iPhone as usb 4G/3G Modem

My 2 cents.

My iPhone is the WAN right now for Surf soho via WiFi.
The iPhone will not connect via USB to the Surf soho.

I do this when the data limit is reached on our hotspot device, it’s tethered to the Surf soho.

I have also reached the data limit on my iPhone and I must say it’s performance is still pretty good.

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I’d like this feature to be added too.

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+1

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Yes, I would love to have a more stable input for iPhone rather than bluetooth which often disconnects when using as Wifi WAN.

Add my name to the list too, please. It may not seem like a very wanted feature, but if you put a poll out there I think there would be overwhelming interest.

I’ve been using speedify (www.speedify.com) to bond a few connections together. You can plug in a couple of different sources (including iPhones) into your computer and it will bond them all together exactly like speedfusion does. It only works for one machine, but if you are doing something mission critical like an important video call, it works great

No connection to speedify, I paid full retail for it, but it saved me several times when I was in dodgy coverage areas and is the only good solution until Peplink sees this feature as important.

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@TK_Liew Any updates on this feature request? Many thanks

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Hello Peplink Engineering Team,
Again, I am bringing this Feature Request back into the light; this Feature Request has been running for over ten (10) years (since 2012), longer than I’ve known @Alex and the Peplink team.

During 2023, a customer had some provisioning issues with two SDX units in HA mode, both having lost connectivity (due to human/customer error in the configuration after our team’s delivery). The customer support people all had iPhones; I think they talked the security guard into borrowing their Android device and, that way, allowed our team to gain InContol2 access so we could restore the devices remotely.

Do the newer Peplink Series-X models have enough capacity to support this Feature Request for tethering via iPhones using the USB connection?

Note: We have often, when travelling, used the USB port on a Peplink BR2 Pro 5G or Peplink MBX MINI 5G as a charging source for our team’s mobile phones, including iPhones.

Appreciate your assistance,
Marcus :slight_smile:

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I definitely support this - very useful request.

Especially when setting up or fixing balance devices with no Wi-Fi WAN or Cellular modem.

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Just to document another use case:

  • This morning the two fiber WAN links are gone due to traffic works in the street
  • USB dongle is down because I didn’t controled it since last update to 8.4.1
  • We do not have WiFi here
  • We have iphone and would be happy to be able to plug it, but no way

So we used an old Rasbperry Pi to link the iphone and present it to the peplink router through RJ45. It works, but we put money on peplink to avoid such things. The more I have skills to drive my own network and the less I need a peplink router to accomplish this.

This is a very old feature request, having wireguard is also an old one too. I believe most of us are dealing with it outside peplink now. Sometimes, just saying: “we won’t do” is better than leave people think it will come… one day.

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Using a Nighthawk via USB now. iPhone is a must.

Any updates on this? The majority of our US customers that we serve have iPhones and this would be a great option to allow backup service so we can gather device diagnostics if the primary connection goes down.