3g Modem in Parallels providing net access to OS X... Possible or not?

P

pbutterworth

Member
Hi,

Slightly strange question here.

I'm considering signing up to T-Mobile's Web'n'walk service wihch in the UK enables you to use a 3G mobile as a bluetooth modem, and includes 3gig of data a month.

Am having very little success working out whether these phones work with OS X (in particular the Sony Ericsson M6000i except by using the overpriced NovaMedia Launcg2Net software).

So what I'm asking is... if I cant get it to connect to OS X as a modem, is there a way to connect it to my XP session running in parallels, and have that act as a network bridge to OS X?

I realise it's a backwards way of doing it, and hopefully it wont be necessary, but just in case!

Thanks

Pauk
 
Yes you can do it.

Connect the phone through bluetooth to Windows. You'll need to install "Windows drivers for OSX" out of a boot-camp package. There are directions here on the forum for finding them.

The VM will need "bridged networking" with internet connection sharing enabled on the modem connection.

The host will need to be "connected" to a network, so create a wireless network with a long random wep password so that nobody can connect to it.

I have been doing this with my HTC blue angel for the past few days. I was unable to get it working prior to build 3186.
 
Thanks for the responses. I agree that Roos barkman's stuff may work, but I cant find anyone who has actually succeeded yet.

The parallels solution is a backup, but i'm glad it can be done.

cheers

Paul
 
I've been doing this for some time, using a Verizon XV6700- a Windows Mobile smartphone which has no Mac support via USB. Bluetooth can work, but is much slower than the maximum speed of an EVDO internet connection. Parallels is using a Boot Camp partition.
The process I use is as follows:

1. Launch Parallels, set to "host only networking"
2. Start XP
3. Be sure phone is selected in USB connections.

Then it's a bit more complicated. I've configured a Mac network location that only uses Parallels Host-Guest. The IP address is assigned manually, using 192.168.0.x, router of 192.168.0.1, with a DNS assigned manually.

In XP, you then establish your internet connection however you do that for your system. After the connection is made (you can verify by opening a browser in XP), you need to enable Internet Connection Sharing for the cell modem internet connection. This is found under Properties/Advanced/"Allow other network users to connect through this computer's internet connection." Then click OK. After a brief delay, your internet connection in Mac OS X should be working through Parallels and your 3g modem.

I'm not sure if the manual address in Mac OS X is necessary, but I found it to be much more reliable doing so. Ultimately, however, I've come to find just booting into XP is much quicker for internet access on the go.
 
Yes I guess most of the time when mobile I could just use the XP partition, but it is useful to know that I can access the net via OS X should I need to.

My email is in XP, so thats the main thing.

Looks like I will get the phone then!
Cheers

Paul
 
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