Addition’s iPhone Modem 2 is designed to allow you to share your iPhone’s internet connection with a PC or Mac — essentially use your iPhone as a modem. I previously wrote an article about iPhone Tunnel Suite in which I detailed how I was able to do this on a PC.  Using the iPhone Tunnel Suite and my iPod touch, I was able to successfully browse the internet despite the fact that I have no wireless card on my computer.  Very cool stuff..  I used a program called ProxifierPE to make setting up (and tearing down) the proxy a little easier (and also easier to debug).  A full description of what I was able to do can be found here.

Getting back to why I wrote this article: after upgrading to 2.2 and jailbreaking again, I stumbled upon a program called Addition’s iPhone Modem 2.  It requires a jailbroken iPhone, and is installed through Cydia.  It also has a helper application that you install on your computer.  So, I installed the helper application, which required the latest .NET framework, which I downloaded on my computer using the iPhone Tunnel Suite.

So after I installed it, I assumed it would magically work.  So I fired up the App on my iPod Touch, fired up the helper application on the computer.  Then, I clicked connect.  ERROR!

It turns out that in order for this to work, you have to have a wireless card in your computer.  The 3G/EDGE connection of the phone is simply relayed to the computer via WiFi.  Totally cool that you can set up a wireless access point to relay the connection, but totally lame that its the only way the modem application will work.  I suppose this is useful if you have a wireless card and are using the iPhone as a laptop connect card, but this method is still inferior to the iPhone Tunnel Suite.

Conclusion

The iPhone Tunnel Suite is a way better alternative that the Modem application for connecting your PC to your EDGE/3G connection.  The iPhone Tunnel Suite is superior because it allows you to do this through the USB connection.  This is both faster and cooler.  You can also still use the iPhone while you are doing this, because the software for the SSH server on the iPhone runs in the background, not like the Modem application.  The Modem application also provides no way of using the iPhone as a modem to connect to WiFi connections.