Use Your Treo as a Wireless Modem

One Bluetooth feature that caused quite a stir among Treo users when the Treo 650 was first released is dial-up networking, which involves using your Treo as a wireless modem to access the Internet on a notebook computer. In other words, you use the data portion of your mobile phone service to establish a data connection with your Treo; you already do this any time you access the Blazer Web browser. However, when using dial-up networking, your Treo passes along the wireless network connection to your notebook computer, effectively turning your Treo into a wireless modem. This feature caused a stir because wireless carriers disabled it in the Treo 650s they sold.

Note

Figure 11.9 and these Bluetooth HotSync synchronization steps apply to a Windows computer, but you should be able to follow along and carry out the same general process on a Macintosh computer.

You can easily tell whether your device has Bluetooth dial-up networking enabled because a Dial-up Networking option appears in the main Bluetooth application screen of your device (just below the Discoverable option) if the feature is available. If you don't see this option, check with your wireless carrier to see whether a Bluetooth dial-up networking update is available for your device. Some wireless carriers, such as Sprint, deliberately disabled Bluetooth dial-up networking, but after receiving considerable pressure from users, they opted to offer an update to enable it.

The specific steps for enabling Bluetooth dial-up networking vary considerably from one wireless carrier to another, so it's better to share with you the general steps required to use it. Following are the general steps for establishing and using a Bluetooth dial-up networking connection between your Treo and a notebook (or desktop) computer:

1.	Pair your Treo with the notebook computer. Tip If your desktop computer isn't finding your Treo, make sure you have the Treo set so that it's discoverable. The Discoverable setting is accessible from the main screen of the Bluetooth application on your device.
2.	Set up your notebook computer for a dial-up networking connection. Typically, this task involves using special software provided by your wireless carrier for entering the username and password associated with your wireless data services account. For example, on Sprint networks, this information is your PCS Vision username and password. You can access this information on your Treo from the Network section of the Prefs application. When setting up dial-up networking on your notebook computer, you must also enter the access point name (APN) for your wireless carrier's Internet access point. Your wireless carrier should supply the APN for its network. Tip To pair your Treo with your desktop computer, right-click the Treo icon in the My Bluetooth Places window on your desktop computer, and click Pair Device on the shortcut menu. You're then prompted to enter passkeys on both devices to establish the pairing. Don't forget that this passkey can be anything of your choosing; all that matters is that it matches on each machine.
3.	Enable the dial-up networking feature on your Treo by enabling the Dial-Up Networking option on the main Bluetooth screen.
4.	Access your Treo device from your notebook computer, and initiate the dial-up networking service.
5.	Enter the appropriate dialing information (provided by your wireless carrier), and dial to connect to the wireless Internet.
6.	When you're finished using the wireless Internet connection, disconnect from the dial-up networking service on your notebook computer, and then disable dial-up networking on your device.

Regardless of who your wireless carrier is, you should be able to follow these general steps to establish a Bluetooth dial-up network connection between your Treo and a notebook computer. I apologize for the lack of details for this task, but there's just too much variation between carriers to go down a more specific path here. At any rate, you'll likely find that Bluetooth dial-up networking is a decent alternative when you aren't able to connect to a traditional wired or Wi-Fi network with your notebook. Just make sure to double-check how your data plan is structured so that you know how much you're being charged (if anything) when using your Treo as a wireless modem.