N900 USB networking

This page describes how to enable Networking on the N900 via USB. The first part describes how to configure the Nokia N900 as a USB pluggable network device. The second part describes how to configure various platforms to use the Nokia tablet as a network device. This article is based loosely on the Maemo 4.x wiki for configuring USB networking.

You might want to use the tablet as a USB network device to log into your tablet remotely, or to transfer data from your tablet to another computer, in a situation where wifi or bluetooth are not an option. If you wish to connect your tablet to a Linux machine over TCP/IP, the PC connectivity section in the Maemo SDK documentation also contains useful information.

WARNING Currently there is a bug in the g_ether.ko driver of OS2008 (both 4.0.1 and 4.1) which prevents USB networking from working correctly with Windows machines (but not with Linux machines). See bug #3243 for details. The bug was introduced somewhere between kernels 2.6.18 and 2.6.21, so Maemo versions based on 2.6.18 kernels (e.g. OS2007 and earlier) will work.

N900 USB network configuration
There is a default USB network interface configuration on Nokia N900. In the file /etc/network/interfaces, you should see a section which looks like this: auto usb0 iface usb0 inet static address 192.168.2.15 netmask 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.2.14

With this default configuration, the N900 USB interface will have the IP address 192.168.2.15, and the remote end will have the IP address 192.168.2.14. By default, the USB network interface on the N900 is configured

Starting USB network mode
Plug one end of the USB cable on the host and the other end into the N900. The N900 will bring up the mode-selection dialog. Select 'PC Suite mode'.

Open X Terminal on the N900 and execute the following: sudo gainroot ifup usb0

If all went well, no errors will be displayed. The command 'ifconfig usb0' will give the following output: Nokia-N900-42-11:~# ifconfig usb0 usb0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr F2:50:8F:04:1D:8B inet addr:192.168.2.15 Bcast:192.168.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500  Metric:1 RX packets:1021 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:2003 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:86091 (84.0 KiB) TX bytes:2556598 (2.4 MiB)

Stopping USB network mode
Unplug the cable to stop the USB network mode.

Host USB Network Configuration
The Host configuration is detailed in Maemo 4.x USB Networking wiki. Please refer to it for details.