[Vibrant Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] samcar:
Hey everyone. I’ve used this site coupled with androidforums for all of my Vibrant problems. In the past I have found all of my answers with a quick search. Unfortunately I have run into a problem where searching hasn’t yielded any possible fixes.

Get ready for a novel. (or scroll to the bottom for the tl;dr)

I updated my Vibrant to 2.2 a few days after the release was updated. I’ve been tethering my phone pretty frequently since then. I rooted my phone days before, didn’t screw around with anything while rooted, then unrooted before I updated. I’m using Windows 7. Using an unlimited data plan. My usual download speeds (through speakeasy) were around 1.3mbps. Uploads were slower, but they don’t matter much anyway. The connectivity and speed have been great up until last night. I was doing some school work, downloading various word files when all of the sudden internet pages were loading extremely slowly, and all of the downloads stopped. I saw a little yellow ! yield sign over the internet connectivity method in my task bar. It said “No Internet Access”. I switched to wifi (my phone tethers 2x as fast as the wifi here), and continued. School > phone internet problems.

Wifi speed (speakeasy.net) (today)

Down: 0.44mbps

Up: 0.10mbps

After getting home today from class, I finally had a chance to try to see what was up. I plugged my phone it, and it worked pretty well for a few minutes. After those few minutes the yellow ! came up, paired with “No Internet Access”. I disconnected my phone from my computer, tried again, reset my phone then tried again, and even removed apps that ran in the background that were sharing the connection. Nothing changed. My phone has been in the exact same position on my desk each time I have tethered it, starting from the very first time, always on the windowsill.

I downloaded the speedtest.net app to see what my speeds were, because the wifi at my house was loading pages and stuff a lot faster than my phone was. While remaining somewhat precise, the results were all over the board. While doing the tests I put the phone in its usual spot on the sill, and then moved it directly in front of me on my desk. I started to search for related problems on line, but couldn’t find anything more than a thread or two with the answer to a similar problem being tower quality/relative distance.

I ran the troubleshoot app that windows has, and it came back with “The DNS server isn’t responding”. Again I searched (google) for a possible fix, and yielded no results. The only thing I found was some custom DNS servers mod on here, but I’ve been waiting for Kies to download for the past 20 minutes to back my phone up. While downloading Kies I noticed that I was getting ~25kbps, and that it was going to take 30+ minutes. I hooked my phone up, and restarted the download. It shot up to 5mbps then just dropped. It went from 5mbps, to 4mbps, 2mbps, 1.5mbps, 900kbps, 800-700-600-500, all while the rate of change was decreasing as well. The jump from 5mbps to 1.5mbps was by the mb, but once it got to 900kbps the rate of change went from dropping hundreds, to dropping tens, to quickly dropping ones, to trickling out single kilobits. Then I was hit with the ! “No Network Access”. While this was happening the phone stayed completely stationary. The complete loss in data came only after tethering. I browsed the internet on my phone for a few minutes after, and everything was fine. It’s almost like the data tethering is signaling the phone to drop network access or something. I have zero apps running in the background of my phone that are using push, to my knowledge. I’m at a loss.

The speed tests I did earlier are below.

Tether speed (speakeasy.net) (last week)

Down: 1.3mbps

Up:??

Today’s 3G speed (speedtest.net app) – based off of 19 tests done in a little under an hour.

Highest download – Lowest download

Down: 0.86mbps - 0.06mbps

Highest upload – Lowest upload

Up: 0.62mbps – 0.03mbps

-Actually the lowest for each was zero, after getting the “No Network Access” I disconnected and tested, and got -0.00mbps.-

Average:

Down: 0.41mbps

Up: 0.18mbps

Also, before buying this Vibrant I had an iPhone on Tmobile. I unlocked it myself, jailbroke it, set up tethering , ect, ect. So I’m not completely phone-modding illiterate. I've just been out of the loop for a year or so.

Tl;dr – Been tethering phone for a month with consistent speed/no problems. Last night randomly I got “No Network Access”, and since then my tethering has started at a very high speed after plugging it in, then dived down until there was “No Network Access”. Windows 7 says “The DNS server isn’t responding.” Phone was in the same spot it has always been in, everything has been fine up until last night. wat do?