How to Tether Your iPhone Without NetShare (Mac Walkthrough)

Some of you were lucky enough to grab a copy of NetShare before it was taken down from iTunes (twice), but for those of you who weren't (present company included), I'll walk you through accomplishing the same result using a jailbroken iPhone.

NOTE: This walkthrough assumes you have already jailbroken your iPhone, see our 3G Jailbreak Tutorials for Mac Users & Windows Users (this walkthrough is for Mac users only, Windows version coming shortly).

Walkthrough

1. Download Boss Prefs from Cydia (see this Tutorial for help) Boss Prefs is a great program that easily lets you enable and disable certain functions on your iPhone. Some of the built in features it supports are:

• 3G Data on/off
• Edge Data on/off
• WiFi on/off
• Bluetooth on/off
• SSH on/off

Boss Prefs also lets you create custom toggles, which we will be doing in this tutorial.

2. Download 3proxy from Cydia

3proxy is a command line program that will let you use your iPhone's internet connection to browse the web from your laptop (or other WiFi connected device).

NOTE: If you can't find 3proxy in Cydia it's likely because you have selected "User" when Cydia asked "Who Are You?" In order to make 3proxy appear in the list of available applications you will need to change this to "Developer".

1. Tap Manage
2. Tap Settings (top left)
3. Tap Developer (no filters)

Now go back to search and type 3proxy and the application should be visible.

3. Create a Custom Toggle For 3proxy in Boss Prefs

• Open Boss Prefs
• Tap Config (top left)

 

• Tap Add (top right)
• Fill In Information for Custom Toggle
• Tap Save (top right)

The start, stop, and process fields are CASE-SENSITIVE, make sure to type the following exactly as I have it: Name: NetShare Start: https://appadvice.com/usr/bin/socks & Stop: killall socks  Process: socks

Setting up your computer to use the proxy

Mac Users:

1. Create an Ad-Hoc WiFi Connection

First, we need to create a private WiFi connection between our computer and the iPhone. Click the airport icon in the toolbar at the top of the screen and choose 'Create Network'.

When prompted type the name of your network. We'll use 'iPhone NetShare' so we can easily identify our network on the phone.

Leave all other settings at default and click 'OK'

2. Join iPhone to Ad-hoc Network

We now need to have our iPhone join the same network so it's visible from the computer. On the iPhone goto Settings -> WiFi and select our newly created 'iPhone NetShare' network from the list.

After joining the network (check mark next to the name), then we can tap the blue arrow to the right of the network to enter some custom address settings.

1. Tap Blue Arrow
2. Tap 'Static' at top of settings page
3. Enter 10.10.10.10 for IP Address
4. Enter 255.255.255.0 for Subnet Mask
5. Press Home button to return to springboard

3. Set Address Settings on Computer Now we need to put our computer on the same network as the iPhone so we will need to give it similar manual settings. Click on the WiFi icon in the toolbar, and 'Open Network Preferences' at the bottom

Let's create a new connection profile for using NetShare. This will keep you from having to go back and changing your settings whenever you get back home and want to use your original WiFi. Click the '+' at the bottom of the connection profiles to add a new service Leave Interface set to 'AirPort' and type in 'iPhone NetShare' for your Service Name

Select your new service from the list of profiles on the left, and choose the 'Advanced' button on the bottom right screen.

1. Click TCP/IP tab
2. Change "Configure IPv4" dropdown to 'Manually'
3. Enter 10.10.10.1 in IP Address
4. Enter 255.255.255.0 in Subnet Mask
5. Click Proxies tab
6. Check the box next to Socks
7. Enter 10.10.10.10 in Socks Proxy Server box
8. Enter 1080 in Port (box after the ':')

4. Turn on NetShare in Boss Prefs

Tap Boss Prefs on the SpringBoard and set the NetShare toggle to ON

NOTE: NetShare will remain on even if you close Boss Prefs, so remember after you are done using the connection come back to Boss Prefs and turn the NetShare toggle to OFF to keep unwanted people from using your connection.

5. Browse the web Now open up your web browser, and head on over to http://www.AppleiPhoneApps.com for the next great App Store review!

 

Summary

Nullriver created a great app when they released NetShare, however, most of us weren't lucky enough to get it before it was delisted. For those of you who have jailbroken your iPhone, this solution is simple, elegant, and if you are using 3G, it actually has the benefit of letting you use the iPhone AND your computer at the same time (as it runs in the background instead of in the App sandbox that NetShare was required to use). Tethering the iPhone to a laptop is a violation of AT&T's use policy, and may result in overage charges, so use at your own discretion. I can tell you that I've used tethering on both the iPhone and other devices for years for things like email and web with no extra charges from AT&T, so as long as you use it responsibly (no Torrents, or Video streaming) you should be okay. The other drawback to using both NetShare and the solution detailed above is that they use Proxy technology to share the connection, instead of true NAT routing. This means that whatever application you have that you want to use on the internet MUST BE PROXY COMPATIBLE. Safari, iChat, and most of the Mac's built-in applications adhere to the system settings for a proxy server and will work just fine, but some applications will require you to manually enter the proxy settings. The proxy type is always Socks 5, and the server address is going to be 10.10.10.10 if you followed the tutorial above. The port number will be 1080. Good Luck, and Happy Tethering! Having Trouble? Did we miss something? Let us know below.

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