Monday 23 August 2010

iPhone4 Tethering Part2 Multiple Devices

Tonight I did some more experimentation with the tethering on the iPhone4 (yes you can do it on the earlier models too) to see about multiple devices.

In my earlier post, I discovered that the address range assigned to tethered devices is 172.10.20.0/28. Given this range, I presumed that multple devices could tether through the iPhone together.

To test this, I tethered my laptop and my wife's MacBook through my iPhone together. Both devices recieved an IP address in the above network. To my surprise they could ping each other without any issues. I guess you could call that an ad-hoc bluetooth network with the iPhone acting as an access point!

I also checked the externally visible IP addresses and as suspected they are both appearing behind the same externally assigned IP address from the 3G network.

So I guess the next question, could you say, have a whole bunch of devices all tethered through an iPhone? Imagine the possibilities, a classroom of students sitting out in the park all on the 'net through a single device?

Interesting possibilities indeed...

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