Root tethering at 4g speeds?

[mdizzle99]

So I just canceled my internet at my house after a frustrating experience with the cable company... so now I'm exclusively relying on the Evo for internet. My question is, is there any way to tether at 4g speeds? Either wired or wireless?

I think I've read that the wireless tether app has not really been coded for 4g so the speeds do not come even close to typical 4g speeds.

I also would rather avoid pdanet and easy tether because I don't want to pay in order to get full access. Anyway, thanks for the help. I've done some research in the matter but still have things kinda muddy in my mind.

 

[kd0axs]

Well, you really only have 2 options. Pay for PDANet/Easy Tether or root and use the wireless tether app.

Honestly, you should just pay for PDANet and use it. It's well worth the money. I'm rooted and have the wireless tether app but I still use PDANet for tethering most of the time.

BTW...PDANet has a free trial. After the trial, you can keep using it for free but you won't be able to access secure sites.

 

[mdizzle99]

Well, you really only have 2 options. Pay for PDANet/Easy Tether or root and use the wireless tether app.

Honestly, you should just pay for PDANet and use it. It's well worth the money. I'm rooted and have the wireless tether app but I still use PDANet for tethering most of the time.

BTW...PDANet has a free trial. After the trial, you can keep using it for free but you won't be able to access secure sites.

I appreciate the input but I think it is confirmed that the wireless tether app is not capable of handling 4g speeds. I know over at XDA they have some tethered patches, but I am having a hard time determining if they will help me with my concern. I am also running myns2.2 which is supposed to have the hotspot feature working but I cannot get it to connect.

 

[kd0axs]

I appreciate the input but I think it is confirmed that the wireless tether app is not capable of handling 4g speeds. I know over at XDA they have some tethered patches, but I am having a hard time determining if they will help me with my concern. I am also running myns2.2 which is supposed to have the hotspot feature working but I cannot get it to connect.

I did some speed tests and here is what I came up with.

(These tests were done by going to Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test on my laptop with Firefox)

Connected to 4G with wifi tether: 1.5 mbps
Connected to 3G with wifi tether: 1.2 mbps
Connected to 4G with PDANet: 3.9 mbps
Connected to 3G with PDANet: 1.2 mbps

So, it looks like you are right. The wifi tether app definitely seems to be limiting speeds

 

[tmwilsoniv]

I did some speed tests and here is what I came up with.

(These tests were done by going to Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test on my laptop with Firefox)

Connected to 4G with wifi tether: 1.5 mbps
Connected to 3G with wifi tether: 1.2 mbps
Connected to 4G with PDANet: 3.9 mbps
Connected to 3G with PDANet: 1.2 mbps

So, it looks like you are right. The wifi tether app definitely seems to be limiting speeds

I can concur with this assessment, but would like to take it a bit further. The better question is what method will yield the highest through speed from your home network to the 4G network? My thorough testing (4G only) suggests that given any tower to device download speed, tower through device to laptop download speeds will be:

Sprint Hotspot 50-65 % of tower to device speeds

PdaNet 75-85% of tower to device speed, wired, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth

Easytether 100% tower to device speeds.

Rooted WiFi Tether 75-85% of tower to device speeds

To mdizzle99, if you are willing to drop the one time payment of $10.00, Easytether will get the job done for you. It will deliver the same tower to device speeds you see on your Evo to your laptop, P.C., or home server. I paid for Sprint's Hotspot for 3

 

[droidtime]

I can concur with this assessment, but would like to take it a bit further. The better question is what method will yield the highest through speed from your home network to the 4G network? My thorough testing (4G only) suggests that given any tower to device download speed, tower through device to laptop download speeds will be:

Sprint Hotspot 50-65 % of tower to device speeds

PdaNet 75-85% of tower to device speed, wired, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth

Easytether 100% tower to device speeds.

Rooted WiFi Tether 75-85% of tower to device speeds

To mdizzle99, if you are willing to drop the one time payment of $10.00, Easytether will get the job done for you. It will deliver the same tower to device speeds you see on your Evo to your laptop, P.C., or home server. I paid for Sprint's Hotspot for 3

 

[tmwilsoniv]

I was so stoked to see easytether running at 100% speed, but it doesn't allow me to use the phone as a hotspot, right? I can only tether one device at a time unless I'm missing something. Also, would you happen to know how the normal USB tethering compares (where you just select USB tethering from the drop down menu when you plug the evo into a laptop)?

Your first question/suggestion is correct. Easytether will not allow you to use your Evo as a hotspot, but what you do with your 4G internet connection is up to you. My task at hand was to connect my laptop and my Blu-Ray player to the internet. I didn't want to spend the $80.00 for a Samsung USB - WiFi adapter just to see if it would work with the Evo's "Hotspot" feature. There was too much distance and potential interference to make it a safe bet, so I opted for a cheap, safe alternative. I turned my laptop into a router.

I deliver the 4G internet connection to my laptop via the Easytether USB and then distribute that internet connection to my Blu-Ray player via a cross-over ethernet cable ($16.00 from Radio Shack). If I had more than one device in need of an internet connection, I would simply run the cross-over ethernet cable to a switch or a router and go from there.

As for the "Normal USB tethering" from the drop down menu, If I recall (we're going back a few months) there was virtually no difference in speed between WiFi connection and the tethered connection. That holds true for PdaNet as well.

 

[flukeSG2]

Back before I switched to the CM6 rom and had 4G access, I was in Chicago and I was getting about 4-5mbps to my evo, which I checked with the speedtest.net app and I was getting the same 4-5mbps on my laptop using the wireless tether app which I also checked on the speedtest website. I'm also pretty sure I've seen in people's signatures 4G speeds of close to 10mbps. I think all the speed just varies on locations. I would stick with the wireless tether app myself.

 

[uniquenameEVO]

Try this:

adb shell
su
rm /data/data/android.tether/bin/fixroute.sh

Reference:
http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/issues/detail?id=510#c63

Also, as with many things...reports of it working and not working are both present. DO NOT go off flashing wimax without knowing the dangers.

 

[mdizzle99]

Try this:

adb shell
su
rm /data/data/android.tether/bin/fixroute.sh

Reference:
Issue 510 - android-wifi-tether - Evo tethers great on 3G. On 4G only getting 3G speeds while tethering - Project Hosting on Google Code

Also, as with many things...reports of it working and not working are both present. DO NOT go off flashing wimax without knowing the dangers.

Thanks. I tried doing this but 1) I'm not sure if I did it right and 2) I can't test it right now to even check.

My experience with adb shell is extremely limited.. but here's what I did:
navigated to android tools folder using cmd. typed adb shell and it said "started" or whatever. Then I typed su then hit enter (I have no idea if you just type that or not), and then I typed rm /data/data/android.tether/bin/fixroute.sh exactly how it is listed and hit enter. All it did was repeat what I typed to me, though. Should it have said something else or am I missing a step?

Thanks. I've tried researching this stuff but I'm still such a noob.

 

[uniquenameEVO]

Thanks. I tried doing this but 1) I'm not sure if I did it right and 2) I can't test it right now to even check.

My experience with adb shell is extremely limited.. but here's what I did:
navigated to android tools folder using cmd. typed adb shell and it said "started" or whatever. Then I typed su then hit enter (I have no idea if you just type that or not), and then I typed rm /data/data/android.tether/bin/fixroute.sh exactly how it is listed and hit enter. All it did was repeat what I typed to me, though. Should it have said something else or am I missing a step?

Thanks. I've tried researching this stuff but I'm still such a noob.

As far as I know, that is right. I did it right from a terminal window on my phone.

I found this a while ago, but I so rarely tether that I haven't actually tested it. I went searching on the day my phone was pulling 10mbit and my pc got less than one.

 

[mdizzle99]

Just a little update. I finally got wired tethering working (without pdanet or easytether) by going here:

android-wired-tether - Project Hosting on Google Code

and installing the 1.4 apk and then following some instructions to get it working with Fresh ROM here:

Android Wired Tether is patched and working for Evo - xda-developers

This seems to give me the fastest speeds while on 4G.

 

[tmwilsoniv]

Just a little update. I finally got wired tethering working (without pdanet or easytether) by going here:

android-wired-tether - Project Hosting on Google Code

and installing the 1.4 apk and then following some instructions to get it working with Fresh ROM here:

Android Wired Tether is patched and working for Evo - xda-developers

This seems to give me the fastest speeds while on 4G.

I'm glad this is working for you. I was curious and gave it a try. I couldn't get it to work. I'm probably missing something simple, but a Force Close was all I could coax out of it.

I hit the link you provided and didn't have the energy to sift through hundreds of posts to help me get something I already have with Easytether. I would like to get this working as it would be a good backup application in case I screw up and lose my paid Easytether.

Enjoy your 4G!

 

[mdizzle99]

I'm glad this is working for you. I was curious and gave it a try. I couldn't get it to work. I'm probably missing something simple, but a Force Close was all I could coax out of it.

I hit the link you provided and didn't have the energy to sift through hundreds of posts to help me get something I already have with Easytether. I would like to get this working as it would be a good backup application in case I screw up and lose my paid Easytether.

Enjoy your 4G!

I was getting FC too. What ROM are you running? I am running Fresh and there was a pretty simple solution but I would have never come up with on my own.

 

[tmwilsoniv]

I was getting FC too. What ROM are you running? I am running Fresh and there was a pretty simple solution but I would have never come up with on my own.

I'm running Fresh 3.3.0.1. w/ Netarchy 4.1.9. cfs Fresh Compatible.

 

[mdizzle99]

Here's a little quote from over at XDA that helped me:

"The problem:

1) Wired tether uses a "libnativetask.so" library file that is contained within its own .apk.
2) Fresh and similar ROMs have "libnativetask.so" in the system/lib/ folder within the ROM itself, stock ROMs do NOT have this.

Don't ask me why, but Wired Tether likes its own .so file more than your system's .so file.

The solution? DELETE /system/lib/libnativetask.so "


The person who posted this also made a flashable zip that was supposed to do that very thing, but it didn't work for me, so I just did it by hand. Instead of deleting it, though, I just renamed it in case there were any unwanted consequences I wanted to be able to easily reverse it.

So bottom line here is what I did to fix it:
- use Root Explorer (downloaded from market)
- hit the "Mount R/W" button at the top
- navigate to system/lib and change libnativetask.so to libnativetask.so.bak
- hit the "Mount R/O" button and you should be done

After doing that, you should be able to use the 1.4 wired tether apk to use wired tethering. Just plug your phone in as "charge only" and turn on the wired tether app and you should be good to go.

Hope that helps.

 

[tmwilsoniv]

It most definitely does help. Thank you. Just one more question, if you please. Will this step render my Easytether app inoperable?

 

[mdizzle99]

It most definitely does help. Thank you. Just one more question, if you please. Will this step render my Easytether app inoperable?

Nope. I just tested Easytether and Pdanet. Both still work fine.