TetherBridge provides whatever download/upload bandwidth your cellular network can provide at the time of your tether session. Cellular networks are known to be more frequently congested than landline networks and the speed can vary from location to location and from time to time. On a less congested 3G network, it is not unusual that our users get well over 2 mbps in downloading as measured at http://speedtest.net. Most likely, you will get a higher speed at midnight than during busy hours.
You must configure your firewalls to allow networking over the TetherBridge interface. In most cases, permission is granted automatically while in some PC environment this must be done explicitly. If the TetherBridge window on your PC indicates that you are connected to the Internet while there is no real connectivity (the data usage indicator on the TetherBridge window remains at 0), you can try disabling the firewall temporarily to experiment. If you have McAfee or derivatives, it is likely that you have run into the problem where even disabling the firewall completely within McAfee will not be enough to resolve the problem. Quite a number of TetherBridge users have run into this problem. The root cause of the problem is that McAfee in these cases is unable to properly handle a new network interface added after McAfee itself has already been installed. Users have got around the problem by installing TetherBridge after McAfee has been uninstalled. The problem does not reappear for them when McAfee is reinstalled afterwards.
TetherBridge uses the USB connection between the Blackberry device and the PC for transferring Internet data. Any other software on your Blackberry/PC which makes use of the USB connection at the same time can have varied level of negative impact on your tether session, from performance degradation only to malfunction. You are advised to turn them all off while you tether, including any which may run automatically in the background. In particular, the Media Sync mode has been known to cause sluggish speed, intermittent connection problems and even unusable tether operation. The Mass Storage mode can also interfere but at a lesser degree. With BB OS 6.0, you should select the "Charge Only" mode from the prompt upon USB connection. For earlier BB OS versions, you may need to configure appropriate options from BB Options to make sure you can disable Media Sync. Please do not start the Blackberry Desktop Manager/Software when you tether.
While providing the benefits of server-less tethering as summarized on the Why TetherBridge web page, TetherBridge is limited in the number of simultaneous connections by what are available on your phone. Your Blackberry device provides sufficient number of simultaneous connections for practically all web browsing. However, other software on your PC may take a significant number of them away and leave very few or none for your web browsing. You may not be aware of how many other programs (some may be malware) are running in the background on your PC. As a result, you may experience various kinds of web browsing problems including sluggish Internet and partial loading of more complex web pages. Note that your PC allows virtually unlimited number of simultaneous connections and you would not be aware that a large number of them have been used by background programs when using regular Internet connection services (dsl for example). If the google page (a simple web page using very few connections) loads and searches fast while more complex web pages (requiring many connections to load) do not load fully or load very slowly, it is indicative of a connection resource limitation problem. You are advised to take actions as recommended below:
- Disable all P2P Internet file sharing programs
P2P Internet file sharing programs (such as BitTorrent, LimeWire, Azureus Vuze, Ares Galaxy, uTorrent, Shareaza, Kazaa ) are known to make a lot of connections over the Internet even when there is no data transfer activity. They can quickly exhaust the connection resources available on your phone and leave very little or even none for web browsing. When you need web browsing speed or when you experience low web browsing speed, turn all such programs off (not even left idling in the background). Such programs may run in the background without being explicitly started. So, explicitly make it to exit. Many of such programs can be configured to auto run when Windows starts. You should configure them such that they only run after being explicitly started.
- Disable all other programs not necessarily required during tethering to free more connection resources
There can be a lot of other programs running in the background which can consume a lot of connection resources. Many programs have auto updaters running in the background. Other programs may perform auto file/media sync between your PCs or between your PC and some servers. For example, Windows Live Mesh may set up a lot of connections for syncing up folders on different PCs. Any of such programs reduces the number of available connections for your web browsing and may even completely deplete the available connection resources on your phone. If you experience difficulty in web page loading (complex web page in particular), disable as many such programs as possible while you tether.
TetherBridge is serverless and your Internet data goes directly to your destination without going through a 3rd-party server. While this characteristic has a lot of advantages as summarized on the Why TetherBridge web page, it does inherit the resource limitation of the phone. In particular, the number of simultaneous connections you can make over the Internet is limited by what are available on your phone. For many web browsing scenarios, this limitation is not visible. However, some web sites may be designed to make the browser to open a very large number of connections. This is particularly true when you quickly navigate from page to page on such sites because the older pages may be still holding many connections for items yet to be downloaded (ads for example). Some pages may even be designed to make the browser hold those connections after the content has been fully loaded (for continuous ads update for example). On such websites, you may experience slow speed in navigating between pages or even lock up (some page is just not loading) because the next page to visit does not get enough connections. When you experience such a difficulty, close all browser windows (which make all existing connections to close) and go to the desired page directly with a new browser window. It is also advisable that you keep a lower count of browser windows open at the same time. You can also try click the "STOP" label or icon on the browser ("X" sign on IE/Firefox). Doing so may help close the connections on that browser window but it does not always work. Closing the window is always effective.
For the best web browsing experience, please follow the advices offered on this page. In some operating scenarios, following these advices may make a huge difference.
