How to Use 3G Connection in Android Application Instead of Wi-Fi

How to use 3G Connection in Android Application instead of Wi-fi?

The T-Mobile 'My Account" app does this, if you are connected to a WiFi connection it tells you that their program will not work over WiFi and then asks the user if they want to turn off the WiFi connection. If you choose "No" then the application exits, if you choose "Yes" then the app turns off your WiFi connection and then continues with starting up.

I think this is a good model to follow, it will ensure that your app is not being ran over WiFi and allows the user to decide if they want to turn off WiFi or not. An improvement on this model would be to turn wifi back on when the user navigates away from your app.

I haven't tested the following code, but it looks like it should work (modified from here)

use the following permissions in your manifest

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_WIFI_STATE"></uses-permission>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.CHANGE_WIFI_STATE"></uses-permission>

and here is some actual code to turn wifi on/off

private WifiManager wifiManager;

@Override 
public void onCreate(Bundle icicle)
{
    ....................

    wifiManager = (WifiManager) this.getSystemService(Context.WIFI_SERVICE);

    if(wifiManager.isWifiEnabled())
    {
        wifiManager.setWifiEnabled(false);
    }
    else
    {
        wifiManager.setWifiEnabled(true);
    }
}

If you do not want to go down that route it looks like you might be able to tell the phone that you would prefer to use the mobile data network rather than the wifi network.

The Android ConnectivityManager offers a function setNetworkPreference. This function is not really documented as you can tell if you click the link. I would paly around with it though because the constants that are defined seem to hint that you can set this to either TYPE_MOBILE or TYPE_WIFI and there is a DEFAULT_NETWORK_PREFERENCE constant as well that is defined as being 0x00000001 which is the same as TYPE_WIFI. So try getting access to a ConnectivityManager by calling

Context.getSystemService(Context.CONNECTIVITY_SERVICE);

and then try using the setNetworkPreference() function.

It doesn't appear to require any permissions in the manifest but it might require the CHANGE_NETWORK_STATE permission or something along those lines.

If you do sue the setNetworkPreference function it would probably be best to also set the Network Preference back to its original values (received from getNetworkPreference)

I hope this helps.

How to use 3G Connection instead of Wi-fi?

Just copying and pasting from another post

/**
 * Enable mobile connection for a specific address
 * @param context a Context (application or activity)
 * @param address the address to enable
 * @return true for success, else false
 */
private boolean forceMobileConnectionForAddress(Context context, String address) {
    ConnectivityManager connectivityManager = (ConnectivityManager) context.getSystemService(Context.CONNECTIVITY_SERVICE);
    if (null == connectivityManager) {
        Log.debug(TAG_LOG, "ConnectivityManager is null, cannot try to force a mobile connection");
        return false;
    }

    //check if mobile connection is available and connected
    State state = connectivityManager.getNetworkInfo(ConnectivityManager.TYPE_MOBILE_HIPRI).getState();
    Log.debug(TAG_LOG, "TYPE_MOBILE_HIPRI network state: " + state);
    if (0 == state.compareTo(State.CONNECTED) || 0 == state.compareTo(State.CONNECTING)) {
        return true;
    }

    //activate mobile connection in addition to other connection already activated
    int resultInt = connectivityManager.startUsingNetworkFeature(ConnectivityManager.TYPE_MOBILE, "enableHIPRI");
    Log.debug(TAG_LOG, "startUsingNetworkFeature for enableHIPRI result: " + resultInt);

    //-1 means errors
    // 0 means already enabled
    // 1 means enabled
    // other values can be returned, because this method is vendor specific
    if (-1 == resultInt) {
        Log.error(TAG_LOG, "Wrong result of startUsingNetworkFeature, maybe problems");
        return false;
    }
    if (0 == resultInt) {
        Log.debug(TAG_LOG, "No need to perform additional network settings");
        return true;
    }

    //find the host name to route
    String hostName = StringUtil.extractAddressFromUrl(address);
    Log.debug(TAG_LOG, "Source address: " + address);
    Log.debug(TAG_LOG, "Destination host address to route: " + hostName);
    if (TextUtils.isEmpty(hostName)) hostName = address;

    //create a route for the specified address
    int hostAddress = lookupHost(hostName);
    if (-1 == hostAddress) {
        Log.error(TAG_LOG, "Wrong host address transformation, result was -1");
        return false;
    }
    //wait some time needed to connection manager for waking up
    try {
        for (int counter=0; counter<30; counter++) {
            State checkState = connectivityManager.getNetworkInfo(ConnectivityManager.TYPE_MOBILE_HIPRI).getState();
            if (0 == checkState.compareTo(State.CONNECTED))
                break;
            Thread.sleep(1000);
        }
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        //nothing to do
    }
    boolean resultBool = connectivityManager.requestRouteToHost(ConnectivityManager.TYPE_MOBILE_HIPRI, hostAddress);
    Log.debug(TAG_LOG, "requestRouteToHost result: " + resultBool);
    if (!resultBool)
        Log.error(TAG_LOG, "Wrong requestRouteToHost result: expected true, but was false");

    return resultBool;
}

And this for calculate host address:

/**
 * This method extracts from address the hostname
 * @param url eg. http://some.where.com:8080/sync
 * @return some.where.com
 */
public static String extractAddressFromUrl(String url) {
    String urlToProcess = null;

    //find protocol
    int protocolEndIndex = url.indexOf("://");
    if(protocolEndIndex>0) {
        urlToProcess = url.substring(protocolEndIndex + 3);
    } else {
        urlToProcess = url;
    }

    // If we have port number in the address we strip everything
    // after the port number
    int pos = urlToProcess.indexOf(':');
    if (pos >= 0) {
        urlToProcess = urlToProcess.substring(0, pos);
    }

    // If we have resource location in the address then we strip
    // everything after the '/'
    pos = urlToProcess.indexOf('/');
    if (pos >= 0) {
        urlToProcess = urlToProcess.substring(0, pos);
    }

    // If we have ? in the address then we strip
    // everything after the '?'
    pos = urlToProcess.indexOf('?');
    if (pos >= 0) {
        urlToProcess = urlToProcess.substring(0, pos);
    }
    return urlToProcess;
}

/**
 * Transform host name in int value used by {@link ConnectivityManager.requestRouteToHost}
 * method
 *
 * @param hostname
 * @return -1 if the host doesn't exists, elsewhere its translation
 * to an integer
 */
private static int lookupHost(String hostname) {
    InetAddress inetAddress;
    try {
        inetAddress = InetAddress.getByName(hostname);
    } catch (UnknownHostException e) {
        return -1;
    }
    byte[] addrBytes;
    int addr;
    addrBytes = inetAddress.getAddress();
    addr = ((addrBytes[3] & 0xff) << 24)
            | ((addrBytes[2] & 0xff) << 16)
            | ((addrBytes[1] & 0xff) << 8 )
            |  (addrBytes[0] & 0xff);
    return addr;
}

And following permission must be added to AndroidManifest.xml

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE"/>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.CHANGE_NETWORK_STATE" />

It works only with android 2.2 and above, tested on both Nexus One and on LG Optimus, other phones I don't know because some method of ConnectivityMananger are vendor-specific.
After 15-20 seconds of inactivity, mobile network is automatically disconnected.

How to connect to a mobile phone via 3G using Android

Googling about how 3G networks work I found that there is NATing (NAT Traversal) involved with outbound and inbound connections. This is not required when connecting via WiFi. So then doing some search on android+NAT+3G+sockets resulted in my answer to this question.

Android Client, Pc Server Socket d'ont work over 3g

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/917385/nat-traversal-with-java

How to use any Internet connection in Android app (wifi, 3g, 4g, etc)?

try this

public class NetWorkCheck{
    ConnectivityManager connectivityManager;
    NetworkInfo wifiInfo, mobileInfo, lanInfo;


    public Boolean checkNow(Context con){

        try{
            connectivityManager = (ConnectivityManager) con.getSystemService(Context.CONNECTIVITY_SERVICE);
            wifiInfo = connectivityManager.getNetworkInfo(ConnectivityManager.TYPE_WIFI);
            mobileInfo = connectivityManager.getNetworkInfo(ConnectivityManager.TYPE_MOBILE);


            if(wifiInfo.isConnected() || mobileInfo.isConnected())
            {
                return true;
            }
        }
        catch(Exception e){
            System.out.println("CheckConnectivity Exception: " + e.getMessage());
        }

        return false;
    }
}

and in the Activity that u want to test connection write this code

 NetWorkCheck networkCheck = new NetWorkCheck();
 boolean connection;

connection = networkCheck.checkNow(UpdateVehicleDetails.this);
                if (connection) {

Android - force network requests go through wifi instead of mobile network

Per the Connecting your App to a Wi-Fi Device blog post:

To direct all the network requests from your app to an external Wi-Fi device, call ConnectivityManager#setProcessDefaultNetwork on Lollipop devices, and on Marshmallow call ConnectivityManager#bindProcessToNetwork instead, which is a direct API replacement.

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