PDAnet Moto Droid

[michaelkahl]

I got PDAnet working with my Droid. I installed Motorola's driver from here. I used the Beta version of PDAnet from here.
It works well and gets the job done, I was pulling over 1Mbps in my apartment but I've seen speeds up to 2Mbps in other areas.
I'm just using the trial, but will purchase the full product.

 

[Electrofreak]

Good to know. I cracked my Voyager for tethering, but was worried about whether I could do it with the Droid. I really like being able to tether (comes in handy when I'm working on a computer that can't get on the net but needs drivers) but I'm not willing to pay a tether fee... Verizon bends me over for enough every month as is.

 

[webrunner]

Thanks for posting that info. I have had a rooted G1 for a year now, and use tethering for an emergency backup when my broadband is down (infrequently). I tried the droid, and was very impressed and want to buy one, but wanted to make sure that I can tether occasionally with it. I don't tether often enough to be justify paying the $30 per month option VZ will offer sometime in 2010.

 

[Erasmus354]

Thanks for posting that info. I have had a rooted G1 for a year now, and use tethering for an emergency backup when my broadband is down (infrequently). I tried the droid, and was very impressed and want to buy one, but wanted to make sure that I can tether occasionally with it. I don't tether often enough to be justify paying the $30 per month option VZ will offer sometime in 2010.

Not to mention that $30 per month gets you nothing. You still have a 5gb limit.

 

[webrunner]

Not to mention that $30 per month gets you nothing. You still have a 5gb limit.

Yes, and there is that too.

Is there any way, other than excess data usage, that VZ would be able to detect if one is tethering occasionally with the droid?

 

[n64man120]

Yes, and there is that too.

Is there any way, other than excess data usage, that VZ would be able to detect if one is tethering occasionally with the droid?

Probably yes, but there's no precedent to say they act on anything but excess data usage.

 

[Electrofreak]

I primarily use my cracked tether connection for emergency backup when the net goes down when I'm in the middle of something, and I've used it occasionally when working on PCs that are having a problem with their network card or adapter.

So far, I haven't gotten any calls from Verizon telling me that I've been busted. This probably due to my generally playing nice with the connection, but there have been a few slip-ups. I used the connection as my only internet connection for about 3 days once while my ISP took their sweet time sending a technician to fix a problem with the coax cable at the telephone pole. There was also one time that I lost internet, tethered to get the connection back up, and realized later that right after I'd downloaded a file about 1 Gig in size on the tethered connection because I'd forgotten to pause the download.

I'm sure that Verizon *could* perform packet inspection on all the data and block services / protocols not supported by my device, but due to the sheer amount of data flying around, I suspect they would only take a closer look if I burned through a lot of data in a very short period of time.

I don't encourage that everyone crack their phones for tethering, and if you're tethering your phone all the time, you should probably pony up to Verizon and stay out of trouble. But for those "Oh $hit, don't tell me I just lost net" moments it's a great thing to have.

My guess is that if Verizon found fool-proof evidence you were tethering, they'd just bill you an extra $30 for that month, but then I don't work for VZW.

 

[michaelkahl]

I am like you Electrofreak, I'll use tethering if there's an outage or an emergency. I'm generally not in an area without wifi where I need to work. That being said, I've used tethering a whoping 3 times total. Once with Verizon when we had a major power outage (at this time I paid them $15 a month to tether my WinMo phone), once with AT&T to see if it was possible, and once again with Verizon to see if PDANet worked.