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01/01/2011, 05:12 AM
#1
I think its time to move the freeTether dialogue away from the MHS thread.
If you've been been keeping tabs via the publicly available freeTether summary page, then you know Ryan and Eric have practically been working non-stop on this. They're very close to releasing a version of freeTether designed to work on both webOS 1.x and webOS 2.x devices.
I don't see an updated version in the feeds yet, but hopefully we'll have some good news to report soon. Stay tuned ...
Here's some history and tethering background for those who've recently joined our webOS community:
- Palm has released MHS for use on "supported" carriers. Since Palm devices are only offered by some carriers, that limits the rest of us who happen to use unlocked Palm devices on carriers unsupported by Palm to fend for ourselves when it comes to tethering solutions.
- A variety of successful tethering methods for devices running webOS 1.x on almost all carriers evolved including the addition/modification of services/daemons and/or MHS patching.
- Independent of MHS, there were two different home brew stand-alone applications created for tethering on devices running webOS 1.x - One worked quite well (freeTether). Additionally, the freeTether daemon/service was found to also enable features in a patched version of Palm's MHS allowing tethering on almost all carriers, even unsupported ones. Another stand-alone tethering application (MyTether) worked well for some, and not so well for others. There were others who couldn't get it to work at all.
- Due to changes implemented with the release of webOS 2.x (including some not yet implemented), previous methods used to enable tethering on unapproved carriers were no longer functional. MHS continues to work for tethering on supported carriers. In those cases (SFR France, O2 UK, Rogers Canada, there may be a few others), tethering is generally offered via a feature add-on or a subscription often referred to as a measured data package for tethering purposes. As mentioned, Palm's MHS generally works for tethering on these carriers. Some carriers may include tethering with their unlimited data packages. Thus far, reports of tethering using MHS on devices running webOS 2.x with unsupported carriers have been inconsistent. MHS may or may not work on these carriers. For example, users lucky enough to have Bell Canada as their carrier can tether using MHS on a device running webOS 2.x without any restrictions since their carrier doesn't block private IP addresses. Their tethered data looks no different to their carrier than regular smartphone data.
To summarize the above, depending on the carrier, the technology in place on that carrier, and the level of tethering restrictions the carrier may have in place, it has been demonstrated that MHS (versions 1.1.4 and 1.1.5) can sometimes provide a working solution for tethering on some carriers (either with or without additional services/daemons and patches) without direct support for Palm devices or for tethering. There's no guarantee any given method works or if it does, whether it will work with webOS 2.x or if a currently working modification will continue to work as future updates to WebOS are released.
Its clear a stand-alone (independent from MHS) tethering solution that runs on webOS 1.x and WebOS 2.x devices is sorely needed. The home brew community is stepping up once again with its work to bring the openSource freeTether applacation to devices running WebOS 2.x (as well as continuing to support devices running webOS 1.x).
Remember to Donate here!
(Directly supports the webOS Internals work on freeTether)
Thanks,
TTB 
freeTether information:
http://git.webos-internals.org/?p=ap....git;a=summary
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