Tethering allows other devices to access your phone’s internet con­nec­tion. The quality of the con­nec­tion depends however on various factors.

What is tethering?

There are actually two de­f­i­n­i­tions for tethering. The first one means tying animals so tightly that they can’t really move. However, today the meaning of tethering is about tying different digital devices together by allowing a second device to share the mobile internet con­nec­tion of a mobile phone. The source device acts as a kind of internet modem and router, allowing other devices to access the internet. Tethering can be used with many different devices, bust most often a phone is used as the internet source. Other smart­phones, desktop computers and tablets benefit from the con­nec­tion.

Tethering is mainly used when a device can’t establish an internet con­nec­tion on its own. The tech­nol­o­gy then allows this device to request access to the internet from the tethering device. It’s supported by numerous phone man­u­fac­tur­ers and operating systems, although they use slightly different names for it. Microsoft calls the function internet sharing, Apple refers to it as a personal hotspot, and Android has the mobile hotspot option.

What are the different types of tethering?

There are different types of tethering available. The dif­fer­ence lies mainly in the internet con­nec­tion between the two devices. This con­nec­tion can be es­tab­lished either with or without a cable and the mobile internet can either be shared as 3G, 4G or 5G. Sharing your mobile internet can also be done via a serial port. However, this tech­nol­o­gy is no longer supported in modern smart­phones, so it’s rarely used. The same applies to tethering via IrDA (Infrared Data As­so­ci­a­tion). Instead, con­nec­tion via Bluetooth, USB or WiFi is more common. When tethering via WiFi, the con­nec­tion can even be encrypted.

The device who is sharing its internet con­nec­tion acts as a DHCP server, offering the con­nect­ing device IP addresses and a DNS server.

How fast is the data transfer?

The quality and speed of data transfer depend on the device sharing the internet and the con­nec­tion. The better the internet con­nec­tion of the tethering device is and the higher its bandwidth, the better tethering can work, in theory. However, the type of con­nec­tion also plays a role. For example, a Bluetooth con­nec­tion is generally very efficient at data transfer, so the speed is low. The distance between the devices can also have an impact on the speed.

How to set up tethering?

To enable tethering on your smart­phone, follow these steps:

  1. Open the settings menu of your smart­phone.
  2. On an iPhone choose the option “Personal Hotspot”, on an Android it’s “Tethering and mobile hotspot” and on a Windows phone look for “Internet sharing”. Enable the function.
  3. Set a name for your network and select a strong password.

To access the network with another device, use the following steps:

  1. Open the list with all available WiFi networks on your phone.
  2. Select the ap­pro­pri­ate network.
  3. Enter the password and confirm it.

What are the lim­i­ta­tions of tethering?

Most modern smart­phones are all capable of tethering. However, sometimes the smart­phone man­u­fac­tur­er has blocked the function or the mobile internet operator doesn’t allow it in some of their plans. Prepaid deals, for example, usually don’t allow sharing the mobile internet con­nec­tion. Or it’s not included in the contract which can make it really expensive if you use it. Some network operators allow the tech­nol­o­gy in principle, but data transfer is limited. Check with your phone man­u­fac­tur­er and your mobile network operator to be sure.

Fur­ther­more, you can connect only one ad­di­tion­al device to the internet via tethering. The data used by other devices also counts towards your data usage limit. So, remember to pay attention that you’ll stay within your limit to avoid extra costs.

What are the pros and cons of tethering?

Depending on the purpose of using the function, the internet con­nec­tion and your network operator, tethering has ad­van­tages as well as dis­ad­van­tages. Let’s take a look:

Benefits of tethering

  • Flex­i­bil­i­ty: The biggest benefit of tethering is the ability to connect devices to the internet that otherwise couldn’t do it. Fur­ther­more, using it to connect to the internet is ef­fort­less, so it’s an easy option to use the same con­nec­tion for more than one device.
  • Lower costs and effort: Tethering also keeps the internet usage costs low. As long as your smart­phone and network operator allow it, it doesn’t cost any extra to let multiple devices use one internet con­nec­tion. The data the other device uses are still ex­clu­sive­ly billed via the smart­phone that provides the internet con­nec­tion. You also don’t have to buy or carry ad­di­tion­al hardware.

Dis­ad­van­tages of tethering

  • Con­nec­tion speed: The quality of the internet con­nec­tion can vary greatly. In most cases, Bluetooth is the slowest option. Even a fast internet con­nec­tion won’t be as fast using tethering, meaning a slow con­nec­tion will be even slower.
  • Battery usage: Tethering uses a lot of battery, so you might need to recharge your phone a lot sooner than expected, meaning the flex­i­bil­i­ty of function can be a bit limited. Most likely you need to start recharg­ing your phone at some point if you are sharing its internet con­nec­tion for a longer period.

What is the dif­fer­ence between tethering and a mobile hotspot?

Although tethering and a mobile hotspot have many over­lap­ping functions and some operating systems even use the two terms almost in­ter­change­ably, they aren’t exactly the same thing.

However, the principle is the same: one device acts as a router and other devices connect to it. The most sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence between the two is that you can only connect two devices via tethering, but with a mobile hotspot you can connect several devices. A mobile hotspot also consumes even more battery power than tethering.

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