Android auto-setup as an ethernet USB host

[Jonas Vautherin]

Hello!

I am interested in connecting to my Android phone (Nokia 7.1 plus) over the network via USB.

It used to be (a few months ago) that the following works:

    my router <--- ethernet cable ---> ethernet-to-usb adapter <--- usb ---> my phone

In that setup, as soon as I plugged the phone and the router together, then Android would show

a new network interface, and would get an IP address.

It was not working on all phones, and I was kind of hoping that Android One was making that

consistent between some phones at least. But I just tried right now, with the same phone, and

it doesn't seem to work anymore.

In the meantime I learned to setup a pocketbeagle as a USB gadget with a DHCP server just for

that, but if the router doesn't work, I'm not surprised my device doesn't work either.

What's the state at the AOSP level? Should it "just work" to plug a `g_ether` gadget into Android

and have a DHCP server running on the gadget side? Or was I lucky last year to get it to work?

For instance, I am quite sure that iOS officially supports that as a feature, as they explain how

to create MFi ethernet adapters in their documentation. Why would it not work on Android?

Thanks in advance,