Tethered connection won't work.

[ChaosPotato]

So, I recently changed phones, and I use the 4G tethering a LOT for online play.

Tethering works fine for anything other than Steam for some reason. I get either "NO CONNECTION" or it flatout won't start and give me the "go offline" prompt thing.
I think it used to work on the new phone before I installed the Steam mobile app, but I could be misremembering (since I tried uninstalling the app and it doesn't work better).

I tried putting -tcp on a shortcut, I tried doing the winsock reset thing since apparently it fixed the problem for some people...

It eludes me completely and I hate it. I can connect to Steam.com using a web browser, I can login to my account but if I click on Community or try to check my profile out, it times out.

Any other tips?

[Zekiran]

Steam has trouble working on wifi, let alone something like this, which is like... wifi on top of wifi.

Online play for something like flash games is great on a phone tether, but... I cannot possibly imagine that you'd be able to get good enough ping or reception overall to play competitive games like csgo or mmos.

[ChaosPotato]

I mostly play solo games or War Thunder so I'm not too bothered. I usually get 50-60ms ping. I'm not using any WiFi though, my phone gets 4G and funnels it through USB directly. It used to work fine on my old phone which makes it double-annoying.

[Zekiran]

Are the phones actually identical? Because if not: anything goes. literally, anything might be incompatible with the way Steam works, or which drivers are needed etc. :(

[ChaosPotato]

The new phone is much more recent. I can actually see the friend list and stuff on the mobile app. Using the same 4G connection. Makes me crazy hahaha

[ChaosPotato]

I FIXED IT!!! Turns out, the default configuration for the APN (Access Point Name) my phone uses (for this particular phone operator at least) is IPv6.
Which works fine for MMS and all things phone related but messes up when it comes to PC stuff. My older phone probably was configured with IPv4 as default since it's older (duh).
I just had to search around for the option to turn it back to IPv4, and BAYM! Everything works. I'm quite happy about that.

[Zekiran]

Oh that's great! And also thank you for reporting back with the fix, someone else may need that information some day :D

[jackx78x]

Man, you made my day, i think it's gonna fix a lot more than just steam, thx

[Otsupbo]

And now you made my day.
Renamed the APN on my Huawei, everything works.

[DISCOUNTOPERATOR]

IM using usb tethering . how do i rename the apn ??

[ChaosPotato]

Originally posted by artharpseal:

IM using usb tethering . how do i rename the apn ??

Change it only if you have the same problem, obviously. Also, if everything breaks just revert what you did and it should be fine again.

Go to the settings in your phone, go to the network thing, mobile network thing, you should have an "APN" tab there, open it and open the informations about your APN. There's a whole bunch of nonsense and somewhere buried in that should live "APN protocol" or something like that. If it says IPv6, switch to strictly IPv4. If it's already IPv4, I don't know what your specific problem is, sorry :(

[Iceira]

Originally posted by ChaosPotato:

Originally posted by artharpseal:

IM using usb tethering . how do i rename the apn ??

Change it only if you have the same problem, obviously. Also, if everything breaks just revert what you did and it should be fine again.

Go to the settings in your phone, go to the network thing, mobile network thing, you should have an "APN" tab there, open it and open the informations about your APN. There's a whole bunch of nonsense and somewhere buried in that should live "APN protocol" or something like that. If it says IPv6, switch to strictly IPv4. If it's already IPv4, I don't know what your specific problem is, sorry :(

Try see it with warning in ipv4 & and ipv6, and if ISP gateway use it then you might need it also.
you wont get past it without it. or through in contact your isp mobil network. you dont need to explan anything here.

could be best advice.

[fray_bentos]

This post was missing the details/steps needed to fix the issue of not being able to login to Steam when tethered to a mobile network. Forcing the phone to use IPv4 does indeed fix this. If you are using Android 13, the steps are as follows:

On Android device:
Settings/Mobile Networks/Access Point Names/

Select your "internet" option (or something similarly named) and take screenshots of all settings (power button + volume down on some phones). Your probably cannot edit those pre-entered settings from your phone network, so you will need to make a new access point using the screenshotted details. You will need to look up the password for your phone network provider online, as this will be blocked out by ***** on the phone. On the phone go back to the previous screen under access point names, and click on "Add" in the top right of the screen and re-enter all of the settings that you took screenshots of (plus the password that you looked up online) Once added, make sure to select the "InternetIPv4" APN setting that you just configured. Your phone should temporarily lose internet connection and rapidly reconnect. Check that you can browse the internet from your phone. Then tether your device to your phone and check that you can browse the internet from your tethered device. Now open Steam and login as normal from your tethered device (hopefully).