When best to hotspot on visitor wifi sites?!

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stuffed

288 posts

Ultimate Geek

#207724 11-Jan-2017 11:09

When you have to login to one of those dreadful wifi sites when away from home base can someone answer this please? (where you are only allowed one device).
Is it best to login to it using your iPhone and then "hotspot" to your iPads?
Thanks

Why work on Wednesday and stuff up 2 good long weekends

trig42

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#1701315 11-Jan-2017 11:32

Can the iPhone do that? Does it use Bluetooth to share the connection to the iPads?

Everytime I've used the Hotspot on my iPhone, it has demanded that WiFi be turned on (if I have for some reason switched it off, meaning it uses the WiFi for connected to clients), and if I turn on Hotspot here in the office (where it is connected to WiFi) it uses the 4G connection and disconnects me from the Office WiFi (I know it doesn't share out the Office WiFi because I use it to test VPN connections and they don't work from inside the network).

sbiddle

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#1701318 11-Jan-2017 11:34

stuffed: When you have to login to one of those dreadful wifi sites when away from home base can someone answer this please? (where you are only allowed one device).
Is it best to login to it using your iPhone and then "hotspot" to your iPads?
Thanks

I'm not aware of iOS being able to simultaneously connect to a WiFi network and use WiFi as the bearer for a hotspot. It uses 3G/4G data as the bearer for a hotspot.

If you want to do what you're describing you need to buy a WiFi AP with the capabilities you want. There are many options for such a device but the TP-Link WR702N is a great travel sized device that will do what you want.

stuffed

288 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1701354 11-Jan-2017 12:53

Thanks but it needs a WAN cable Connection

Why work on Wednesday and stuff up 2 good long weekends

chevrolux

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#1701375 11-Jan-2017 13:14

I carry a little Mikrotik hAP AC to do this - albeit less and less as I get sick of rubbish hotspots and just use 4G.

2.4GHz radio to connect to hotspot. 5GHz for my devices. Just NAT everything over the address that gets given by the hotspot DHCP server works well enough.

richms

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#1701384 11-Jan-2017 13:31

I have a tplink 3020 (or 2030?) that I use for phonebox wifi to many devices. Just make sure that the first one that you conect to the hotspot is the same each time, since it will be the one that gets the redirect to the portal and has to have the cookie that was set when you logged on.

Works okayish, but slow since its going in and out on the same radio so just as bad as a wifi repeater for killing thruput.

Richard rich.ms

sbiddle

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#1701415 11-Jan-2017 14:15

stuffed: Thanks but it needs a WAN cable Connection

Are you meaning the TP-Link I posted? If so I'm pretty sure the repeater mode only passes through the MAC address of the TP-Link so would work.

I have one here so will try and find some time over the next few days to test it.

There was an Asus unit that had a WISP mode and could use WiFi as the uplink, but it's a pretty rare scenario to want. If you want to buy something these days something like a Mikrotik hAP lite as mentioned above is the best option.

shk292

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#1701425 11-Jan-2017 14:26

stuffed: Thanks but it needs a WAN cable Connection

I use one of these http://us.dlink.com/products/connect/shareport-mobile-companion/

It can connect to WAN via either wifi or cable and then share that connection to all your devices. Many advantages including not having to authenticate each device, not having client isolation between your devices, using unlimited number of devices etc. Enables the use of chromecast from a mobile device in a hotel.

That particular model is quite old now but there are plenty of similar ones around