Makeshift Home Internet

I am moving house soon, which means setting a sweet new home network. Exciting times! Unfortunately the move was pushed back by a week, which is fine, except… hey what happened to the internet? Oooops.

What to do? A jankey interim solution obviously.

I have an unlimited data plan on my mobile, complete with unlimited tethering, so there is the answer. Use my phone as a mobile hotspot, but there are a few problems with that:

• My desktop doesn’t have WiFi
• Anything connected to a mobile hotspot no longer has a LAN connection to other network devices
• That seems way to easy

So here is the real setup:

• My mobile phone is tethered to my laptop via a USB cable.
• My laptop is sharing the USB modem connection to the Ethernet connection, becoming the internet gateway.
• My Raspberry Pi is still acting as the DNS/DHCP server, telling devices what to talk to.
• My old ISP router is still a router/wireless access point.

Does it work?

Yup!

It’s actually way faster than my 15Mbps down 1Mbps up “broadband” connection. I have used my phone directly tethered to my desktop/laptop before when I’ve needed the speed, but never shared to the whole network.

Once I move I should have lovely 362Mbps down 36Mbps up cable broadband. I will be installing some fancy Ubiquiti networking gear, so there should be a post about my experience with that in the next few weeks.

• Internet