Hi,
I would like to use the 5G connection of my FP4 as a router for my computer.
Do you know if it’s possible to connect him direcly via a usb cable to do that ?
Thx !
Why not tether via WiFi? I don’t think it adds anything if you use a cable (Ethernet is also used in WiFi by the way, it doesn’t mean you use a cable).
Haven’t tried this myself but network tethering via USB seems to be a pretty standard Android feature nowadays.
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Yes, USB tethering works absolutely fine on FP4.
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That’s a pretty unconventional view. Yes, both Ethernet and WiFi use MAC addresses, but that doesn’t make them the same protocols.
Apart from that, if you can connect something via a wire, do it. Wireless is so much more error prone… (Except, if the wire actually means a USB Ethernet card, then the level of reliability is actually similar to wireless 
).
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I know I’m a nitpicking nerd here 
But WiFi uses the same family protocol as the Ethernet you’re talking about. It’s technically wrong to refer to Ethernet as a wired connection, it also applies to WiFi. At least, that’s what my buddies at the Dutch NREN have told me once in a rant where they also included Infiniband in the conversation.
But on topic, let us know if you found a way to connect your phone to your router.
Nope: Ethernet - Wikipedia
That’s not the intention, he wants to connect a computer to the phone, not a router.
That works via USB-Tethering and possibly via a USB-C-Ethernet adapter.
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I’m using my FP4 now for about half a year as the only device to provide internet to my notebook, mostly over a wired connection (USB). I use the WiFi hotspot feature only if I don’t care about latency, since the ping is definetly higher and less reliable then.
If you consider of using the tethering function mostly, you can go in the developer settings and change Default USB configuration to USB tethering. Like this, you don’t have to choose the option everytime you plug your phone in. Be aware that this setting is not device specific and your phone will provide tethering to every PC you connect it to while it is unlocked.
If you want to keep your phone connected everyday for a dozen hours and your phone is rooted, I can recommend you AccA and the “battery idle mode” feature. Like this, your phone doesn’t constantly load its battery but in the same time draws its power consumption from the USB source.
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Note: its gonna put a lot of weight on your battery, like a mifi would, but to be fair a new battery is officially available. Ethernet/usb is better than WLAN for battery, the main culprit is gonna be the 4G connection. You can use USB <-> Ethernet and then a switch or hub. This works on Android
Maybe it can be set up to charge from the laptop via POE (Power Over Ethernet)
A laptop’s ethernet does not adhere to any PoE standards. It cannot deliver PoE. You’d need a PoE injector. Plus, the MiFi or smartphone or whatever also needs to support receiving PoE (they don’t either). You might as well just connect it to proper power supply.
What is Ethernet?
You can do worse than ask the people who actually have the job of defining it.
https://ieee802.org/3/
(Don’t expect a pretty “box” preview here, we’re talking hard basics!)
Just to complete the picture, Wi-Fi is IEEE 802.11, not 802.3, though they may share certain notions.
@Phil34 Given the choice, since you’re just connecting one device, I’d use USB.
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What? Definitely not. Ethernet is a wire protocol. The only layers that are common with wifi are layer 2 and above, and those are things like TCP/UDP/ICMP etc, not Ethernet! (InfiniBand is an odd case: it’s a distinct wired transport, but you can run the Ethernet protocol over it if you want to. InfiniBand has basically been obsoleted by 10GbE and 40GbE anyway, so you can forget all this and I recommend you do.)
Infiniband is for sure not obsolete. The use case is RDMA low latency and high speed, but not just high speed. Other protocols have a lot of headers that are not needed for IB use cases. Taking them out saves processing time. IB is used for high speed trading and e.g. HPC.
But I already said we digress a bit too much from the original question, which I also didn’t read well enough due to time.
PoE is out of scope for phone charging. It’s also very unlikely you’d find a laptop with PoE. 48 V is not that common in battery powered devices.
Maybe you did actually mean Power Delivery (PD)? That could actually be the case.
Anyways, once you connect the phone with a laptop with a USB cable, the phone will charge (but maybe slowly).
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