Advantages of tethering, i.e. PDAnet, Easy-Tether

[Sweet Kitten Feet]

Tell what the advantages are. Seems like this would only be usefull in a place where there is no wi-fi, and I'm reliant on 3G, is that correct? I currently have VZW wireless broadband. I was on the employee and got it for cheap. No longer an employee and it's like 70 a month. So I'm dropping it on April 1. Trying to decide whether to replace it with cable modem and wireless router for less than half the price per month and just tether it to my droid.

 

[Stretch2m]

You've hit the nail on the head: it's primary use is for people who don't want to pay for wireless broadband separately from their 3G plan. There may be other benefits but I can't think of any.

 

[br91655]

Well, it's nice in emergencies. I'm posting this from my desktop which is wirelessly tethered to the droid. My cable internet is down and has been all day. In other words, Verizon is bailing Comcast out of deep poo.

 

[LtKen]

Well, it's nice in emergencies.

This is all I use it for, since it's technically a violation of my ToS. I know they'll likely never bust me for it, but I never played in the street as a kid. Depending on how much data you use, you may or may not red flag you as someone to check on. Plenty of people here do 10+ Gb/month with no problems. I however downloaded 1/2 a terabyte last month on my home cable connection, so the phone tethering would not be an option.

 

[jsh1120]

Since my cable connection and wifi in my home network yields performance about ten times faster than 3G, I have no incentive to tether my droid to my home system(s). And when I'm on the road on business I almost always have a strong wifi connection in my hotel room; again making 3G coverage a bad second choice.

On the other hand, I've stayed in hotels that offer "free wifi" that consists of a budget router sitting behind the check in desk and I'm on the fourth floor more than a thousand feet away. In those cases 3G is essential or at least competitive in terms of performance.

I usually don't tether my Droid because I have a separate broadband contract with VZW that enabled me to purchase an HP Mini 311 netbook for $149 with Windows7, 2 gigs of memory, and 160 gig hard disk. (Great little system) That's the system I usually travel with these days. But if I didn't already have that contract I'd appreciate the fact that I can occasionally tether my droid in emergencies when I have to have internet access and wifi is not available.

 

[skginty]

Easy Tether works great. I was paying for wireless access for my netbook so I would have internet any time. Easy Tether with my Droid works great... and saves me $60/month! It's pretty quick, too! One issue... incoming phone calls sometimes disrupt the connection... or maybe it's just answering them that disrupts the connnection.

 

[samsonite801]

I mainly only use my Android WiFi Tether to connect my netbook when I'm traveling on vacations in the car, or at airports, etc. I'd rather not use public WiFi because then I'm relying 100% on my netbook's internal firewall for security, whereas when using WiFi tether on the Droid, I have installed my custom iptables firewall scripts into the Linux OS (the Droid is a router) and this firewall is much more secure because I control the scripts (I have similar scripts on my home Linux router), and you also have an extra layer of security in that the Droid router uses one-to-many NAT to give you a private IP address on your LAN sitting behind the firewall while the public (Verizon) IP address is on the other side of the firewall so nobody can directly ping you anyways. For this reason, when I need internet away from home, I use the 3G over the WiFi Droid router 100% of the time. But I probably only log less than 2 hours total time per month using tethering anyway, since most things I can directly do using the Droid itself when away from home. The netbook is only needed when I want a bigger screen (it has 1366x768), or when I need to use the Skype with video webcam. Any other thing I can do right on the Droid.
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[jasonhc73]

To tether or not to tether...

1. Tether only if you have 3/4 G speed.
2. Tether only if you have 3 or more bars.
3. Tether if you want to nerd it up outside and there or no wifi available for you to slurp from.
4. Buy any a Virgin Mobile android phone and pay $25(a month) for unlimited data! (Funny how the tethering is not even an option on the phone)
   1. I just moved into my new house, all the neighbors have wifi security enable and I have no WiFi access yet. So my only option right now is to tether, and it works freaking awesome!
5. Easy Tether and PDANet are both free, but have no HTTPS access.
   1. Both allow HTTPS access if paid (Easy Tether is 9.95 and PDANet is $15)

So should I go ahead and get cable/phone/bundle for $170 a month:icon_evil:, or get Sat for $55+$25=$80 a month and just use the tethered phone? Or add highspeed internet and just use normal WiFi, which for me is $40 for 10Mb.

I do like the faster Wifi, no brainer easy use. But tethering was a heck of lot easier than I thought it would be...

 

[Gritwater]

I have cancellled my home inet and simply used easytether pro for 9.99 one time fee.

Now, I have rooted aand use wireless tether for free.

Now...when at home...I wireless, if im on the road in a hotel, I easytether pro (more secure than the hotels wifi)

Sent from my Droid 2 while driving. Thankyou Tapatalk

 

[HayWire]

Not if you want to download music or movies or play games. The lag will kill you.

Sent from my DROIDX using DroidForums App

 

[kodiak799]

Yeah, I use it in a pinch when no wifi/broadband option. Haven't experimented enough probably to optimize it, but I'm lucky to average 300-400kbps, which is painfully slow and pretty much useless for anything other than email and very light browsing.

Sure, it's a violation of TOS but it's like considering I use maybe 1 gig a month total data, are you really going to bend me over for a few hours of tethering?

And let's suppose I sign-up for 10gigs on LTE, and I'm making this up but if I pay $80 (which is what their current mobile broadband price is) you're darn right I'll ditch home broadband and and tether right up to that 10gigs every month. It's stupid and arbitrary - I shouldn't have to pay an additional fee for tethering or for multiple devices when I only use one at a time.

 

[jannypan]

You've hit the nail on the head: it's primary use is for people who don't want to pay for wireless broadband separately from their 3G plan. There may be other benefits but I can't think of any.

 

[Gritwater]

Not if you want to download music or movies or play games. The lag will kill you.

Sent from my DROIDX using DroidForums App

It just takes some pre-planning.... when I go to bed, I start any downloads I want and when I wake up.. it's done.

Well worth it considering the amount I save per month, by cancelling my home inet.


Before the droid

cell phone + cable + inet = 250

after the droid
cell phone (that includes inet) + cable (home phone included) = 150

1200 a year savings, I'll take the risk of violating my T.O.S.

 

[gatecitycanes]

I use it at work. I have a lot of downtime and the corporate IT guys used to always be on our cases about using their internet for personal use. They always made it sound like personal surfing had us on the razor's edge of crashing the whole network.

Now I use PDANet to stay off of their grid. Best thing I ever did. Wifi Tether also works for providing access to the iPad.

 

[Gritwater]

I use it at work. I have a lot of downtime and the corporate IT guys used to always be on our cases about using their internet for personal use. They always made it sound like personal surfing had us on the razor's edge of crashing the whole network.

Now I use PDANet to stay off of their grid. Best thing I ever did. Wifi Tether also works for providing access to the iPad.

I work at a place that monitors our inet use all the time. I don't have to worry about pop-ins from the boss but they do check our histories. I don't surf pron at work, but we've been questioned about forums before.

So, I have a laptop I hook up using Easytether and the only thing I do on the work computer is work stuff.