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.
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!
Do you normally have SIMless service? 🤨
The hotspot function basically just lets you connect other devices to the Internet through the phone’s cell service. No service == no hotspot.
Apps may allow you to use it as a range extender tho.
My phone will hotspot when it’s connected to WiFi. I can even tether it to a desktop PC and use it as a WiFi adapter.
Well, technically that’s not a “hotspot”. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it’s a Wi-Fi extender.
And a poor Wi-Fi extender as well, since you halve your network bandwidth by using an extender with a single radio chip.
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
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.
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.
An antenna can absolutely send and receive at the same time. It’s called duplex .
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!
I am not sure if the bandwidth is really limited by the controller, or by the modulation / signal-to-noise ratios in practical scenarios.
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.
My phone does that just fine. It’s a Samsung limitation. All it does is create an access point and forward traffic via its default route.
Your phone works without service?
Of course it does(*).
(*): assuming you mean “works” in the sense of “turns on, lets me use it just fine, does everything that does not require an active cell connection”