Jailbreak: Get Your Computer Online Using Your iPhone's Data Connection

http://lifehacker.com/398961/get-your-computer-online-using-your-iphones-data-connection

by echair • 18 years ago

29 23 18 years ago

st3fan• 18 years ago

This is awesome! It's so great to see really useful things happening in the jailbreaked-iphone scene!

I'm sure this will turn into a beautiful app that does not require command line access. Hopefully they can also figure out how to turn the iPhone into an actual access point. Not sure if the chip supports that though.

trezor3• 18 years ago

Just FYI: Windows Mobile phones can do this natively with no hacking. It even allows general connection sharing using a Bluetooth personal area network, with automatic DHCP and NAT. You don't even need to hack your way trough a socks-proxy.

I mean... Cool that a hacked iPhone can almost do connection sharing too, but this just shows another thing the iPhone doesn't do which makes it subpar to competing smartphones. (UI be damned)

river_styx• 18 years ago

Windows Mobile phones can tunnel socket connections over ssh natively?

trezor3• 18 years ago

No. As i added to my comment: It has general connection sharing. No tunneling needed.

silencio3• 18 years ago

That's a no brainer, but tethering is not available on the iPhone for whatever reason (who knows who's really at fault for that). So unless your carrier's TOS doesn't mind you tethering your phone with the wrong plan (basically with a phone-only data plan, and they will care if they find out), your point is moot.

Also, "UI be damned"? I've used many smartphones before and the iPhone has the only mobile browser worth using right now. The UI matters a lot.

notauser• 18 years ago

If you can tether your phone then the browser on the device can be of much lower quality before you care.

Any time I'm somewhere for more than 5 minutes (coffee shop, train, meeting ) I tether my Eee 901 to my phone (a 6120c, which comes with 3gb of data for ~$20/mo). That gets me a _good_ keyboard, a large screen, and full blown Firefox + addons. Way, way more usable than an iPhone and cheaper over it's lifetime.

Because of that I only use the browser on the device for flash movies, real player streaming radio (from the BBC), and mobile-friendly data like movie listings or rss news. Two of those the iPhone can't even do, and the other one it offers no real advantage for.

wallflower• 18 years ago

From MacRumors discussion:

"Unlimited" means "around 5GB or so". Multiple months of ~5GB transfer will result in nasty phone calls, them looking deeper in to your account, or both.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=527722&page...

fallentimes2• 18 years ago

Then the snake oil salesmen shouldn't advertise "unlimited".

And if you have an emergency, who cares if you get nasty phone calls? This is a great budget emergency solution.

silencio3• 18 years ago

I assume it's more unlimited on your phone where realistically most people wouldn't be going over that kind of limit often. Non-mobile browsing for me usually means regular sites (vs. mobile/iPhone optimized) and longer browsing, resulting in more usage. Sure, AT&T will have a hard time being able to tell what you're doing, but it's against their TOS to tether without the right plan.

(Not that I disagree with you, just pointing out why this is an issue...AT&T can and has charged people who've tethered without the right plan for the data they used..and it's not pretty.)

trezor3• 18 years ago

And if you have an emergency, who cares if you get nasty phone calls? This is a great budget emergency solution.

iPhone with a rip-off data-plan and budget solution in the same sentence? Steve Jobs' RDF is indeed strong with this crowd.

immad2• 18 years ago

So as long as you use it reasonably it should be fine. As a primary Internet connection would be unreasonable

akd• 18 years ago

Why shouldn't unlimited mean unlimited? For six months my only Internet connection was through my Blackberry. T-Mobile is very good about not restricting what you can do with your phone, and not complaining when you do things like this.

bluelu• 18 years ago

Tell me something my 5 year old normal cellular phone can't do!

nickb• 18 years ago

Browse the web without needing WAP etc support.

god• 18 years ago

"Create an ad-hoc network on your computer. On Macs, just click on the Wi-Fi icon in the menubar and select "Create Network." On Windows, set up internet connection sharing."

And on Linux?

newt0311• 18 years ago

Most linux distros just require setting the ssid some something unique and then changing the connection type to Ad-Hoc. For example, in gentoo (my distro.) all I need to do is add two lines to /etc/conf.d/net and I am done. Ubuntu probably has a graphical app to do the same thing with otehr distros filling in somewhere...

gojomo• 18 years ago

How hard would it be to sneak a general SOCKS proxy app into the Apple App Store, to enable this same technique on non-jailbroken phones?

Maybe hidden inside a multiplayer game that also opens and listens on a number of TCP sockets?

DenisM• 18 years ago

If it were to gain adoption they will find out and baninate your app. It probably will be then removed on next sync from all phones.

Jailbreak: Get Your Computer Online Using Your iPhone's Data Connection

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