Reverse Tether using Bluetooth PAN to iOS Devices

As far as I can tell, this method of Internet sharing (setting up a Bluetooth PAN between iOS device and Mac running OS X) works fine for iPads, but not iPhones. (According to http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20110612232450787, it also works for iPod Touches; that article does not mention iPhones.)

I'm able to pair both my iPad and my iPhone to my MBP, but only the iPad is able to actually join the PAN. When I click the MBP in the Bluetooth preferences on each iOS device, the iPad joins the PAN; the iPhone says "connection unsucessful" then forces me to "forget device".

I'm using the current OS versions on all devices (iOS 6.0.1 on iPad mini and iPhone 4S; OS X 10.8.2 on MBP.)

I don't know why the iPhone would have less PAN functionality than iPod or iPad, but it appears that it does.

I was just testing this and with 2 different iphones I could not get the connection to work. I have succesfully been able to share my hotel's wifi over bluetooth with an iPod touch, another Macbook and an WiFi only iPad.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has been able to get it working with a Cellular+WiFi iPad. All devices are running the latest OS X 10.8.2 and latest iOS 6.0.1

Yeah, that worked fine for me (Cellular+WiFi iPad). I was able to connect an iPad 2 (Cellular + WiFi) and an iPad mini (Cellular + WiFi) to the PAN with my MBP. But not the iPhone 4S.

Note that both iPads were the cellular-capable model and had the US SIM installed but had "cellular data" set to "off" in settings. I doubt this matters, but just in case.

I have the same issue. I really need to share my wi-fi to my phone via a bluetooth PAN. Why should it work with my iPad but not my iPhone? There is no reason I can think of, technical or otherwise.

APPLE! Please provide some feedback on this issue!

with Moutain Lion 10.8.2 I made it work by setting the bluetooth pan to static ip address instead of DHCP in Network preferences on the MacBook. The static IP should be like this (on my MacBook it's named en2, it varies):

en2: flags=8963<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500

ether 20:c9:d0:84:80:4e

inet 192.168.2.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.2.255

media: autoselect (10baseT/UTP <half-duplex>)

status: active

originally this 192.168.2.1 is assigned to an interface called bridge0, but that never really works:

bridge0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500

ether ac:de:48:b0:7e:15

inet 192.168.2.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.2.255

Configuration:

priority 0 hellotime 0 fwddelay 0 maxage 0

ipfilter disabled flags 0x2

member: en2 flags=3<LEARNING,DISCOVER>

port 12 priority 0 path cost 0

After I assign this static ip 192.168.2.1/255.255.255.0 to the bluetooth pan , I can ping 192.168.2.2 ( which is my phone that is connected to the MacBook to access internet sharing through WiFi)

$ ping 192.168.2.2

PING 192.168.2.2 (192.168.2.2): 56 data bytes

64 bytes from 192.168.2.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=194.351 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.2.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=9.369 ms

Th funny thing is that bot USB camble and PAN bluetooth don't seem to be working.

Using Mountain Lion 10.8.3 and iPhone 3GS iOS 6.1.3

Things used to work once with Apple products, at least computers… at least before iPhones and iPads showed up…

I FOUND HOW TO FIX IT! On 10.8.3

1. Pair with your idevice

2. Go to prefences and network

3. In network, add Bluetooth PAN and bluetooth DUN and apply

4. close and open prefences agian

5. go to sharing

6. in internet sharing put

Share your connection from: WiFi

To computers using: Bluetooth PAN

7. apply and your done

(iphones may not be compatible with this)

I FOUND HOW TO FIX IT! On 10.8.3

1. Pair with your idevice

2. Go to prefences and network

3. In network, add Bluetooth PAN and bluetooth DUN and apply

4. close and open prefences agian

5. go to sharing

6. in internet sharing put

Share your connection from: WiFi

To computers using: Bluetooth PAN

7. apply and your done

(iphones may not be compatible with this)

I managed to share my iMac's connection with my iPad flawlessly. I paired via Bluetooth, enabled sharing from wifi to Bluetooth PAN, and connected great. The internet was intermittant– occasionally the iMac would be dropped from the network, also disconnecting the iPad from the network. Disconnecting the iPad and reconnecting the iMac before reconnecting the iPad made this work fine. My iPad, though, is not the device I need to connect to the internet. It can connect via wifi very easily without being paired with the iMac via Bluetooth. I suppose it's fairly cool that I can turn wifi off and still have internet connection through Bluetooth PAN, though.

The iPhone 5 will not connect to the iMac via Bluetooth. Each time the iPhone has a dialogue telling me my iMac is not supported and automatically disconnects. I tried using the iPad to share its wifi network with the iMac by using a Bluetooth PAN then I tried to make the iMac share this network with the iPhone using wifi. The iPhone connected to the iMac's wifi network successfully, but evidently the iMac is not connecting to the internet through the Bluetooth PAN. The iMac shows a connection to the iPad, but the iPad is evidently not sharing its internet connection with the iMac. It does show the linked chains in the upper left corner. I tried sharing connection using an iPhone 4S, but it also has a dialogue saying Bluetooth with the iMac is not supported.

My iPhone 5 has a very short wifi range (30ft) and no cell network connection at my house. All my other devices (including iPhone 4S, iPad, iMac) have great connection, so I'd like to use these devices to ensure my iPhone is within 30ft of an antenna.

If I can't get the iPad-iMac-iPhone system working tomorrow, I'm going to try to connect an old PowerBook to my iMac via Ethernet and share the network that way.

It seems like with the number of wifi devices I have laying around the house I should be able to connect them all to the internet...

-Nate

I Ran into this same issue after installing IOS6. This was a killer feature I used frequently while travelling and staying in hotels where only one connection was allowed to one device. I shared my ethernet or wifi via bluetooth to all my Idevices.

In IOS6 apple took away the ability to share internet via bluetooth to the iphone. Genius bar researched and confirmed this.. only suggestion was to contact apple via suggestion portal and request the feature back.

Apparently since they are pushing the cloud based services they feel there is no need for bluetooth connectivity and use between mac computers and iphones.

It still works with the ipad.

I was using bluetooth to reverse tether my iMac/iPad Mini running Mountain Lion/IOS until tonight, it failed. No idea why I was able to set it up using PAN before and use it unless something in IOS7 killed it. But it worked after I 'upgraded' to IOS7 on the iPad Mini. These changes that take things away are not nice argh, 50 bad words. I have had ML on the iMac since I bought it...

scott

You can't connect your phone to your computer and browse through it over wi-fi if your computer is connected to wi-fi unless you have more than one wi-fi radio in your computer (such as the internal wi-fi and a USB wi-fi adapter) because a wi-fi adapter can only be a client or an access point, not both at the same time.

So: If your internal wi-fi is connected to a router then it can't also serve internet access to your phone.

Hello , i was able to connect Various Android Devices but strangely enough i am not able to connect an iPad Mini 2 - i mean, it is possible to connect it, but the Bluetooth Tethering eg. Internet Sharing from Ethernet to IOS via Bluetooth PAN is not working. This happens with iPad Mini 2 and IOS 9.2.1 although the device is paired with Network Access Something.

Anyone else having this issue?

This is definitely a bug from Lion. You can activate Internet Sharing to Bluetooth PAN devices.... you wont get packets forwarded to the ipad.

I could do it on Leopard but can't make it work on Lion. Both iPad 1 and 2 don't work now. So I guess Apple needs to fix this bug on Lion.