Tether your iPhone 3G to your laptop – Use your iPhone 3G as a wireless modem
By Will Park on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 12:38 PM PST In Announcements, Apple, Applications, iPhone, iPhone OS
The iPhone tethering solution (”tethering” is a method that allows your laptop to use your mobile phone’s wireless data connection to surf the web, check email, etc.) that allowed first-generation iPhone owners to hop on the information superhighway at EDGE speeds wasn’t exactly what you would call preferred method for getting web access on-the-go. But, EDGE data speeds were enough for short-stints of web-surfing and email checking – when you absolutely need an internet-fix with no landline or WiFi hotspot in sight.
[Update]
There’s now an easier way to tether your iPhone 3G and iPhone to your laptop. PDAnet allows you to use your iPhone as a wireless modem without any of the terminal commands required in this tutorial. PDAnet also allows you to use your iPhone and iPhone 3G’s wireless data connection to check email and send Instant Messages in addition to browsing the web. Find the new iPhone 3G tether tutorial here.
[Update2]
Tethering your iPhone 3G is even easier with iPhone OS 3.0 installed. The newly released iPhone 3.0 OS supports data tethering out-of-the-box, it just takes a little (very little) hackery to get it to work.
Find the updated iPhone 3G tethering hack here.
With the iPhone 3G launched in over 22 countries, mobile warriors the world over are cruising along at UMTS/HSPA speeds with abandon. And, now that the iPhone Dev Team has busted the iPhone 3G out of its file-system lock-down, second-generation iPhone 3G owners can now tether that delicious 3G data connection to their data-hungry laptops. Forget EDGE, 3G data is how you want to be perusing the intertubes, regardless of whether you’re using an iPhone or laptop.
You’ll need to jailbreak your iPhone 3G to its 3G data connection through to your laptop, so make sure you brush up on your iPhone 3G jailbreak protocol before jumping in to this iPhone 3G tethering guide.
Follow this tutorial to get your iPhone 3G tethered and playing nice with your laptop:
- Jailbreak your iPhone 3G
- Install 3Proxy and MobileTerminal
- Fire up the “Cydia” application that was installed during the iPhone 3G jailbreak
- Navigate to Install>All Packages
- Find and install MobileTerminal
- Find and install 3Proxy
- Hit the “Home” button to verify that MobileTerminal is now installed on the homescreen (3Proxy isn’t a GUI app, so you won’t see an application icon)
- Create an ad-hoc WiFi network on your laptop laptop
- Name it something memorable – like “Tether-ific”
- Lock your iPhone 3G on to the ad-hoc WiFi network you just created
- Settings>WiFi Networks
- Find out your iPhone’s IP address
- Setting>WiFi Networks
- Tap on the little blue arrow to the right of the WiFi network you just joined – “Tether-ific,” in this case
- Write down the iPhone IP address
- Fire up MobileTerminal on your iPhone 3G
- Execute the proxy program
- Type in “socks” and hit enter
- You won’t get any confirmation that the SOCKS server is up and running, but it is
- Hit the “Hom” button to return to homescreen
- Remember to quit the MobileTerminal application by opening it later and holding down the “Home” button and forcing it to quit
- Execute the proxy program
- Start up your iPhone’s Safari browser and open a web page
- Wait for your iPhone’s Safari browser to realize that it can’t use the ad-hoc WiFi network (because it leads nowhere, for now) and then switch to using the 3G data connection
- This step takes a little while, so be patient
- Configure Firefox to use your iPhone proxy
- Preferences>Advanced>Network>Setting
- Find the “SOCKS Host” field and enter the IP address you wrote down earlier
- Set port to”1080″
- Go to Firefox’s address bar and type in “about:config”
- Hit Enter
- Find the “Filter” field and type in “socks”
- Hit Enter
- Find the entry that looks like “network.proxy.socks_remote_dns”
- Double click
- Change value to “true”
- You’re done, get to surfing the web through your new iPhone 3G tether!
Remember to quit MobileTerminal when you’re done surfing at 3G speeds. Start up MobileTerminal again and hold down the “Home” button until the application force-quits
[Update2]
Tethering your iPhone 3G is even easier with iPhone OS 3.0 installed. The newly released iPhone 3.0 OS supports data tethering out-of-the-box, it just takes a little (very little) hackery to get it to work.
Find the updated iPhone 3G tethering hack here.
This is a way better (quicker) option to do this:
http://lifehacker.com/398961/get-your-computer-online-using-your-iphones-data-connection
Cool! It works fine! Now I got some real use for my dataplan, and the high premium I got to pay (sweden/telia =P ) doesn’t feel so tough
Hi,
How do I execute the proxy program “3Proxy” I tried to do it last nite with no success!
Tom
@Tom
run “socks” in the MobileTerminal.
This doesn’t work for me btw. Tried several times but no luck.
Does this still work or has AT&T figured out how to stop it? I want an iphone, but I want to be able to tether…
Hi guys, I searched high and low for an easy application and believe I found it http://www.iphonemodem.de
@Gabriel
Does that work on a pc as well?
Hi Adrian, not sure what you mean.
But I what I do (after I have installed Iphonemodem)
- I have created a Ad-Hoc network on my pc and let my iphone connect to this network via Wifi.
– Check the IP adress of Iphone when connected to the ad-hoc network (Settings, WiFi Networks, tap on the network created above)
- In Firefox, Options, Network, Setting, Manual Proxy Configuration at Socks Host I put the Iphone IP Adress and port 1080.
- I switch on the iphone modem on the Iphone.
- Surf internet via Firefox.
connect with my laptop via Ad-hoc network to the Iphone. I set the iphones IP address in the manual proxy configuration (port 1080)
please ignore the last two sentences in posting above
There is a much easier solution for this called PDA Net that you can get in Cydia and be browsing at 3G Speeds with the iPhone. Its pretty slick and you don’t have to deal with the Proxy’s!
you guys are amazing!! i have been searching all over the internet for hoursss on end! and this website answered all questions i needed about ssh and mobile terminal!! thanks a great deal!!! You all are so amazing, i just got my 3g a few weeks ago and its been jail broken since then.
Thanks again, all of the hard work made is greatly appreciated!
Hi guys, I searched high and low for an easy application and believe I found it. how can i be your distributor.please contact me back via my email
am not able to browse secure sites. any sugestions.
i tried this for the first time a few weeks ago and could not get it to work. Granted i was using the browser on my iphone and writing down the directions as best as i could. today i decided to print them off before i left for the day and voila! im on it right now sitting next to a lake. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS TUTORIAL!!!!!!!
Great post, I found more iphone tethering information on this site dedicated to 3g Iphone tethering >> 3gtethering.com. Check it out if you need more help, or if oyu have another phone.
I guess you need a some sort of data plan?
I have a jailbroken 1st gen, no edge plan, I can’t use this can I?? :$
yes you can jayson we got it to work on the first gen tonight
i have a hp laptop running vista and i had no problem getting pda net to work or jailbreaking and i am new to the iphone thank you for the help in getting the software needed for it to work
can anyone tell me how to view pics on the iphone 3g without having to put in that user id and password
AY… Are you freakin serious?!? Utfse. Stop coming into threads asking irrelevant info?
I found this. It is way easier. I didn’t want to mess with jailbreaking. It took me like 5 min and I was online. REALLY EASY!
http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/18/how-to-tether-your-iphone-running-os-3-0-without-jailbreaking/
could u tether a i phone 2nd gen 8 GB? for my home pc and laptop? Just really need to know because I am going through a Divorvce n hav no money so I just nees to know asap cause my ex is going to cancle my service through t mobile n i wont b able to keep my phone # soon but tmobile is to expensive for me unless I could tether my phone for home pc n laptod?
The 2 Gen iPhone will tether and work fine. I used to use it often, especially when my home internet would go down (sometimes frequent). However, with the update to the newer versions of iTunes and software update on the phone a couple of months ago, the option to back-door open up tethering has been closed. I’m not certain if you can down grade you phone software back to a point were it will work. You could simply try it using the above directions. If it works, then don’t upgrade you phone software or iTunes when prompted (like I did) and it should still work. I tried redoing it after my software upgrade, but it doesn’t enable the tethering feature (it doesn’t even show up on the phone any longer).