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Turn your iPhone into a Wifi hotspot

Published Nov. 6, 2010

Setting up your iPhone to work as a Wifi hotspot for your laptop/desktop computer is a fairly simple, painless process, if you have the right tools and a little bit of patience.

Requirements
• Jailbroken iPhone
• Laptop/Desktop with Wifi radio/adapter
• PdaNet application on iPhone

Steps
1. Jailbreak the iPhone. There are many tools and tutorials available on the web to learn how to do this and I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. Hint: Want a hands-off, idiot-proof jailbreak? Try www.jailbreakme.com.

2. Launch the Cydia App (it gets installed during the jailbreak process) and download PdaNet. I found Cydia a bit confusing at first, but basically it is just a directory of apps. PdaNet is under the networking section/heading.

3. Create an ad-hoc Wifi network on your PC or Mac. Under Windows Vista, this was very simple to do. I went to Control Panel -> Network and Sharing Center and then Set up a connection or network. From the list of options that appears in the popup window, I clicked Set up a wireless ad hoc network. Then click the next button twice. You will then be prompted to enter a "Network name", and then choose your level of security. On one version of Vista it only allowed me to select "WEP" encryption, which was disappointing. Another Vista version allowed WPA level 1 encryption, which is better than WEP, but not as strong as WPA2, which is what I really wanted to use.

Once you set up the encryption level and select a password, you can choose to "save this network" or just press the "next" button. The PC will establish the ad hoc network and then, if you mouse over the network icon in the task bar area, it will say "waiting for users to connect", meaning it is waiting for the iPhone part of this setup.

4. Connect the iPhone to the ad-hoc network. First, go into the settings app, tap Wifi, select the ad hoc network from the list of available networks, type in your password and the level of encryption (if you set it up with encryption). Wait for the iPhone to connect to the ad hoc network, then close the settings app and launch PdaNet. PdaNet will scan and quickly find the ad hoc network. You will then see an information box containing the computer name, MAC address and data rates being transferred in real time through the phone. It may take a minute or two for the PC to connect, but once it does you should be able to use your internet browser or email client like you normally do.

Observations
• The modem/wifi app is a battery drainer so make sure you are plugged into a power outlet. I don't recommend charging through the laptop/PC via the sync cable. The wall adapter is much quicker.
• While suitable for some light browsing, emailing, etc, the speed of the data connection through the phone didn't seem as fast as browsing on the phone itself on 3g or Wifi.
• I don't recommend trying this if 3g isn't available. The EDGE connection is painfully slow. In fact, it didn't work half the time with Firefox and didn't work at all with Google Chrome (which doesn't like slow connections at all).
• PdaNet seems to be a fairly solid app. I used the free version several times while I was testing the wifi hotspot capabilities of the phone. I'm not sure about the paid version and whether it offers any advantages.
I did try another app, iphonemodem, but could not get it to work. It required a desktop program to setup the ad hoc network, which I think is a little ridiculous, given how easy it is to set one up. There is also the mywi app, which I think is about $20 or so, but I didn't try it either since PdaNet worked so well.
• I did a speed test of this on Speakeasy.net. Download Speed: 2381 kbps (297.6 KB/sec transfer rate) Upload Speed: 288 kbps (36 KB/sec transfer rate). 2.4 megs is not bad for 3g. I wonder how consistent it stays that fast. That's almost as good as my paltry Frotier DSL 3meg line.

Personal Opinion
Apple and AT&T shouldn't require you to pay extra fees to use the iPhone as a "tether" internet connection. They are simply doing it to gouge more money out of us consumers.

This is unfortunate, but it is what it is. Fortunately, there are a lot of talented hackers out there who have found a way around Apple-AT&T's restrictions and made the tools, for the most part, totally free.