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Comment by cosmosgenius | Hacker News Reader

Is this any better than just doing Hotspot with wifi bridge? I just have my hotspot on my pixel for my devices to connect to. Pixel itself is connected to whatever "public wifi" is there.

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Your hotspot just makes the untrusted hotel wifi available via your phone wifi. The networks between your computer and your target services can still inspect and alter your data. Tailscale, or more specifically the Wireshark underneat, sets up an encrypted tunnel so those "untrusted" intermediate networks can't do that.

If my phone has a VPN to my home server, then it should all be encrypted.

Yes, but it wont work for sharing mobile internet because VPN doee not apply to tethering unless you have root. On Android there is also WiFi direct, but it's not very reliable and require proxy / not work for everything.

s/Wireshark/wireguard

Does that actually work? I don't think you can both have hotspot on and be connected to another network.

Yes, it has actually worked starting with the Pixel 3.

It's called Dual-Band Simultaneous or "STA+AP" (Station + Access Point) concurrency that can bridge an existing wifi connection to an access point to other devices via a hotspot.

Yes it works. Now you can also tether via USB. Both of them have worked flawlessly for me recently.

It seems to be only on certain devices feature(?): on my Pixel it worked, Samsung phone just says "sorry, can't do that".

Most newer (or at least new + expensive) phones can share their wifi connection via hotspot. 2.4gh only though I think.

Do you know what’s the technical term to search if a phone has that capability? Asking for an iPhone

Like WiFi tethering?

My iPhone calls it personal hotspot.

It's my understanding that personal hotspot can only utilize the cellular connection for the internet side since the wifi connection is being used to connect clientside. If one is hoping to use hotel wifi rather than their cellular plan data, Apple's solution won't work.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong on this however.

Unfortunately, iPhone can't bridge wifi networks, which makes travel routers particularly useful if you have an iphone, and a laptop, and are staying at a hotel with wifi.

Not only new and expensive, my 5 year old budget phone could do it (a vivo).

Budget Chinese phones often have features that only expensive American or Korean phones have.

Works fine, yup.

In my experience hotels throttle wifi connection per device (IP/Mac address or whatever) and so you'd be better off using something that can use the wired connection in your room (which is usually unthrottled or has higher bandwidth) and be an AP for your personal devices.

If you don't have a wired connection then this wouldn't be any better, except for any connectivity features it might offer (probably some vpn capability).

I have a gl-inet device and it does pretty much all I need whenever I travel.

Hotels in Las Vegas typically charge around $15/day per connected device. Want to download a new book on your Kobo and play Diablo for a few minutes? That’ll be $30, please!

That’s the real win of a travel router, IMO.

Is this a common occurrence in the US? It sounds worse than tipping culture.

Nah just Vegas being Vegas. The whole area is designed to squeeze every dollar out of you.

Good to know, in some bizarre way. Thank you!

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