is fairly simple with [Blueman][1] and it
even provides [NetworkManager][2] integration, so all
NetworkManager-capable applications can be notified about the
connectivity.  Windows Mobile 6.1 allows tethering over a Bluetooth PAN
([Personal Area Network][3]); but there is another method called DUN
([Dial Up Networking][4]), which I will not describe here. So here is a
step-by-step tutorial what I did for my PAN approach, with a few
(german) screenshots, tested on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid:

*   Since my laptop was running on Ubuntu Lucid, there was already a
    recent Blueman version in the Ubuntu repos available. On older
    systems, you may want to add the [Blueman Launchpad PPA][5].

        $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:blueman/ppa  # only necessary on pre-lucid systems
        $ sudo aptitude update
        $ sudo aptitude install blueman

*   Note that this also removes possibly installed `gnome-bluetooth`
    packages since Blueman is an adequate replacement for the GNOME
    Bluetooth UI.

*   After the installation has finished, I had to enable the NMPANSupport
    plugin for NetworkManager 0.8 by right-clicking on the Blueman icon in
    the GNOME notification area and selecting “Plugins”. For older
    NetworkManager versions, there is also a plugin for NetworkManager
    0.7, called NMIntegration.

    <div class="gallery">
    [[!img blueman-menu.png alt="Blueman context menu"]]
    [[!img blueman-plugins.png alt="Blueman plugin page"]]
    </div>

*   Then I activated tethering on my phone (“Programs” → “Internet
    Sharing” on my Windows Mobile 6.1, but YMMV). Apparently this was
    neccesary with my model, because without tethering enabled I could not
    get a Bluetooth PAN connection in the next step.

    <div class="gallery">
    [[!img winmo-program-menu.png alt="Windows Mobile Program screen"]]
    [[!img winmo-connection-sharing.png alt="Windows Mobile Internet
         Sharing application"]]
    </div >

*   I paired the phone and my laptop via Bluetooth, and created a PAN
    (Personal Area Network) by connecting to the “Network Access Point”
    service on the phone. In Blueman, all you have to do after pairing is
    right-click on the device and select “Connect To: Network Access
    Point”. This creates a new network device `bnep0` which is
    automagically configured through NetworkManager (using [stateless
    address autoconfiguration][6]).

    <div class="gallery">
    [[!img blueman-pan.png size=x100 alt="Blueman: Context menu for device
      “Leia”, menu entry “Network Access Point” is selected"]]
    </div>

    (Yes, my phone is called [Leia][7]… I also have a yet another HTC
    Prophet for testing purposes, which is called [Luke][8] :-) )

*   However, in my setup, though I was able to ping certain IP adresses on
    the internet, DNS lookups timed out for some reason. It got better
    when I explicitly set an IP address for the Bluetooth PAN driver on my
    phone, and did the tethering process all over again.

    <div class="gallery">
    [[!img winmo-connections.png alt="Windows Mobile System Settings
      Screen, with item “Wi-Fi” selected"]]
    [[!img winmo-networkdrivers.png alt="Windows Mobile Network Driver
      settings screen, with menu item “Bluetooth PAN Driver” selected"]]
    [[!img winmo-bluetooth-ip.png alt="Windows Mobile Bluetooth PAN Driver
      settings screen"]]
    </div>

*   And off I went with mobile internet access. Woo-hoo! \o/

I may also add that the NetUsage plugin in Blueman is very reasonable to
use ;-) After activated, the network usage can be viewed by
right-clicking on the Blueman icon and selecting “Network Usage”.

[0]: http://www.boost.org/
[1]: https://launchpad.net/blueman
[2]: http://projects.gnome.org/NetworkManager/
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_area_network
[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_profile#Dial-up_Networking_Profile_.28DUN.29
[5]: https://launchpad.net/~blueman/+archive/ppa
[6]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-local%20address
[7]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leia_Skywalker
[8]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_Skywalker

[[!tag Blueman bluetooth mobile_internet_access network NetworkManager
    Ubuntu Ubuntu_Lucid Windows_Mobile]]