iOS 4.3 Personal Hotspot Wi-Fi Sharing Limited to Three Devices in Many Countries?

[akbc]

Time to ditch my WiBro modem that's been costing me extra $20 bucks a month.
Now I can use my unlimited 3G with my iPhone 4 for both my laptop and my other Wi-Fi accessories at times.

And here in Korea, the 3G isn't terribly slow and are available everywhere - in buildings and underground/subway. And with my carrier there are over 40,000 Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the country... So I guess I should list my WiBro modem up for sale.

3 Seems like a reasonable number... I have never used my WiBro modem with more than 3 at most. And that was including the iPhone, though my modem could support 7 at once.

 

[carlosap]

My iPhone 4 in my carrier can't even provide a good 3G Data connection for itself, let alone 3 laptops. Mexico Telcel really sucks!!!!

Thats why you have to change to iusacell 4x faster and cheaper

 

[ul1984]

This is actually really crappy, don't even understand why there is a limit at all. When I were on a skiing holiday with a group of friends(think we were 5) we used a single 10Mbit flatrate 3G connection through an Android phone with wifi tether, and it worked wonderfully. Muliple ppl could even play WoW with no packet loss or noticable lag, while some ppl were browsing the web.

If the ISP/connection allows it, and you pay for it, why even have a limit at all?? sucks. (I know the solution is to tether it using a cable to a Mac for example, and then share the connection from there, but why do we have to bother with that?) Apple should be about helping the customer, not working against him.

 

[jbuck777]

faster safari performance is always welcome, I always feel like it can be faster, i hope jailbreak comes out for this.

4.3 jailbreak is ready from what I last read on DevTeams blog, they just wont release it until Apple releases 4.3 to the masses.

This is actually really crappy, don't even understand why there is a limit at all. When I were on a skiing holiday with a group of friends(think we were 5) we used a single 10Mbit flatrate 3G connection through an Android phone with wifi tether, and it worked wonderfully. Muliple ppl could even play WoW with no packet loss or noticable lag, while some ppl were browsing the web.

A skiing holiday...that situation would more then likely be a non-issue. Most hotels (especially ski resorts) offer free WiFi to their guests. Your just finding silly excuses to whine... 3 people connected through a single 3g connection would be sort of painful. Ping rates are high, data rates aren't even close to broadband (Im getting 40Mbps during the day and 85Mbps at night over cable being broadcasted with an AE using 802.11n). Take it as it is...or jailbreak and do some modding to change the amount of allowed connections.

 

[ul1984]

A skiing holiday...that situation would more then likely be a non-issue. Most hotels (especially ski resorts) offer free WiFi to their guests. Your just finding silly excuses to whine... 3 people connected through a single 3g connection would be sort of painful. Ping rates are high, data rates aren't even close to broadband (Im getting 40Mbps during the day and 85Mbps at night over cable being broadcasted with an AE using 802.11n). Take it as it is...or jailbreak and do some modding to change the amount of allowed connections.

The reason for wanting to tether to more than three devices is irrelevant, I was just giving an example of when I remember last having a use for it.

Excuses to whine... I love Apple products and have been using them for over ten years, just dont see the reason to have to cap something like this. Since its quite easy to share the connection to an unlimited number of people anyway, by using a computer as the router instead of the phone.

It's just a silly virtual limitation, that doesn't help anyone.

I know it's probably the telecoms demanding this, but these days with Apple being this big its time they stopped listening to their demands. There is no chance in hell that they would risk not being able to sell iPhones, Apple has the power here. They should use it to make their products better for their customers!

 

[jbuck777]

The reason for wanting to tether to more than three devices is irrelevant, I was just giving an example of when I remember last having a use for it.

Excuses to whine... I love Apple products and have been using them for over ten years, just dont see the reason to have to cap something like this. Since its quite easy to share the connection to an unlimited number of people anyway, by using a computer as the router instead of the phone.

It's just a silly virtual limitation, that doesn't help anyone.

Not entirely true. Most (if not all) base stations have limited clients. For instance, both the Airport Extreme and Time Capsule have a limit of 50 users. Airport Express has a limit of 10.

There are caps everywhere...for both infrastructure sake and end user experience sake.

Imagine hooking up 50 clients to a single wireless AP....say your ISP provides 20Mbps speed, your looking at 0.4Mbps per user on your network. Not to mention your going to be dealing with data collisions and ping speeds that are through the roof.

 

[katz]

Imagine hooking up 50 clients to a single wireless AP....say your ISP provides 20Mbps speed, your looking at 0.4Mbps per user on your network.

Yeah that's not necessarily true... It's not like everyone would be necessarily accessing the internet at the same time and at every instant. And it's not like you can't get by on 0.4 Mbps for web browsing. You're grasping at straws. Sorry.

 

[jbuck777]

Yeah that's not necessarily true... It's not like everyone would be necessarily accessing the internet at the same time and at every instant. And it's not like you can't get by on 0.4 Mbps for web browsing. You're grasping at straws. Sorry.

Maybe not accessing the internet...but still maintaining a connection to the network impedes performance as a whole.

400Kbps, yeehaw....thats less then a half of what I get over 3G on my iP4 at peak hours.

The point I'm trying to make here, it's for reasons like infrastructure and, most importantly to Apple, end user experience that Apple puts a limit on the number of clients. If they allowed 10 clients, you might be glad about that....but you certainly wouldn't have a good user experience.

 

[Powerbooky]

I know most of the world allows 13 channels for 802.11b, while the US uses 11 and Japan uses 14. There are similar differences for 802.11g and 802.11n.

This could be that it is a technical limit, there are different WiFi access points for different countries.

The only reason for that are the differences in frequency regulations that different countries have around the world (channel list). Also the amount of transmission power allowed is different in some places. The same goes for the use of GSM or 3G frequency bands (phones automatically adjust to the local regulations).

But this has nothing to do with the lower limit of clients allowed on the iPhone hotspot.

 

[JCCL]

Thats why you have to change to iusacell 4x faster and cheaper

If I had known....like with every iPhone before it I sold my 3GS and got the 4 plus a new 2 year contract in August. Basically, with what I made with the 3GS I got the 4 for free. My father bought and iPhone 4 sim free from Apple online and while he is a Telcel user, he bought a iusacell SIM to test it and it is a lot faster.........5MBPS according to Speedtest.net VS 1MBPS at most I get with Telcel. I never knew Iusacell was launching their GSM network, i only I had know.........

 

[mabaker]

Best thing is the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G share the very same hardware. Yet both are cut off in 4.3, they’d be running 4.3 efficiently. IT’s stupid marketing play in typical Apple style.

 

[iBMW]

Are people really angry over this?

Man 1: Wouldn't it be great if someone gave us some pies? (not angry just hopeful)
Man 2: I'll give you some pies!
Man 1: Cool, I can't wait to have some pies. My friends have pies. Pies are good.
(time passes)
Man 2: Here you go Man 1, here are 3 pies!
Man 1: But ... but my friends have 5 pies!! (not happy, even though he was happy when he had no pies)

See. It's simple.

 

[hayesk]

Yeah that's not necessarily true... It's not like everyone would be necessarily accessing the internet at the same time and at every instant. And it's not like you can't get by on 0.4 Mbps for web browsing. You're grasping at straws. Sorry.

Try to learn a bit about network routing before making claims like "grasping at straws" or the condescending "sorry." When you are wrong, it just makes you look foolish. And you are wrong.

No one has mentioned nothing about storing and processing routing tables, ARP caching, etc. Do you think your iPhone is efficient at these tasks at very low latency? Or even your Mac? Go ahead and try to use Internet sharing on your Mac with 200 clients, whether or not all of them or even a few of them are trying to access the Internet at the same time. Like your iPhone, it simply isn't built for the task.

 

[hayesk]

Best thing is the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G share the very same hardware. Yet both are cut off in 4.3, they’d be running 4.3 efficiently. IT’s stupid marketing play in typical Apple style.

That's not exactly true. The iPhone 3G is faster than the original iPhone - by a fair bit. The iPhone 3G, however, have the same amount of RAM as the original iPhone.

 

[pmz]

Doesn't matter. We don't need it for that. Who wants to share 1 - 3 mbps
with 3 other devices, let alone more? No, tethering from your personal smartphone is meant for your noteboook or your iPad, nothing more.

What's most interesting is why does it say "Photobooth" comes to the iPhone with iOS 4.3? It most certainly does not.

 

[pmz]

Best thing is the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G share the very same hardware. Yet both are cut off in 4.3, they’d be running 4.3 efficiently. IT’s stupid marketing play in typical Apple style.

You have no idea what you're talking about. This is about as simple as it gets...They have slow hardware, 400-600 Mhz and 128 mb of RAM. They ran the software built for them, just fine...

Today, software IS NOT BUILT FOR THEM. It's being built for the 900 - 1 Ghz, 256 - 512 mb of RAM devices. So naturally, it runs like crap on the older devices.

There is a very simple solution. Don't Upgrade the Software On Your Old Phone. It will continue to run beautifully for years to come, but if you NEED something new, buy a new phone, and stop talking about marketing ploys. It's been almost 5 years since the original iPhone! You think things should stay the same that long? Get a grip.

 

[bassfingers]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148a Safari/6533.18.5)

But you still have to pay to use the data. All carriers who do this: you're teh suk balls

 

[zorinlynx]

Why do you people DEFEND Apple's decisions to limit what the hardware can do?

I mean, I love Apple stuff as much as the next guy, but I'm very quick to point out when they do something stupid.

And an artificial 3 user limit on the personal hotspot is just plain stupid. The hardware is capable of a hell of a lot more.

Don't love a company so blindly that you start agreeing with its decisions to screw you.

 

[NoStopN]

The only thing I can complain about is that every report I see says that personal hotspot will only be on the iPhone 4. Us 3GS users are out of luck. I guess MyWi & TetherMe/iTether apps won't be made useless after all.

 

[DrJohnnyN]

why do you people defend apple's decisions to limit what the hardware can do?

I mean, i love apple stuff as much as the next guy, but i'm very quick to point out when they do something stupid.

And an artificial 3 user limit on the personal hotspot is just plain stupid. The hardware is capable of a hell of a lot more.

Don't love a company so blindly that you start agreeing with its decisions to screw you.

This.

 

[AppDeveloper]

The only thing I can complain about is that every report I see says that personal hotspot will only be on the iPhone 4. Us 3GS users are out of luck. I guess MyWi & TetherMe/iTether apps won't be made useless after all.

That depends what you want to connect to your iPhone 3GS. If iPad or Mac computers you are NOT out of luck. The personal hotspots works also on iPhone 3GS with bluetooth so you can share the Internet with your iPad or Mac notebook or iMac using the bluetooth connections. It works. I use this. I have even heard that someone was able to use PC notebook for that.

I guess Apple is just careful here since many people assume that hotspot functionality is automatically WiFi... And iPhone 3GS cannot use WiFi for that.

 

[hayesk]

Why do you people DEFEND Apple's decisions to limit what the hardware can do?

I'll defend Apple's decision when it makes sense. What I won't do is spout off about how Apple is somehow "wronging" me when the limitation doesn't matter, and I don't know the reason for the limitation. You could argue the limitation to 3 instead of 4 or 5 is ridiculous, but come on? Does it matter?

The assertion that the iPhone can be a hotspot for unlimited devices is ridiculous. If that were true, Cisco would be out of business. We'd just use cell phone hardware for routing the Internet.

 

[ghostlyorb]

MyWi will work with 5 devices on my iPhone 4... so the phone can support it for sure!

 

[ranReloaded]

Why are they limiting to 3? I bet a couple of weeks later they'll come up with a 'pro' plan that lets you connect up to 5 devices and costs more.

That is "The Carrier Way".

 

[notabadname]

Why do you people DEFEND Apple's decisions to limit what the hardware can do?

I mean, I love Apple stuff as much as the next guy, but I'm very quick to point out when they do something stupid.

And an artificial 3 user limit on the personal hotspot is just plain stupid. The hardware is capable of a hell of a lot more.

Don't love a company so blindly that you start agreeing with its decisions to screw you.

Don't "so blindly" assume that just because other people disagree with you, they must be "blindly" agreeing with Apple. Amazingly, people can be well grounded, and not blind, even if they side with Apple and not you.

Simply let go, and accept that some "sighted" people actually don't agree with you