Title is self explanatory. For background, I am currently running Asahi Linux on my M1 MBP. Whenever I connected the hotspot without data being turned on, it somehow still worked like any regular wifi. I even ran several updates in the system and downloaded multiple apps in this wifi, which I find it amusing. But out of curiosity, I wanted to know from you guys that what could the reason be for this.
EDIT: So after following the advice of jet@hackertalks.com, I relized that the hotspot is using the network of my University’s Wi-Fi, which explains why the hotspot worked even with the data turned off.
Do a traceroute and see which network it transits through
Ok, so after running traceroute, it seems that the hotspot is using the network of my university Wi-Fi, which my phone is connected with. EDIT: Thanks a lot! Forgot to thank you for the advice 😅
It’s interesting on it’s own, since I do remember my android phone disconnecting from wifi when enabling the hotspot. If I understand it right, this type of wifi bridge requires two radios to work efficiently, but it may have changed in latest Wi-Fi standards. Curious nontheless.
I’m guessing it uses the 2.4ghz antenna to transmit and the 5ghz antenna to receive or vice-versa
This was my thinking as well, I did not know that there are phones that can be connected to a wifi network while hosting their own wifi network 🤔 On my iPhone, the only way to achieve Internet on pc while phone is on wifi, is to connect the phone via USB to the PC and share the internet connection this way.
Most androids can, samsung hides it behind a setting called “wifi bridge” and some hide it in dev settings but its almost always default off
Exactly, hence this post.
Is the phone essentially acting as a fancy Layer 3 extender?
No idea about that, tho even my old phone, which was Xiaomi 12T, could do that.
Which phone is that? I thought that most phones could not create a hotspot and at the same time connect to a WiFi network.
Most phones can, it’s just disabled in software, you can enable it in Androids developer settings.
wow, that’s a stupid default setting. thanks
Mine is a Motorola Edge 40.