For my work, I am sometimes in the field using my iPhone 8's 4G connection for Internet. I tether my laptop to it over WiFi using Personal Hotspot; this works fine.
Some of the equipment I work on doesn't have WiFi to be able to connect to the hotspot, but it would be useful to temporarily give it Internet access while I'm working on it. I see that Lightning ethernet adapters are now available and show up as an ethernet interface in iOS.
All the information I can find refers only to using the wired interface as the uplink to the Internet.
Does anybody know whether iOS will run Personal Hotspot (ie, DHCP, NAT, routing to the 4G interface, etc) on the ethernet interface when one of these adaptors is plugged in?
Thanks.
Best Answer
It will work if you connect the iPhone via usb to a PC or Mac and then forward the connection over ethernet to a wifi router.
With a wifi router, you would be able to access both wired and wirelessly what is on the network. The connection would come from the iPhone, go to the computer, then travel to the router; where a NAT would be created, and multiple devices connected to the wifi router would allow for communication between the wired and wireless devices.
A note: your Mac and iPhone will not connect to the network because they are supplying the internet connection. Another device would be needed.
See Screenshot below: