ericfaller.com Pithy Quote Goes Here

Another Killer App

While writing the previous post, I thought that Remote Desktop would be the killer iPhone app, but now I've changed my mind. The new killer app is SSHD. Why would an SSH server on a phone be a killer app? Who cares about remotely logging in to their phone's command line?

The answer is that SSHD can apparently run a full SOCKS proxy server with the -D command. Using that, it's possible to use the phone's cellular internet connection on your computer. The setup looks like this:

Yesterday my Comcast connection went down (stupid Comcast), so I had to try it out in order to get back online and get my Dancing Matt fix. It worked surprisingly well - it wasn't really obvious that I was using a phone connection, except that the speeds were pretty slow.

I ran a speed test on the bandwidth, and these were the results:

208 kbps is not that bad by modern standards, and it definitely works if your main ISP connection goes down, or if you're stuck at a wedding with no WiFi.

If coverage is good, a 3G iPhone would probably be significantly better. If you need to save cash it might even be fast enough to use as your main home ISP. Hmm..