Followup: Free iPhone and iPad Tethering. UNEASYsilence Will Give You a Free App to Do It
So, yesterday we covered how to tether your iPhone using a 99 cent iPhone flashlight app. Well, now the app is pulled.
The problem remains that people want to tether their iPhone for free. Well, my dear loyal readers – I will build you an App that will enable free tethering starting today.
Here is how I’m doing it (and how you can do it too) if you have a iOS developer account with Apple.
I’m going to compile the iphone-socks-proxy app available on Google code and release it as an AdHoc app to the first 80 people who email me their iOS devices UNIQUE ID (?) at SORRY ALL SPOTS FILLED. Also, drop a comment (without your UUID in it) so I know the email isn’t getting caught in some SPAM filter somewhere.
For those who want to know what the iphone-socks-proxy app is, its an open source project that allows you to connect your laptop to the Internet through the iPhone’s 3G/EDGE connection (tethering) without having to jailbreak your iPhone. If you want to install the application on your iPhone you will have to build and install the App from the supplied community code. The code is completely legitimate and does not use any undocumented APIs and NO JAIL BREAK is required.
As for how to use it? Once I build it you will drag the compiled App as well as the mobile provision file to iTunes and sync it to your device.
On your laptop start an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network. On Mac this is done by:
System Preferences->Network
select AirPort
click on Network Name and select Create Network
in Name enter “mywifi”, press OK, press Apply
Connect you iPhone to the add-hoc wifi network:
Settings->Wi-Fi
select “mywifi”
Run this SOCKS App on your iPhone
In the SOCS Proxy tab press Start
take note of the address and port that appear on the screen.
if you get the message “no Wifi” then you are not yet connected to the ad-hoc network. Wait a minute and try again.
put your iPhone face down on the table in order to save battery
configure your laptop application to use your SOCKS (with the above address and port). Some examples:
Safari on Mac (Firefox needs a different configuration):
System Preferences->Network->Advanced…
select Proxies
check SOCKS proxy
in the SOCKS Proxy Server field enter the address and port that appear on your iPhone screen
press OK
press Apply
Firfox on Mac
Firefox->Preferences…->Advanced->Network->Settings…
Select “Manual proxy configuation:”
enter IP and port of your iPhone in the SOCKS Host: and Port:
OK
Unix (Mac) shell commands can be made to use socks (socksify) using the tsocks command (check the man page) (see also).
tsocks is configured using the file /opt/local/etc/tsocks.conf for example, if the proxy is on 169.254.213.179:20000 then the file should look like:
local = 127.0.0.1/255.255.255.255
local = 169.254.0.0/255.255.0.0
server = 169.254.213.179
server_port = 20000
server_type = 5
When finished remember to disable the usage of SOCKS in your laptop application:
Safari Mac: uncheck the above SOCKS proxy and press OK and Apply to restore regular connectivity
Even cooler is the App supports 10 minutes of task completion so you can exit the app briefly without losing connectivity. The last catch, UNEASYsilence (and Experiment23) takes NO LIABILITY on any data charges or loss you may experience. AT&T could wake up one day and decide to limit or charge you for the data you consume. Consult your bill regularly.
