Ethernet adapters for the mobile devices including Tablets

seek10

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
After watching Scottie's video on his blog, I thought I will try it as it may reduce the hassle of sitting in front of computer all the time.
It may also reduce effort of downloading the long video's on to laptop and copy it to my android tablet( some how this doesn't work for my ipad) and watch it some where else. As he warns it is complicated and there is no one place that tells which Ethernet adapter product works for which tablet.

Here is my experience with it.

I have couple of tablets one ipad (with lightening plug with latest ios) and and Samsung Galaxy Tab A tablets (with USB type-C connector with android 8.1) .

When I looked for Ethernet Adapter for Samsung TAB A, I couldn't find any. So, I decided to buy this one for testing purpose. When I first connected

For multiple reason, I decided to look for dongle for Samsung Galaxy Tab A(SM-T380) and If it works and i will connect to other devices like mobile phones with appropriate adapters.
- Given that I couldn't find any internet ( or amazon.com) post for this exact model , I bought this belkin's model.
  • First when i connected to my galaxy tab A, i can see tablet is charging, but no internet. "Ethernet" menu item is grayed out. So I called Costco where I bought tablets and I have good experience with their customer support than the manufacture. They transferred it to Samsung support, who said that "Ethernet menu item should not be grayed out" and played with developers settings with no result. They asked me to contact belkin support for drivers or some thing, which I did. Belkin support said it is "Plug and Play device, so no driver". I asked Samsung support to give list of products they recommend and they have another company called J&J supporting the compatibility of their device, No body even answered from that company after long wait.
- Mean while searching on Samsung website, there are couple of products users tried and excite that it worked for Samsung Tab S3. I ordered one Cable connect dongle and tried with a adapter( USB 3.0 to USB TYPE-C). No Luck with this either even though the light on it glows.

I guess it may be due to it was disabled at Kernel level. Last choice is root it, but still not sure what needs to be done to activate ethernet though. So, I left it there.

- So, I ordered this dongle for ipad out of 2 products available on amazon( $24), though some reviewers complain that this unit is failing in weeks or months. So i bought it with a 4 year warranty for extra $3. Boom!. :cool2: It works even though there are little inconveniences.
For example,
- If you try to install a App, Nothing happens. It looks you can't install apps' on ethernet as the Apple accountsecurity check is not getting triggered. So you have to connect to Wi-Fi and apply the Apps and disconnect from wi-fi and use it.
- It pops a dialog box asking to enable Wi-Fi, when you connect to ethernet. you can disable it.
- If you have a habit of switching off modem in the night, you need to hard restart( power button) the ipad or you need soft restart. Even if you are not using long time with hibernation, you may have to restart for the ethernet connection.


Interestingly, this week, apple seems to recommend this belkin's dongle. I guess, they handled little ios hiccups I mentioned above. But it is $100 instead and lot of money for my $250 ipad.

Given that not many websites on the net on the subject, I thought we can document here.
 
For Samsung Galaxy Tab, this model is working too: Good Way: HE2230 USB 2.0 3-port Hub with Ethernet Adapter

It's not fantastic as you have to use it with a second adapter "USB Type A" -> "USB micro A" but it work.

I bought other ones which were not detected too but I don't have them under the hand right now. If we would be able to know the chipset used inside those adaptors we would know for sure which one are working. I think there's no more than 2 or 3 chipsets on the market.
 

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This is so nice of you Seek10 for reposting this video. I was thinking recently of returning to Ethernet as my main source of connection. I will definitely keep a tag on Scottie blog. More power to you Scottie nice job.
 
I have been using the white fast ethernet dongle with the micro-USB port as shown in Scottie's video for a couple of years now. I have an Asus tablet and it works great - my only complaint being that the connection is a bit loose, so if I pull on the tablet the dongle will come out, so have to watch for that. I have noticed that there's a slight size difference in many of the micro USB ports that come with different devices and because of that, they aren't always interchangeable.
 
For Samsung Galaxy Tab, this model is working too: Good Way: HE2230 USB 2.0 3-port Hub with Ethernet Adapter

It's not fantastic as you have to use it with a second adapter "USB Type A" -> "USB micro A" but it work.

I bought other ones which were not detected too but I don't have them under the hand right now. If we would be able to know the chipset used inside those adaptors we would know for sure which one are working. I think there's no more than 2 or 3 chipsets on the market.
Thank you for the link Ellipse.
 
I have been using the white fast ethernet dongle with the micro-USB port as shown in Scottie's video for a couple of years now. I have an Asus tablet and it works great - my only complaint being that the connection is a bit loose, so if I pull on the tablet the dongle will come out, so have to watch for that. I have noticed that there's a slight size difference in many of the micro USB ports that come with different devices and because of that, they aren't always interchangeable.
Until year back, the only thing I was using tablet for is kindle books and some other books I copied to it. When my 5 year old andorid tablet became too slow, I thought i will try ipad. But I realized I can't copy much on to it, so I ended up buying Galaxy Tab A(2017) to catch up all the video's piling up to be watched and i don't want to disconnect all the wires to laptop for moving it another place. Some how, in my mind I thought it was not possible to connect ethernet to the tablet. I guess, I don't follow much mobile tech news because of all the hype that comes with every release.
 
"Reverse Tethering" is another way to get a hard wired internet connection.

The idea is that you connect your tablet or phone to an internet-capable computer with the USB file transfer/charge cable which comes with the device. With the correct settings or app and some fiddling, you can get online that way. This has a number of advantages; as well as getting a web connection going, you can also charge your device and perform file transfers between the phone/tablet and your main computer all at the same time.

I have a desktop computer wired directly into a router, so there's no Wifi in the house, plus it's fast and reliable. But if you were using a laptop and were somewhere that a hard line connection wasn't available but you really needed to spend an hour or so on the web you could enable your laptop to connect over Wifi, but then set it a few meters away from yourself and run a cable to your phone/tablet, minimizing EM exposure. (While this would work, it also seems like a lot of trouble and wire tangle, especially if you happen to be in a public space with people milling around. I tend to just save my internet stuff for when I get home. But I can definitely see circumstances where this strategy could become useful. I was house-sitting one time and there was no Ethernet option, but Wifi aplenty.)

The problem with Reverse Tethering is that it can be tricky. Some devices don't support the feature out of the box while others do. Some users report that it's easy peasy to get Reverse Tethering going, while others must resort to complex device rooting and all manner of hacking around to get the feature operational.

To make matters worse, you can't even just look up your device to see if it is possible. Some carriers sell the same model of device, but set them up differently depending on their policies. In some cases there are software switches which, even on a rooted device, are not available to the user, and which can be used to permanently disable Reverse Tethering. (Presumably, to ensure that the user is locked into a pay-as-you-surf system they would benefit from.)

There are ways around this, but as Scottie says... It's Complicated.

A quick search on "How to Reverse Tether" will bring up dozens of pages with similar step by step instruction lists which will get this feature running if it hasn't been restricted on your device. If you happen to have a device where it works, then, cool! You now have a pretty great way to avoid Wifi.

And if you are tech-inclined at all, (not out of your depth in running ADB and rooting and all that stuff), then it should be possible to get pretty much any device going, (maybe even a Kindle Fire..?)

To that end, Scottie, you might want to check out this little tool: Genymobile/gnirehtet

I don't know if that will work on a Kindle Fire, but it might provide another angle of attack if you haven't already explored it.
 
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Thanks for the tip with gnirehtet. Since some time now I just plug my phone to my laptop, run
Code:
[user]~>/home/user/Downloads/gnirehtet-rust-linux64/gnirehtet run
and then I open the new forum posts each in a new tab in firefox on android. Then I activate each browser tab once so the twitter embeds etc get also loaded. Now I just cntrl+c on my laptop terminal to close gnirehtet, unplug the phone, and I'm ready to go with plenty to read offline on the phone.:thup:
 
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