u/paul_jiang

Something I learned the hard way during a recent trip. I was relying on my iPhone hotspot to work remotely and the speeds were terrible — barely 0.5 Mbps on my MacBook even though the phone itself had strong signal and fast speeds. 

Turns out carriers intentionally slow down hotspot traffic. It's not about signal strength or congestion. The phone detects you're tethering and caps your speed.                                      

A few things that helped:                                                                                            

  - USB tethering is generally faster than WiFi hotspot                                                                

  - Some carriers throttle less on certain plan tiers (check if you can temporarily upgrade before a trip)

  - Routing traffic through a local proxy over USB can avoid the throttling entirely — the carrier can't distinguish it from regular phone usage                                                                      

Saved me from having to hunt for cafe WiFi every day. Just sharing in case anyone else has been frustrated by this.

Something I learned the hard way during a recent trip. I was relying on my iPhone hotspot to work remotely and the speeds were terrible — barely 0.5 Mbps on my MacBook even though the phone itself had strong signal and fast speeds. 

Turns out carriers intentionally slow down hotspot traffic. It's not about signal strength or congestion. The phone detects you're tethering and caps your speed.                                      

A few things that helped:                                                                                            

  - USB tethering is generally faster than WiFi hotspot                                                                

  - Some carriers throttle less on certain plan tiers (check if you can temporarily upgrade before a trip)

  - Routing traffic through a local proxy over USB can avoid the throttling entirely — the carrier can't distinguish it from regular phone usage                                                                      

Saved me from having to hunt for cafe WiFi every day. Just sharing in case anyone else has been frustrated by this.

Something I learned the hard way during a recent trip. I was relying on my iPhone hotspot to work remotely and the speeds were terrible — barely 0.5 Mbps on my MacBook even though the phone itself had strong signal and fast speeds. 

Turns out carriers intentionally slow down hotspot traffic. It's not about signal strength or congestion. The phone detects you're tethering and caps your speed.                                      

A few things that helped:                                                                                            

  - USB tethering is generally faster than WiFi hotspot                                                                

  - Some carriers throttle less on certain plan tiers (check if you can temporarily upgrade before a trip)

  - Routing traffic through a local proxy over USB can avoid the throttling entirely — the carrier can't distinguish it from regular phone usage                                                                      

Saved me from having to hunt for cafe WiFi every day. Just sharing in case anyone else has been frustrated by this.

I've been dealing with painfully slow hotspot speeds on my iPhone for months. Running a speed test on my phone directly: 300+ Mbps. Running the same test on my Mac connected to the hotspot: 0.5 Mbps.   

I'm a developer so I decided to look into why. Turns out the traffic gets flagged and slowed down when it goes through WiFi hotspot. But if you route it through USB instead using a local proxy, the traffic looks the same as  regular phone usage.                                                                                            

https://reddit.com/link/1t7j57m/video/fj085zzc0zzg1/player

https://reddit.com/link/1t7j57m/video/a6fn5zzc0zzg1/player

  So I built a small Mac + iPhone app that does exactly this. Plug in USB, click one button, done. Went from 0.5 Mbps to 220 Mbps instantly.     

  I will put up a page about it if anyone's interested                                                                                                                                                                

  Not trying to spam — genuinely built this to solve my own problem and figured others here might have the same frustration. Happy to answer any technical questions. 

I've been dealing with painfully slow hotspot speeds on my iPhone for months. Running a speed test on my phone directly: 300+ Mbps. Running the same test on my Mac connected to the hotspot: 0.5 Mbps.                             

And this is original hotspot connect

And this is after i open FastNet app

 

I'm a developer so I decided to look into why. Turns out the traffic gets flagged and slowed down when it goes through WiFi hotspot. But if you route it through USB instead using a local proxy, the traffic looks the same as  regular phone usage.                                                                                            

  So I built a small Mac + iPhone app that does exactly this. Plug in USB, click one button, done. Went from 0.5 Mbps to 220 Mbps instantly.                                                                                               

  I will put up a page about it if anyone's interested                                                                                                                                                                

  Not trying to spam — genuinely built this to solve my own problem and figured others here might have the same frustration. Happy to answer any technical questions.