How can I route hotspot traffic through my phones VPN?

October 1, 2012 5:54 PM

How can I route hotspot traffic through my Android phone's VPN?

I have the galaxy nexus, rooted and with the stock Ice Cream Sandwich ROM. I really don't want to install a custom ROM at this point if I can avoid it.

Currently hotspot traffic (when the phone becomes a wireless access point for other devices) does not travel across the VPN. I have a working OpenVPN and a PPTP VPN that I can use, if either will work better. Preferably the fix would be VPN agnostic.

I'm thinking/hoping I can configure iptables to route the traffic properly, but I never really learned more than how to block or open ports and don't really understand what I'm doing in this arena.

Is this something that will work? Why, exactly, if you want to take the time to explain it to me? And will it fix traffic over both VPNs, or just OpenVPN? If not, what is a better way?

Bonus: I believe I'll have to install iptables. This is one guide I found. I'd be interested in actually compiling it for the device myself, if that's not too much of a recipe for disaster. Unfortunately I really don't have time to do too much actual research and head banging, as I'm way too busy with other stuff right now in my life. So a walkthrough would be welcome. This is pretty much the opposite of me reading TFM, but really. It would be nice.

posted by jsturgill to computers & internet (4 answers total)

Are you seeing no traffic leaving the phone via cellular data, or unencrypted traffic?
posted by zippy at 7:20 PM on October 1, 2012

Are you seeing no traffic leaving the phone via cellular data, or unencrypted traffic?


I just tested this out (also on a Galaxy Nexus), because I always thought I could VPN via the hotspot. Nope. Hotspot traffic just went out the regular cell connection, even after Android giving me a scary "this VPN app will intercept all your network traffic!" message.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 7:32 PM on October 1, 2012

Traffic from the phone itself, while it's operating as a hotspot, goes through the VPN.

Traffic from clients goes into a blackhole to nowhere. No internet access via the hotspot as long as the VPN is active.
posted by jsturgill at 7:56 PM on October 1, 2012

Just to be extra super clear, it's the phone that is connecting to the VPN, not the hotspot users.
posted by jsturgill at 7:59 PM on October 1, 2012