Using iPhone Personal Hotspot to connect laptop.

Dinarius

I have very good wifi at home and various gadgets run on it including my iPhone.

However, my laptop is having problems connecting to the wifi at any distance. So, I just connected it using the iPhone's Personal Hotspit feature.

When the computer detected the iPhone and the connection dialog opened, I selected Public Network.

As soon as the connection was made (it was excellent) the iPhone Immediately switched from wifi to 3G.

Question: Is this because the laptop is using the phone's wifi & the phone must now use 3G? Or were both connected to 3G and if so, why?

Obviously, if I have to use the phone, I don't want to have to pay for the data.

Thanks.

D.

Ps. I'm going to update the laptop's wireless drivers and see if that improves the situation.

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

Alanstrainor

The phone will only allow you to use the personal hotspot over 3g. So when your iPhone is set to act as a hotspot it is using your data allowance whenever you connect your laptop.

Update drivers on your laptop, and if the signal is poor, upgrading your router could be an idea, or setting up another router to act as an access point could be an option also.

Dinarius

Thanks guys.

Updated the drivers and running fine now.

I updated from witihin Device Manager. Windows went online and found version 9. something (it had been 2.0 dating from 2009!), but a quick Google says that it's at 10.0 now. But, drivers are very hard to find for this wireless card. Anyway, I'm not complaining.

One thing about the iPhone is that it appears to offer the option to connect by both wifi and bluetooth. Apparently, you just put in the password. So, wonder why it ends up using 3G? Odd. :rolleyes:

Thanks again.

D.

Alanstrainor

It's not odd. The iPhone will allow you to connect other devices via Wifi or bluetooth. Once these devices are connected they will use the phones 3g connection to connect to the internet.

You're asking the iPhone to act as a repeater for wifi, it was never developed to be a networking device, so it's not all that surprising that it forces you to connect through 3g. There's probably some technical limitation at play too.

Dinarius

Alanstrainor wrote: »

It's not odd. The iPhone will allow you to connect other devices via Wifi or bluetooth. Once these devices are connected they will use the phones 3g connection to connect to the internet.

You're asking the iPhone to act as a repeater for wifi, it was never developed to be a networking device, so it's not all that surprising that it forces you to connect through 3g. There's probably some technical limitation at play too.

Ahah! Understood.

Thanks!

D.

Dinarius

Ps.

I thought I would, if effect, be setting up the iPhone as a second router.

So, is there an app that would make this possible? If not, a good idea for an app methinks.

D.