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How to use your phone as a mobile hotspot
Most mobile phones have the function to allow devices (such as desktop computers, laptops or tablets) to connect to it and share a Wi-Fi connection. Discover how to do it.
Chris (a.k.a ChrisR5) | Community Member
So, picture this, you’ve just joined the flock and you’ve bought/got your own router to squeeze every single megabit of bandwidth out of your line for intense gaming sessions, or maybe just to get the Wifi signal to stretch just that little bit further to the bottom of the garden…
But you’ve run into a problem! Your router doesn’t have a modem connection to plug straight into the wall. Not to worry, your Cuckoo router can come to the rescue!
Plug the Cuckoo router into the wall as you normally would, use the ADSL/VDSL filter provided and plug from the filter into the grey port.
Either connect to your Cuckoo router’s wireless network or plug in an ethernet cable into one of the yellow ports to connect to it. On your device, open a web browser and go to: 192.168.1.1
It should look something like the picture above. Click Sign in at the top of the page and then log in with your “ Access Key ” which can be found on the back of the cuckoo router or use your own password if you have changed it.
Once logged in, click on the “ i ” symbol on the “ Gateway ” tab and scroll down to the bottom and click on “ Setup your Gateway ”
Click on the dropdown for “ Routed Type ” and click “ Bridge ”. Make sure that the MTU is “ 1500 ”, VLAN Enabled is on and the VLAN ID is “ 101 ”. Click close. You’re nearly there!
To check that you are in “ bridged ” mode, the “ Internet access ” tab should say “ Gateway in Bridge Mode ”. If it says this, you’ve completed the hard part!
On the back of the cuckoo router, make sure to plug an ethernet cable into the yellow LAN ports 1-3 . This is important as LAN port 4 is used for maintenance , should something happen with your internet connection/Cuckoo router. See below for the port guide:
Then plug the other end of the ethernet cable into the “ WAN ” port on your own router. This will more than likely be separate to the other LAN ports.
This is the last step (hooray)!
You’ll need to go into the admin panel of your own router (it’ll more than likely be on 192.168.1.1 . If not, check the back of your own router for details).
Once in the admin panel, look for WAN or Internet settings . Set the “ WAN connection type ” to “ PPPoE ”. A couple of boxes for username/password should appear.
At Cuckoo, PPPOE login details are generic. The username is pppoe@cuckoo.co and the password is 123456789 .
Once done, you should have an internet connection!
Please Note: Step 4 may be slightly different for everyone as many different routers (especially mesh network boxes!) have different layouts. As long as you look for something similar to what is noted, you should be OK. Mesh network boxes usually have an app instead of web interface, so follow step 4 the same way, but use the app instead of going to the web interface.
Hopefully this has been helpful and will allow you to use your own hardware on the cuckoo network! We’re sad to see that you don’t want to use the provided router (it’s good!), but everyone has different needs.
This guide was built on the top of Tommy's foundation instructions for mesh networks.
Any problems, please post in the help section on the forum and we’ll do our best to help!
-Chris
Most mobile phones have the function to allow devices (such as desktop computers, laptops or tablets) to connect to it and share a Wi-Fi connection. Discover how to do it.
There are a variety of ways that you can boost the Wi-Fi signal in your home and there are different things you can do depending on the problem you’re experiencing and the home you’re living in. Discover how in our handy guide.