Federico Lentini's Blog

PdaNet – Tutorial (EN)

Today I’d like to review an application called “PdaNet”, which uses the cellular connection (GPRS or 3G – UMTS) of your iPhone (and iPhone 3G) to connect your laptop to the internet.

What it does is sending the data settings of the iPhone to the computer’s network settings over wifi. 

Now the step-by step instructions on a Mac and iPhone 3G (Firmware 2.1):

1) Download PdaNet, available on Cydia after the jailbreak of your iPhone

2) Create a “computer to computer” wireless network on your mac / pc

Create Computer-to-Computer network

3) Join the network with your iPhone

Join the network created before

4) Launch “PdaNet” on your iPhone

PdaNet start-screen

5) Wait until it sends all required data to your computer automatically

Sending Cellular Data to the computer over wifi

6) Surf the web on your computer

Connected!! (I blurred my mac-address for privacy reasons)

IMPORTANT: Only do this if you have a good data plan on your iphone, or it will cost you really much!!

I’m using my iPhone 3G in Italy and my service provider is “Vodafone Italia”. I pay 3€ per week and have 500mb data traffic per week available. It worked good with approximately 75% 3G signal strength. I did a speed test on my computer at www.speedtest.net and I got a pretty good result: about 700 kb/s download and 300 kb/s upload.

Speed test results (Tested on the computer connected to 3G)

TRY THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK, JAILBREAKING COULD VOID YOUR IPHONE GUARANTEE AND SOME PROVIDERS DON’T OFFER TETHERING, SO BE CAREFUL!