Binding the join socket to the Wi-Fi network covers a phone that has
joined a hotspot. It does nothing for the phone that is sharing one:
that phone has no Wi-Fi *client* network, so there was nothing to bind
to and the code gave up — leaving the socket on the default network,
which is mobile data, and a connection to a guest going out over
cellular to die.
ConnectivityManager does not offer the tethering interface as a Network,
so there is no network to name. Binding this end of the socket to one of
our own addresses on the guest's subnet picks the route instead, which
is the only lever available. The subnet test assumes a /24, which every
Android hotspot hands out, and getting it wrong costs a bind that would
not have helped anyway.
This is the direction that was left broken: the owner of the hotspot
trying to join a game hosted by one of its guests.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_0132V9gE6DF9itz2z3Hn7BK9