This phone is broken (broken screen) and was given to me, so I figured I’d use it as a WiFi extender, but I guess I can’t.

  • @forrgott@lemm.ee
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    4411 days ago

    Well, technically that’s not a “hotspot”. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it’s a Wi-Fi extender.

    • m-p{3}
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      1711 days ago

      And a poor Wi-Fi extender as well, since you halve your network bandwidth by using an extender with a single radio chip.

      • TurboWafflz
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        1011 days ago

        I’ve only seen that option on phones with two radios, it uses the 2.4GHz radio for one connection and the 5GHz radio for the other

        • @LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works
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          510 days ago

          I am not entirely sure what kind of radio fuckery happens, but my phone (Oneplus 6 with LineageOS) can be connected to a 5 Ghz wifi network and have a 5 GHz hotspot open at the same time.

          I am assuming the wifi chip has two (or more) somewhat independent frontends, since my home wifi and the phone hotspot are on two different 5 GHz frequencies.

        • @forrgott@lemm.ee
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          411 days ago

          That’s kinda required. I doubt one antenna can simultaneously send and receive.

          Anyway, there’s still only one controller, so your bandwidth is still halved.

          • lurch (he/him)
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            311 days ago

            An antenna can absolutely send and receive at the same time. It’s called duplex .

            • @forrgott@lemm.ee
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              4
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              11 days ago

              Oh, I should clarify; this is more than send and receive - there’s some amount of network routing involved with being a Wi-Fi extender or relay or whatever.

              What I probably meant to say is one antenna cannot send/receive simultaneously on more than one network.

              But, yes, duh, thank you for calling me out on that one!

          • @LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works
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            110 days ago

            I am not sure if the bandwidth is really limited by the controller, or by the modulation / signal-to-noise ratios in practical scenarios.

    • @kernelle@0d.gs
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      410 days ago

      I’ll have to disagree on that one, WiFi extenders extend an existing network, keeping the same network and DHCP is done by the original access point.

      A hotspot creates a new network, and DHCP is handled by the hotspot, not the network on the WAN side.