iPhone tethering: Could exceed your bandwidth limits; and tips how to avoid that scenario.

So I deal with huge files all the time for print. One of my many concerns (working mostly over the internet) is loss of my internet connection. Recently thanks to "upgrades" in my local area, my internet service through Comcast has been less than desirable. It's been down 3 mornings for the last 3 days. When I call I get the run around. I even went down and picked up a new modem. Still the internet was down today. Only other service comparable (outside of some major data line) is a fiber connection offered by AT&T. They indicated there would be added fees for installation since my office is not on the ground floor. (Nice).

So, I recently purchased an unlocked iPhone 4S from the Apple Store and activated an unlimited* data account from T-Mobile (*unlimited data, but not speed rates). So when the internet went down yesterday I plugged my iPhone into my Mac Mini and enabled "personal hotspot" for "USB Only" on my iPhone under settings. It was great. Rather than having all of my emails say "sent from iPhone" on my phone's email account and not being stored in my regular main e-mail account (because of the security issues with people getting my live account via a phone), I was able to actually store all of my messages on my real mail server and use all of my contacts from my workstation.

So far so good.

So today the internet was down from 9am til 12pm (almost exactly). I'm not sure if this is throttling. If it is (tech coming tomorrow), then I'm sure I'll hear about it. So when I started receiving emails with attachments on them today on my phone (while it was tethered), I received a text-message from T-Mobile saying that my 500mb 4G limit was almost reached and that I would have to download at slower speeds (hopefully I can still pull stuff at 3G). This is odd and a bit of trickery since my phone does not do 4G nor do any of the local cell towers.

I got to wondering how I was about to exceed this limit. I only sent a couple of emails and downloaded 4 or 5 with attachments. Oh, but wait... I'm using imap on my desktop. So what really happened is because this tethering thing is an all new venture in my case (out of desperation), I didn't take the time to review my settings for each of the mail accounts on the phone and on the tethered computer. So when I received those 5, 10mb e-mails with attachments, it was really 50mb for my phone, and 50mb for my desktop. Also I browsed to a few photo-heavy websites on my desktop, and I had a download (open in the background) from when my network went down (150mb Adobe Cloud Update) on my desktop.

I'm not going to get into the minutia of all of the little settings that need to be changed in your mail clients to make them work over your tethered phone, but I do have some suggestions to make the whole process go smoother.

If and when you tether:

1. Make sure that you have all open programs closed on your desktop.
2. Disable "load remote images" on your iPhone (if that's the device you're using).
3. If you're using imap, just use the webmail feature (with SSL) provided by most ISPs or web hosts. You'll want SSL for "security" but remember that these encrypted connections also take up more bandwidth. This step will however save you killing your data plan by syncing your imap folders once on a desktop e-mail client (eg. my sent items imap folder is 34gb from about 5 years of usage).
4. Save the files for proofs to their smallest sizes before sending over a cellular connection. (If you can get away with a 100k jpeg vs a 1.2mb PDF then try that).
5. Make sure if you're using the Adobe Apps, that the Creative Cloud Syncing is off (unless for some reason you're working from it, then expect to run out of bandwidth.)
6. Make sure if you open a web application like Dreamweaver or Filezilla that you disable the keep-alive functionality and FTP syncing.
7. Stay away from Ajax sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube while on the tethered machine. Even Google image search can bring you down. If you need to do research, then use the apps on your phone (in mobile mode to browse) then transfer the images back over to your machine. Also the Facebook and Twitter apps for mobile devices do not automatically download new content via Ajax without the click of a button.

If you follow these simple concepts, and limit the outbound and inbound traffic you might have a connection for longer. If you don't, you may be limited to Edge speed, and that's more painful than working on a 14.4kbps modem in 1990.


Be sure to have a backup plan in the event of a network outage. In this day and age most clients will not take "my network's down" as a reason for missed deadlines.

I'll update this post if I remember anything else.