Jailbreak: Get Your Computer Online Using Your iPhone's Data Connection | Hacker News Reader

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

lifehacker.com

29 pointsechair23 comments

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...

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.

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.)

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.

uh yeah with the word _Emergency_. RDF? - I don't even own a Mac or an iPhone. I would have made the same comment if "iPhone" was replaced with any other phone.

Obviously, I would highly recommend having a better backup solution in place, but if shit hits the fan and you have to connect to computer A to remote location server B, this seems like an OK option. Do you have any other ideas? Please share - can't have too many backup plans :).

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

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.

You're being pedantic. It's quite obvious that they mean unlimited on a 3G cellphone modem, which has a fundamentally limited throughput.

Seriously...this is like debating with the people who think it's okay to bring Tupperware to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

this is like debating with the people who think it's okay to bring Tupperware to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

It's more like management kicking you out after they've felt you've had "all-you-can-eat".

Hmm. Well you are not allowed to tether the phone. So if they are not expecting users to do that it is reasonable to have a 5Gb limit since no one would break that.

Whether it is ethical to enforce a no-tether policy is a separate debate.

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?

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.

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

Browse the web without needing WAP etc support.

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.

"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?

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...

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)

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.

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.

Indeed. But I do a lot of those on my phone anyway. Lot simpler than pulling out the laptop, and I like browsing on my phone more than I do on my laptop (egads).

Windows Mobile phones can tunnel socket connections over ssh natively?

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com