Hi,

I have a 8310 and I was using it without a BlackBerry plan (BIS). I installed several standard applications like OperaMini, LogicMail, etc. I did setup the TCP stuff (APN) and it all worked. I was able to use Opera and LogicMail. Then after a few days it just stopped working. Neither LogicMail nor OperaMini would connect anymore. The stranges thing is that I did not do anything in the meantime. I know, because I was in the woods . I checked my mail (before going into our camp where we have no reception) and it worked then I tried to check it again in a few days and it never worked again. Needless to say I did not install any new software between the two tries (though I don't know how it could break the whole phone).

What can I do to get the TCP connection working again? Has anybody heard of anything like that before?

On a generic data plan, you might have to talk to their tech support. Have you tried pulling the battery?

I'm not sure if I did it earlier but I just tried removing the battery and it didn't help. I don't think my operator could help, because the settings are good (well, it's just the access point name, we don't need a username or a password here). They worked with this very same device and I also used these settings with my s60 (Nokia 6120) phones.

OK, I managed to find out a few things (just for the record...) The main problem is that the DNS resolving fails. I tried a lot of things, I accidentally deleted the whole OS with javaloader (it said it would wipe the applications... quite misleading), then I upgraded to 4.5. This finally turned the BB into a BT modem, so I could try it with my PDA (linux) and my laptop (windows) and I found that the DNS settings weren't pushed at the beginning of the connection.

So my operator has changed something in the beginning of August when this misery started. I was definitely able to use the subscription without manualy setting the DNS servers earlier, for about half a year.

Then I sat down and wrote a simple test MIDlet to see if this was the same problem with the applications running on the blackberry. And it was: every (http) request sent using a domain name failed with DNS resolving error while every request using an IP address succeded (whether I used the ;deviceside=true trick or not). Now if only at least one of the applications I tried gave me a sensible error message, then I could have spared quite a lot of time. But know, Opera, LogicMail and all the others just kept saying that there was a problem with the connection, even though the OS provided the necessary information with the Exception.

Actually this simple app took a lot longer than expected, because the logging library I'm using in a couple of applications just started to throw NullPointerExceptions from the initialization code. And of course I didn't know where they came from and as I've been using this lib for a while, so thought that the problem is with my code. The emulator in the JDE doesn't work, of course :(.

If anyone seeing this message is interested in this primitive connection testing application, just let me know and I'll post it somewhere. All it does is that it tries to connect to a server using the IP address, then the domain name over http, then opens a socket to see if that works (your operator may block it).

I'd love to see your testing app (and any other information you've found on this issue). I've been banging my head against this one for a couple weeks to no avail.

I can't speak for Opera, but LogicMail actually does log its errors and a lot of its other activities. You just need to go into the BlackBerry event logger to see the messages. Type Alt-LGLG from the BB home screen to get there. In that utility, you can configure what applications get logged and to what level.

During network I/O, LogicMail will first attempt to retry. If that fails, it should log the exception under the ERROR level.

You can get it from www [dot] origamind [dot] com/p/misc/ConnectionTest. (Sorry for not posting it as a clickable link, but the forum software wouldn't let me do this until I have three more posts.) It tries to connect both with IP address and DNS name. For me it showed that the problem was with DNS resolving. I didn't do anyhting about it as I was reluctant to call the customer service and then suddenly after three months of pause it started to work again