IPhone Share Internet

It's possible to share the EDGE connection on the iPhone using the Wifi connection as a tunnel.

Setup Ad-Hoc Network

The iPhone and laptop can be connected directly using an Ad-Hoc network. This can easily be set up in Windows.

Open the wireless network adapter properties, click the 'Wireless Networks'-tab.

At the bottom, to into the 'Advanced' settings, and select Computer-to-computer (ad hoc) networks only.

Now, add an ad-hoc network by clicking Add, typing a SSID like iPhonePipe, and selecting Disable in the data encryption drop-down.

There should be only one network in the Preferred networks list, e.g. iPhonePipe, click Ok to commit the changes.

Configure iPhone

With the ad-hoc network set up, connect the iPhone to the new ad-hoc network.

To keep the iPhone from dropping the Wifi ad-hoc connection, disable Auto-lock under Settings, General, Auto-lock, and set it to Never.

To connect to the ad-hoc network, go to Settings and Wi-Fi, wait a moment for the scan to complete, and select the new ad-hoc network, e.g iPhonePipe

Once the iPhone is connected with a check next to the name, touch the blue arrow to find the IP address for the iPhone connection.

Alternatively, set a static IP address to avoid having to refresh and wait for the pseudo DHCP IP to be set.

PuTTY Tunnel

Set up a tunnel via SSH to allow the data requests to be sent to the iPhone end of the ad-hoc connection. The SSH server on the iPhone acts as a SOCKS proxy server.

• Download PuTTY

Open a new session and type the IP address from the iPhone in the Host Name (or IP address)-field.

Next, go to the Connections, SSH, and Tunnels screen. Add a new forwarded port, first select Dynamic destination, and then enter a random port number in the Source Port-field, e.g. 9999, leave Destination-field empty, and click Add to add the new entry to the list.

Now, click Open to start the SSH the connection to the iPhone. Accept the key challenge and login using root as the login. If the password of the jailbroken iPhone hasn't been changed, the password is either alpine or dottie.

If you see a # character and get a command-line, everything is good.

Configure Applications

The Internet sharing only works in programs what allow you to set a SOCKS proxy server, e.g. Firefox, Pidgin, Internet Explorer, MSN Messenger, and more.

To surf via EDGE using Firefox, change the proxy settings in Options, Advanced, Network, and Settings. Select Manual proxy configuration and at the second to last field, SOCKS Host, enter localhost. The PuTTY client is the local tunnel to the iPhone, and therefore the localhost-address is used when interfacing with the tunnel.

Use the port set as Source Port in PuTTy, e.g. 9999, in the port field.

Another thing to fix, as the iPhone does not resolve DNS queries yet (google.com -> 64.233.167.99), the Firefox network.proxy.socks_remote_dns settings has to be set to true. In the address bar, enter about:config. Then in the filter bar enter socks_remote_dns and double click the preference to change false to true. Re-open Firefox.

Now, try to open www.google.com and if it doesn't load as fast as normal you know you're on EDGE. :)

If you encounter problems, as you probably will, try to re-initialize the process and install the BIND DNS server on the iPhone below.

References

• Use Your iPhone's Internet Connection On Your Laptop
• HOWTO: Secure Firefox and IM with PuTTY