No Internet access via WIFI hotspot

[npnicholson]

I've set up a WIFI hotspot on my phone (a Huawei P9 Plus running Android 7.0). Devices can connect to my phone fine with WIFI, but then they all report there is no Internet access. Internet works fine on my phone. I have a good 4G signal.

I've just been on the phone to technical services for an hour. They talked me through reentering APN details and reset my account but it hasn't helped, which doesn't surprise me.

What can I try next?

[BandOfBrothers]

Hi @npnicholson

Did they confirm specifically that tethering had been provisioned on your account  ?

Are you able to test your sim in another phone as a process of elimination to rule out the phone or sim card that maybe at issue. 

[npnicholson]

Apparently tethering is enabled on all accounts now.

[npnicholson]

New information...

I've just tried the same thing with my wife's phone which is also a Huawei P9 Plus running Android 7.0 and I get exactly the same behaviour. I tried to connect an old iPod to the WiFi hotspot on her phone. It connects but says there's no Internet.

When I look at the connection properties on the iPod I see it has been assigned an IP address and subnet mask, but there is no IP address in the router or DNS fields, which would explain why it can't find the Internet.

In contrast when I connect the iPod to our home WiFi the router and DNS fields are populated and both contain the local IP address of our router (192.168.0.1). The iPod has an IP address of 192.168.0.10 in this case.

So why does the phone hotspot not give the iPod the IP address of the router?

[npnicholson]

I've now tried connecting an Android tablet to by phone hotspot. Again, it connects to the phone fine but there's no Internet. In this case though the tablet seems to have all thre required IPV4 information including router and DNS IP address?

[Tash]

@npnicholson I appreciate you may have previously tried these steps, however are you experiencing issues with using your phone as a hotspot after following the steps provided on our device guide?

You may also find the information on our support page helpful with the issues you're experiencing.

Please let us know how you get on.

[npnicholson]

Hi

Devices have no problem connecting to my WiFi hotspot suggesting it's configured correctly according to the guide. After they have connected there is then no Internet access, despite Internet working on my phone.

Internet access with Bluetooth tethering doesn't work either when my phone is using mobile data, but if my phone is connected to my home WIFi then the bluetooth tethering works. This suggests the problem is to do with access to the Internet over the mobile data network for tethered devices.

[Jenny]

@npnicholson – I’m sorry you’re still having problems using your phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot.

I’ve got a few more settings for you to check - please go to:

1. Settings
2. More
3. Tethering and portable hotspot
4. Wi-Fi hotspot *(don’t turn it on yet)*
5. Go to ‘set up Wi-Fi hotspot'
6. Scroll down to the bottom of the new page
7. Make sure that the band is set as 2.4GHz
8. Keep scrolling down and check the maximum connections

You’ll then need to change this to the number of devices you want to connect to your hotspot. Please note that phones sometimes save/remember old connections, so even if it’s been six months since someone connected, this could be taking up a space in the connections total.

Let us know how you get on.

[npnicholson]

I've now experimented with connecting a Windows 10 tablet to my my phone hotspot and got more information on the problem. It seems DNS requests to the DNS server are being refused. Here is the output from ipconfig and nslookup run when connected to my phone hotspot:

IPCONFIG:

ipconfig /all
Windows IP Configuration

   Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : ASUS-Tablet
   Primary Dns Suffix  . . . . . . . :
   Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
   IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Wireless LAN adapter Local Area Connection* 5:

   Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft Wi-Fi Direct Virtual Adapter #3
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 42-16-7E-D8-B1-6B
   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Wireless LAN adapter WiFi:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : The Broadcom 802.11 Network Adapter provides wireless local area networking.
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 40-16-7E-D8-B1-6B
   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::103f:707e:d6ec:c07f%2(Preferred)
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.43.150(Preferred)
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 25 July 2017 13:26:18
   Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 25 July 2017 14:26:17
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.43.1
   DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.43.1
   DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 171972222
   DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-1D-51-25-15-40-16-7E-D8-B1-6B
   DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.43.1
   NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Tunnel adapter isatap.{2057E4AA-7461-4670-B082-CF7965DDC3B7}:

   Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft ISATAP Adapter
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

   Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

NSLOOKUP:

nslookup -type=soa -debug www.microsoft.com

------------
Got answer:
    HEADER:
 opcode = QUERY, id = 1, rcode = REFUSED
 header flags:  response, want recursion, recursion avail.
 questions = 1,  answers = 0,  authority records = 0,  additional = 0

    QUESTIONS:
 1.43.168.192.in-addr.arpa, type = PTR, class = IN

------------
Server:  UnKnown
Address:  192.168.43.1

------------
Got answer:
    HEADER:
 opcode = QUERY, id = 2, rcode = REFUSED
 header flags:  response, want recursion, recursion avail.
 questions = 1,  answers = 0,  authority records = 0,  additional = 0

    QUESTIONS:
 www.microsoft.com, type = SOA, class = IN

------------
------------
Got answer:
    HEADER:
 opcode = QUERY, id = 3, rcode = REFUSED
 header flags:  response, want recursion, recursion avail.
 questions = 1,  answers = 0,  authority records = 0,  additional = 0

    QUESTIONS:
 www.microsoft.com, type = SOA, class = IN

------------

[Gemma]

@npnicholson - Please change the DNS to the same s Google’s. The IP addresses are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

You’ll need to disable IPv6 on your Windows tablet. Once you’ve done this, please try again.