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New to tethering. Help!

T

twstd1

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 27, 2011
3
0
I have an iphone 4 with an unlimited plan (lucky me!) and am very curious about tethering.
What is the easiest, best method to turn my phone into a mobile hotspot?
I have done an internet search and most of the pages with tips and pointers are out of date.
I saw that Tether just got taken off of the App store.. Bummer.

What is the best thing to do? Jailbreak? Tether App? What is an unlimited data plan gal to do?
 
Tethering is the fastest way to lose your grandfathered unlimited ;) ... AT&T's system can find out almost immediately to which you'll receive a text notifying you, and then they'll force you to switch plans and pay for tethering. "Tethering" needs to be hid from the carrier, you could try PDA net but I know others have still had AT&T find out.
 
Tethering doesn't need to be hidden from anyone.

Contact your carrier to get a tethering plan. Your unlimited plan will not give you tethering.
 
Givmeabrek said:
Tethering doesn't need to be hidden from anyone.

Contact your carrier to get a tethering plan. Your unlimited plan will not give you tethering.
Click to expand...
Considering she was looking at Tether app that was banned quickly and searching talking about jb'ing, I took it as she wanted to know how to tether and not lose unlimited, in which yeh the app needs to hide it from the carrier like PDA did. However I don't know about other carriers, but AT&T can still find out.

You can jailbreak and take the risk of being forced to still go to a different plan and pay extra for tethering on top of it, or just go ahead and switch plans anyway lol
 
SurferMan said:
You can jailbreak and take the risk of being forced to still go to a different plan and pay extra for tethering on top of it, or just go ahead and switch plans anyway lol
Click to expand...

Jailbreaking is fine, loading a tethering app will likely get you flagged.

If you want tethering, you need to pay for it. They will see you and you will be switched to a tethering plan.
 
"Considering she was looking at Tether app that was banned quickly and searching talking about jb'ing, I took it as she wanted to know how to tether and not lose unlimited, in which yeh the app needs to hide it from the carrier like PDA did. However I don't know about other carriers, but AT&T can still find out."




Ha, ha, you reached the same conclusion I did. :)
 
wpotere said:
Jailbreaking is fine, loading a tethering app will likely get you flagged.

If you want tethering, you need to pay for it. They will see you and you will be switched to a tethering plan.
Click to expand...

Umm.. no.

Loading a tethering app will NOT get you flagged; tethering and consuming copious amounts of data will.

I've had MyWi loaded on my iPhone 3G for the past 3 years. I have not once been flagged for excessive tethering. On average, I use no more than 4MB down, and 3MB up (I only use it for work, and once per month). I'm on a grandfathered unlimited data plan.

Those that use and abuse it are getting flagged. Don't abuse it, and you should be fine.

BL.
 
bradl said:
Umm.. no.

Loading a tethering app will NOT get you flagged; tethering and consuming copious amounts of data will.

I've had MyWi loaded on my iPhone 3G for the past 3 years. I have not once been flagged for excessive tethering. On average, I use no more than 4MB down, and 3MB up (I only use it for work, and once per month). I'm on a grandfathered unlimited data plan.

Those that use and abuse it are getting flagged. Don't abuse it, and you should be fine.

BL.
Click to expand...

LOL, don't think that they can't see it. :rolleyes: Yes, you can load it and they may or may not say anything. However, I do know someone that tethered for only a day and only surfed the web that was sent a text about it. So your theory about it only being if you use copious amounts of data holds no water. ;)
 
In the past it was cool, nobody cared really, not even AT&T... I used to tether to my hearts content. I think it was only in the recent year or so where the # of smart phones users has gotten so large and continues to exponentially grow that carrier put their foot down.
 
Thanks y'all. Yeah, I wanted to tether with my unlimited plan. I live in an RV and do not have hard wired internet. So, aircards are where it's at for me. But they are pricey and my Virgin card slows me down after 5G. I was hoping to use my ATT unlimited plan and ditch a $40 a month pop for the Virgin card.
I already use it for Netflix and so my data usage is not small. But if they have a way to flag me and I might be putting my Netflix in danger:)... Eh, $40 a month for the aircard will have to do.
And again, thanks for the input.
:)
 
Givmeabrek said:
Tethering doesn't need to be hidden from anyone.

Contact your carrier to get a tethering plan. Your unlimited plan will not give you tethering.
Click to expand...

That's not completely true, in many countris outside of the US, it does give you tethering.
 
twstd1 said:
Thanks y'all. Yeah, I wanted to tether with my unlimited plan. I live in an RV and do not have hard wired internet. So, aircards are where it's at for me. But they are pricey and my Virgin card slows me down after 5G. I was hoping to use my ATT unlimited plan and ditch a $40 a month pop for the Virgin card.
I already use it for Netflix and so my data usage is not small. But if they have a way to flag me and I might be putting my Netflix in danger:)... Eh, $40 a month for the aircard will have to do.
And again, thanks for the input.
:)
Click to expand...
Yeh we still have grandfathered unlimited as well, I used to tether in the past, very handy when traveling or with friends on vaycay. AT&T didn't really care, same as other carriers like I mentioned before. However especially in the last year or so they've really cracked down with the # of smart phone users and that # keeps growing daily. So haven't done it in a long time, not risking losing our family unlimited across all lines.

If you really need tethering though, they do offer it though and it works very nice, think my buddy pay's $20 a month (cheaper then the air-card) on top of his data plan (you'd have to switch and lose unlimited, but a lot of people that have unlimited still don't usually go over the current data plan limits anyway, i.e. 2GB a month etc)... which if you really need to tether isn't a bad deal.
 
How come in the US you need to pay for tethering and why do you need to use apps like iTether? I just turn on the Personal Hotspot in Settings and connect my laptop via wifi.
 
SurferMan said:
Considering she was looking at Tether app that was banned quickly and searching talking about jb'ing, I took it as she wanted to know how to tether and not lose unlimited, in which yeh the app needs to hide it from the carrier like PDA did. However I don't know about other carriers, but AT&T can still find out.

You can jailbreak and take the risk of being forced to still go to a different plan and pay extra for tethering on top of it, or just go ahead and switch plans anyway lol
Click to expand...

Even if you "hide" your Tethering with the help of PDANet, AT&T can still find out?

This doesn't exactly apply to me directly, as I have sprint. I tethered using a rooted android phone for nearly 14 months and never had an issue.

I thought the whole point of the tether masking in PDANet was so that you can't get "caught"?
 
bjb.butler said:
Even if you "hide" your Tethering with the help of PDANet, AT&T can still find out?

This doesn't exactly apply to me directly, as I have sprint. I tethered using a rooted android phone for nearly 14 months and never had an issue.

I thought the whole point of the tether masking in PDANet was so that you can't get "caught"?
Click to expand...
it is, but that doesn't mean that it works. There are plenty of people that have been caught using PDANet's "hide usage" feature.

Now, to know if they got caught after using pdanet, or if they were caught based on previous tethering usage on the account is the golden nugget of info that, unfortunately, we will probably never know.
 
twstd1 said:
Thanks y'all. Yeah, I wanted to tether with my unlimited plan. I live in an RV and do not have hard wired internet. So, aircards are where it's at for me. But they are pricey and my Virgin card slows me down after 5G. I was hoping to use my ATT unlimited plan and ditch a $40 a month pop for the Virgin card.
Click to expand...

FWIW: AT&T is probably going to throttle you after about 2GB, even if you manage to hide the tethering traffic from them. AT&T is now throttling all unlimited plans if you end up in what they claim is the "top 5%" of data users, which they say is at about 2GB per month.

And if you're streaming netflix, then I wouldn't recommend the regular tethering plan from AT&T either, since after 4GB of usage in a billing cycle, they start charging $10 per GB.

I would check and see if maybe Clear is in your area. If they are, you can get WiMax from them for about $35 a month, which is cheaper than virgin mobile and probably much faster.
 
Or if you think you would use less than 4GB per month, get the 4 GB data plan from ATT which includes tethering. You wont get throttled and you may end up saving in the end since no aircard.
 
This whole tethering issue in the USA is ********.

In Thailand they sell you the phone. Unlimited 3G. They don't care whether you are tethering or what. It's your phone, your plan, you use it as you want to use it.

All I do is plug in my phone and it connects my laptop to the internet. I leave the Personal Hotspot on all the time.

What they do here is that if you go over 3GB they throttle your speed down to EDGE until the next bill. Resets on the 9th every month.

However, I have done many times more than 3GB and they have never throttled me down.
 
For those that aren't encumbered by draconian US carriers (although it should be noted that Canadian carriers are far worse), or who have paid for a tethering plan, tethering on iPhone is extremely simple:

Step 1: http://cl.ly/Cvuf

Step 2: http://cl.ly/CvuK

Step 3: http://cl.ly/Cw1M

Step 4: http://cl.ly/Cv8p

Then, it's simply a matter of connecting to the wi-fi hotspot being broadcast by your iPhone:

Screen%20Shot%202011-12-28%20at%208.58.55%20PM.png
 
Last edited:
milani said:
Sorry the pictures are so big. I'm too lazy to scale them down in Photoshop, and VB code won't let me scale them, either.
Click to expand...

Download the Photobucket App. Upload there. The app will give you the option in the settings to set the upload resolution.

Like this

2631f8ce.jpg


and there I am doing my personal hotspot BTW. As usual.

Carrier is TrueMove Thailand.
 
Thai4s said:
Download the Photobucket App. Upload there. The app will give you the option in the settings to set the upload resolution.
Click to expand...

Good point, but I just changed the image embeds to URLs. :D

EDIT: I am downloading the app, though. Looks great.
 
Last edited:
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