
 Tethering - wglb
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/08/28/Tethering
======
Tichy
How can you buy an unlocked phone, though? Except for the N1 through the
developer connection? I am guessing that tbray uses a N1. So do I and most
other Android developers I know.

Which means we are all living in a fantasy land. We have a good experience,
whereas life for the people we told to buy an Android phone will suck.

~~~
gaius
The key is "locked phones they sell for cheap". Gotta be paid for somehow.

You can buy an unlocked phone easily; I got mine at eXpansys. Be prepared for
a shock if you don't know what a phone actually costs...

~~~
pedrocr
What you got by paying full price was a network-unlocked phone but it will
still be locked when it comes to the software running inside it. Unlocking so
you can run your own kernel will void the warranty.

If all you want is a root shell to the existing software, "Universal Android
Root" seems to be the tool to use and won't void your warranty. It's still a
hack and not something you get out of the box.

The only phone I know of that actually seems to come unlocked is the Nokia
N900 where you can get a root shell out of the box and probably also swap the
kernel for your own without voiding the warranty (not sure).

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illumin8
Easy solution for iPhone - jailbreakme.com then purchase MyWi through RockApp.
For $20 you get a wifi hotspot. You just need to be careful to not go over
your AT&T data plan cap.

~~~
tel
I wonder if it's possible to write an open source hotspot app and then just
deploy it to your own phone via developer signing. It's $100/year but I'd
think there's a fair intersection between those who'd use a tethering app and
those who are already developers and there's no risk of bricking.

~~~
spicyj
Although it certainly isn't the same as MyWi, iProxy sets up a SOCKS proxy
through which you can send your web traffic:

<http://wiki.github.com/tcurdt/iProxy/>

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drdaeman
> without considerable deep-packet inspection, how can you tell that there are
> other computers gatewaying

Uhm... TTL (IPv4)/hop limit (IPv6)? Not accurate but seeing TTL of 254, 127,
63, 59 or 31 means that there's quite high probability that sender is a
router, not packet's originator.

~~~
barrkel
Even simpler, looking at the user agent string. All the mobile networks I've
used use HTTP proxies (transparent or explicit) to hugely decrease image
quality; the JPEG artifacts are atrocious.

I guess the marginally harder problem would be linking together the proxy with
the authentication of the connecting user, to let authorized tethering users
through. Perhaps they could use a different proxy via a different APN, or
similar techniques.

~~~
illumin8
> Even simpler, looking at the user agent string.

This would catch a lot of false positives. For example, I use Atomic Web
Browser on my iPad and iPhone - it lets me change my user agent string because
some websites try to redirect you to a slimmed-down mobile version, and I
might want to get to the full version of the website. So it is quite often
that I actually change my user agent string to show desktop Safari instead of
mobile.

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mrud
Unfortunately it depends also on the hardware. The Milestone and afaik the
droid are very unlikely to support the official 2.2 tethering as the Wifi chip
does not support AP mode.

But you can get easily tethering on a the milestone (or many other 2.1/1.6
devices) with the adhoc mode. Root your phone (you just have to intsall one
application nowadays) and install the open source wireless-ether
<[http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-
tether/>](http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/>); package

~~~
jallmann
USB tethering works on the Droid though. Unfortunately, using it first takes
you to a Verizon signup page where they make you pay for the privilege.

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Yaggo
Why just not to pipe all the traffic through SSH proxy (-D) to avoit user
agent filtering? Or do they also block connections to other ports than 80?

(Telcoms are really ripping off people in some contries. I pay 14 EUR per
month for unlimited, uncapped, unfiltered 3G data for three(!) devices.)

~~~
vetinari
They do not block, just shape. My mobile operator (O2) shapes everything but
http, so with ssh tunnelling or ssl-based vpn, things get much slower.

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antirez
Android portable hot spot feature is more or less the only thing (together
with the better notifications) that is preventing me from selling my N1 in
favor of an iPhone 4...

~~~
cmelbye
As another commenter noted, it's possible to get this functionality on iPhone
if you jailbreak and purchase a tethering app. There are apps that will let
you run a wifi hotspot, but I personally just spent a few bucks on an app
which would allow me to use the iPhone's native tethering, which is very nice,
automatic, etc.

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hackermom
I really feel for the economic (and more) problems Americans and Canadians
have to endure in this context just to acquire something that should be
natural to every "mobile" person on the planet: easy and unhindered
communication.

I really, really hope Europe won't become the same hell.

~~~
obsessive1
One of the problems in the UK is that it's hard to find an unlimited internet
plan. Nearly all the networks place a 500MB limit, which is very easy to go
over if you use tethering apps. It can end up costing an absolute fortune.

~~~
semanticist
While there's no truly 'unlimited' packages, my standard data with T-Mobile is
1GB, and you can usually find packages for more if you need it.

If you're using your phone's internet a lot, it's probably better value to get
a USB dongle or mifi device. You can get a 3GB/month contract from Three for
£10 or £15.

