Iphone tethinging as modem to router.

[matt_mu]

I'm wondering if i use my iphone with usb tethering and get a female usb to male Ethernet adapter, plug my iPhone usb cable into my iphone and the other end into the usb adapter and plug it into the internet ethernet port on my router i could the my iPhone as a modem and power my routers internet?

 

[digistyle]

Alfred I have the same DWR-116 router but could not get mine to work with my iPhone 6s. I have a MoFi router and it will plu and play perfect. Plug in USB and it asks to trust and everything works beautifully. But when I plug in USB to the dwr-116 it never recognizes or asks to trust. What firmware version are you running on the 116? Or do you have a custom firmware? Btw you said you put in your pin, what pin are you referring to? I know some USB and personal hotspot devices you get from your carrier come with a username password and pin, but I was unaware of that for iPhone. Even if tethering jailboken or native hotspot sharing. Thanks in advance

 

[Hitek146]

Alfred I have the same DWR-116 router but could not get mine to work with my iPhone 6s. I have a MoFi router and it will plu and play perfect. Plug in USB and it asks to trust and everything works beautifully. But when I plug in USB to the dwr-116 it never recognizes or asks to trust. What firmware version are you running on the 116? Or do you have a custom firmware? Btw you said you put in your pin, what pin are you referring to? I know some USB and personal hotspot devices you get from your carrier come with a username password and pin, but I was unaware of that for iPhone. Even if tethering jailboken or native hotspot sharing. Thanks in advance

On your iPhone, hotspot must be enabled in settings. If your carrier and/or data plan does not support this, then the hotspot option will not show up in the settings menu. In this case, you would need to jailbreak your phone and install TetherMe(what I use) or MyWi(I think it's called) in order to enable tethering. Without enabling the hotspot feature, no devices connected to your phone will be able to detect your phone's internet access.

Personally, I use a TP-Link TL-MR3040 with OpenWRT installed that I configured to bridge the USB iPhone interface over to an ethernet port that I can plug into any router or computer....

[Edit] I thought your MoFi was a hotspot that your were connecting to your DWR-116, and I didn't realize that it was it's own router connecting to your iPhone. In your case, I would guess that the software drivers on the DWR-116 haven't been updated to support an iPhone 6, while the MoFi(most likely due to it's premium cost) has the latest drivers that do support an iPhone 6. Just a guess; you could always connect the phone to a Windows laptop with iTunes drivers installed, and bridge the iPhone network connection to the ethernet port, which you could then plug into the WAN port of any router. I know it's sloppy, but it works if you really need it...

 

[Baz3146]

Got a close friend stuck in the middle of absolutely no where.

He asked this very thing after getting iPhone 7 with unlimited data thru AT&T.

He'd like to tether his router to use his iP7 hotspot and share the internet connection to his 2 PCs.
Laptop and Desktop.

Would it be easier to just theather to his iP7?
Or go the router tethering to iPhone.

Anything new and the cheapest we can sort out for him would be the best.

Like a specific router that has the ability to tether to iP7 HotSpot.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Hitek146]

The USB tethering option is really just for people that need to connect their device to a router or host computer through a cable. If anyone just needs to have Internet through wifi, then enabling tethering through mywi or tetherme would be enough to supply Internet without having to use any other equipment...
If you have any more questions, or need me to elaborate, feel free to respond again...

 

[Eccmvincent]

I'm wanting to connect my iPhone 6 to something in my car to broadcast wifi for my Android tablet. I'm doing this same setup in two cars and don't want to spend any money I don't have to...the problem is I haven't found an 'automatic' solution.

I found an app that runs in Windows and broadcasts a hotspot, but you must manually tell it to start. It's called mHotspot. I've emailed the company to see if they have a script for an 'autotether' when it's detected, or a script that can be run, but I haven't heard back.

The benefit of this is that it can be used with every (I think) rev of iPhone, as the iTunes software will update the drivers when the phone is updated and then connected.

My other idea was to use this with a LattePanda to minimize boot time and energy usage (instead of a full-blown computer), and it still runs genuine Windows 10, so iTunes and the drivers will work.

 

[Hitek146]

I'm wanting to connect my iPhone 6 to something in my car to broadcast wifi for my Android tablet. I'm doing this same setup in two cars and don't want to spend any money I don't have to...the problem is I haven't found an 'automatic' solution.

I found an app that runs in Windows and broadcasts a hotspot, but you must manually tell it to start. It's called mHotspot. I've emailed the company to see if they have a script for an 'autotether' when it's detected, or a script that can be run, but I haven't heard back.

The benefit of this is that it can be used with every (I think) rev of iPhone, as the iTunes software will update the drivers when the phone is updated and then connected.

My other idea was to use this with a LattePanda to minimize boot time and energy usage (instead of a full-blown computer), and it still runs genuine Windows 10, so iTunes and the drivers will work.

Not sure why you wouldn't just use the WiFi hotspot feature of the phone. While Windows is a nice OS for daily usage, it pretty much sucks for any embedded type of application like you are suggesting. Even if you did use Windows, driver updates wouldn't be an issue because the working set of drivers currently installed would continue to work without them having to be updated. The drivers are actually seperate from iTunes, and as long as the driver were installed, iTunes is not necessary. Also, using a WiFi card as an Access Point(hotspot) under Windows is very flaky, and even then only certain wireless cards are supported.

As I stated above, I use my iPhone USB tethered to a router with a USB port, and certain routers can even provide the WiFi hotspot for you(mine doesn't have enough memory to do both tethering and WiFi simultaneously) if you can't just use the iPhone's built in hotspot.

I actually use my setup in my truck, and have my router configured to provide a local hotspot for my tablet and laptop in my truck, while constantly watching for local free internet such as McDonalds or Walmart. When the router detects free WiFi(if I'm parked at Walmart or McDonalds, or my home or my friend's house) it will connect to the free WiFi and re-broadcast it over my hotspot instead of using the data on my iPhone. When I leave an area with free WiFi, my router automatically switches my hotspot's data source over to my iPhone. Works great!

 

[Eccmvincent]

Thanks for the quick response! There hasn't been much info that I've found regarding this challenge. The issue that I have is that in order to get the tethering straight from the iPhone (and connect to it with Android), is that I manually have to go into the hotspot screen on the iPhone. I have previously had it jailbroken so that I could activate the broadcast each time I plugged my phone into power (or it connected to my radio via Bluetooth), but have had to upgrade it to 10.3 for work and lost my ability to do so.

My concern with the "4G routers" is that from what I've seen, many of them tend to be locked to a specific iOS rev (many in the 6.xx range) and iPhone (iPhone 5 is the newest for some of them). Every time that you update your iOS, you MAY have to update the firmware on the router.

If this is wrong, I will happily take that knowledge and apply it! I need something that I can just dock my iPhone in the car, and it starts the hotspot.

It sounds like you have found a solution, so I'd love to know more! I joined TG just for this particular thread, so I am not familiar with how all of this works. I did see some stuff about DD-WRT, which I've used in the distant past, but I am unfamiliar with it's use on equipment other than the generic Linksys home routers.

Thanks!
Eric

Not sure why you wouldn't just use the WiFi hotspot feature of the phone. While Windows is a nice OS for daily usage, it pretty much sucks for any embedded type of application like you are suggesting. Even if you did use Windows, driver updates wouldn't be an issue because the working set of drivers currently installed would continue to work without them having to be updated. The drivers are actually seperate from iTunes, and as long as the driver were installed, iTunes is not necessary. Also, using a WiFi card as an Access Point(hotspot) under Windows is very flaky, and even then only certain wireless cards are supported.

As I stated above, I use my iPhone USB tethered to a router with a USB port, and certain routers can even provide the WiFi hotspot for you(mine doesn't have enough memory to do both tethering and WiFi simultaneously) if you can't just use the iPhone's built in hotspot.

I actually use my setup in my truck, and have my router configured to provide a local hotspot for my tablet and laptop in my truck, while constantly watching for local free internet such as McDonalds or Walmart. When the router detects free WiFi(if I'm parked at Walmart or McDonalds, or my home or my friend's house) it will connect to the free WiFi and re-broadcast it over my hotspot instead of using the data on my iPhone. When I leave an area with free WiFi, my router automatically switches my hotspot's data source over to my iPhone. Works great!

 

[jgerbracht]

Hitek146 ---- You said "Personally, I use a TP-Link TL-MR3040 with OpenWRT installed that I configured to bridge the USB iPhone interface over to an ethernet port that I can plug into any router or computer.... "

Can you give details on that...I have the MR3040 and installed OpenWrt on it--But nothing happens when I plug my iPhone into it. There is nothing on the config pages that gives me a option for USB--its just wifi or Ethernet--thanks.

 

[danearman]

Hitek146 ---- You said "Personally, I use a TP-Link TL-MR3040 with OpenWRT installed that I configured to bridge the USB iPhone interface over to an ethernet port that I can plug into any router or computer.... "

Can you give details on that...I have the MR3040 and installed OpenWrt on it--But nothing happens when I plug my iPhone into it. There is nothing on the config pages that gives me a option for USB--its just wifi or Ethernet--thanks.

Did you ever get this resolved. I have also been trying to get an iPhone 6S connected to a Openwrt router using a usb connection. The openwork router can see the iPhone device connecting and disconnecting from the USB port but the iPhone never asks me to "trust the device" nor does a USB0 ethernet device ever get created. Any help would be much appreciated.

Note: I have installed the following openwrt packages and rebooted.

kmod-usb-net kmod-usb-net-rndis kmod-usb-net-cdc-ether  kmod-usb-net-ipheth

 

[brandon.tamm]

Can anyone confirm that with this HOTSPOT > ROUTER IN BRIDGE MODE > WIFI ROUTER (connected via ethernet) setup.....

1) Do you need to manually start the hotspot if devices are not using it after so long? (Is the hotspot connection persistent or does the iPhone/iPad have to be manually manipulated stop working if nothing is connected for so long?)

2) Has anyone done this with all Apple devices - envision IPAD HOTSPOT > AIRPORT EXPRESS (Bridge mode) > AIRPORT TIME CAPSULE ... does this work well and if so is there any manual manipulation or is this set it up once and forget it?

 

[danearman]

Hey Brandon,

FYI, I never could get this solution to work and never got any response to my question. Hopefully you have better luck than I did.

Can anyone confirm that with this HOTSPOT > ROUTER IN BRIDGE MODE > WIFI ROUTER (connected via ethernet) setup.....

1) Do you need to manually start the hotspot if devices are not using it after so long? (Is the hotspot connection persistent or does the iPhone/iPad have to be manually manipulated stop working if nothing is connected for so long?)

2) Has anyone done this with all Apple devices - envision IPAD HOTSPOT > AIRPORT EXPRESS (Bridge mode) > AIRPORT TIME CAPSULE ... does this work well and if so is there any manual manipulation or is this set it up once and forget it?

 

[treycopeland25]

Hello all,

I'm moving to the country in a few weeks and moving from ATT to T-Mobile unlimited. I'll have an iPhone 8 with their buy one get one promotion. The only options for Internet in that area where I'll be moving is satellite. The other option is 4G LTE cellular data.

Has anyone confirmed that this works with an iPhone 8? I'm wanting to connect the iPhone tethering to the router via USB and broadcast that hotspot connection through the wireless router throughout the whole house.

I haven't been able to test this yet, but wanted to get some more recent comments and discussion going on this. With most major carriers going to unlimited data now, I'm sure this set up is becoming more widespread.

Thanks,
Trey

 

[swrtwdrv]

Hi Trey,

I don't directly connect my iPhone to my router. I use my iPhone as a Personal Hotspot. I set up a D-Link DAP-1650 Range Extender in Media Bridge mode and connect it to my Google OnHub router via Ethernet, and all of my devices connect to the OnHub. If I had a bigger home, I could add Google Wifi points or OnHubs to form a mesh network.

One big negative to this setup is that Xfinity is my cell phone provider, and they limit devices tethered to my cell phone hotspot, namely my network, to 600kbs up and down, so things are a bit slow. This is OK for my vacation home, but is too slow for my main home.

Rich