You could try something crazy like this to get the Sony out of your tablet (though that was a kobo...), but otherwise you're probably stuck with whatever phoning home Sony would like to do.

Running around the net, I found a couple solutions that looked like yours, but none were exactly the same. Most of them used a combination of dd-wrt and a separate computer running Wireshark, so you may want to look in that direction.

Way over my head.

Probably, if the device can find a 3G connection, which is intermittently possible even at my remote rural house. Likely I can (eventually) control my local wifi connections, but otherwise I can keep the device configured to not use 3G. And as I mentioned, I can cut the antenna wire, which at the moment sounds palatable.

If I become truly paranoid, I can lock the device with a password to prevent anybody from enabling the 3G option or wireless switch.

As I very much need to learn concepts, I appreciate any such links, even if not directly applicable.

HowToGeek's guide to Wireshark is a very useful introduction. This blog post from Coert Vonk should also be useful for getting dd-wrt and Wireshark talking to each other. This article from Question Defense may also help.

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Thank you!

Looks like the ebook reader is a hopeless project with respect to wireless.

As mentioned, the 3G support is built-in and automatic when enabled. I can't stop that other than keeping the wireless switch off and the 3G option disabled.

I tested the wifi feature while my internet connection was unplugged. The device finds my Linksys router but refuses to do much after that unless a connection to the Sony store is established, of which I see repeated popup messages. Typical proprietary nonsense.

With wifi enabled I connected to my Linksys router status page by manually entering the IP address, but I'm skeptical of trying an internet IP address because I'm presuming the device always tries to connect to the Sony reader store and perform some data mining, which possibly includes URLs from the browser cache.

This little venture actually started several months ago after I bought the device. I noticed then I could not use the built-in web browser to read html files unless the wireless switch was enabled. I was curious about using the browser to access sites such as wikipedia while reading a book.

At this point looks like using the browser is hard-coded to connecting to the store. Possibly I could still use the browser to view local html books but I then have to enable wireless, which I don't trust on the reader unless my internet connection is unplugged, which I do not want to do.

BTW, I like the device as an ebook reader. One of the better models for rendering PDFs. I just have no need for the proprietary nonsense.

Somebody please start selling a true free/libre software ebook reader. (Tablet too!)

Even if I learned how to root and hack the device, more than likely my programming skills are insufficient to unlock the browser and disable the store requirement.

Disabling the antenna likely is my safest "paranoid solution."

Regarding the original thread, as I don't yet have a way to tap into my network at convenient points, I'll test XP with the Windows version of wireshark.

I still need to learn how to monitor my network. Yet Another Rainy Day Project.