NetShare iPhone Application Tutorial and Review
One of the most controversial applications in the App Store is the application called NetShare. NetShare works with your iPhone to allow you to create a tethered Internet connection with your Mac or PC. What does this mean? Well, it means that you can use NetShare to turn your iPhone into a WiFi hotspot - sort of.
After some pesky configurations, you can get your Mac or PC to communicate to your iPhone which then connects to the web. I tested it and it does work, but wasn’t very fast since I’m on the Edge network. If you’re lucky enough to have a 3G connection, it will be much faster…. but then again, I’ve never been on a 3G network, so I have no idea how fast that is. 
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I’ve only tested this on a Mac so far, but have included a video tutorial that some other dude was nice enough to do. Scroll to the bottom of this post to see how to configure this on a PC.
Step 1:
Click on the AirPort configuration icon in the upper right corner of your Mac. Select “Create Network” and create a Computer to Computer Network. You can name it whatever you wish… I named mine “NetShare”.
Create a Computer to Computer Network:
Step 2:
Open your System Preferences (Under the Apple Menu in upper left corner). Click on Network. Select the “Airport” connection on the left. The connection you created should be selected in the drop down menu. Click the Advanced button in the lower right.
Step 3:
Click the tab at the top that says TCP/IP. In the “Configure IPv4″ drop down menu select “Using DHCP with manual address”. Enter this IP address in that field: 192.168.10.2
Step 4:
Next, click the “Proxies” tab at the top and check the SOCKS Proxy checkbox in the left. Choose “Manually” from the Configure Proxies drop down menu. In the field that says SOCKS Proxy Server, use the following IP address: 192.168.10.1. Click OK and then APPLY. You may want to write down the number 192.168.10.1, as this number you will be entering in on your iPhone.
Step 5:
Go to Settings on your iPhone and select the network you created on your Mac. Click on the blue button with arrow on the right to configure these settings.
Select Static at the top and enter the IP address you entered on your Mac which should be 192.168.10.1. Click the space next to “IP Address” to enter this number.
Now you should be ready to go! Open the NetShare application on your iPhone and Safari browser on your Mac and you should be able to surf the net. You can monitor your activity on the iPhone and see the number of connections and incoming and outgoing data transfer.
I’ve only got this to work on the Safari browser so far. I’ll try to figure out the FireFox settings later, but if you want to get started, you can see if this works:
Go to Firefox >> Preferences >> advanced >> network
Click on ’settings’
Clck on ‘manual proxy configuration’
Enter the ip address against SOCKS Host.
You may have to keep checking the iTunes App store to see if NetShare is available or not. I lucked out and was able to buy and download it before it was pulled again. As of this writing, it doesn’t appear to be available for purchase, but Nullriver has been communicating with Apple to figure out what the deal is. If it is available to buy, you might want to grab it before it dissappears again. You can download it for $9.99.
Oh yes…one other word of caution. I have heard rumors that it may be against the AT&T terms of service to use NetShare, so be be careful. Could just be a rumor, but I would only use NetShare in emergency situations and not abuse it by playing multiplayer games, etc.
For Windows XP users, here’s a video tutorial on how to set this up on your PC: