Android Emulator Internet Access

Ocassionally we find our android emulators cannot connect to the internet. May it be working yesterday but not today. Damn it!

The explanation stated by this post reveals the underlying cause.

On some WI-FI network, the emulator could not get DNS configuration automatically. My experience shows this not only happens to wifi network, but also to cable network.

Solution

There are 2 solutions:

1. Manually set DNS,

   • set DNS when emulator starts up.

   In Eclipse:
   
   Window > Preferences > Android > Launch
   
   Default emulator options: -dns-server 8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4
   

   • set DNS after emulator starts up.

   setprop dns.net1 8.8.8.8
   

   The IP 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 are provided by Google freely.

2. Toggle the Internet access to your emulator with F8 (on Windows) and Fn + F8 (on Mac OS X).

   With this shortcut, you get the ACTION_BACKGROUND_DATA_SETTING_CHANGED dispatched.