Wirless connectivety
03-27-2015, 08:42 AM
#1
Member
Thread Starter
Wirless connectivety
Playing around with my truck and found how I can connect the truck to a wireless network. So I turned my hotspot on my phone and it connected. Can someone tell me what that is for? How is it used? Etc.
03-27-2015, 09:41 AM
#2
Senior Member
I have now used mine but I believe it is used if you want to hook up your laptop and do some work or get the kiddies iPads hooked up on the road. Others may have more experience with it though. Now that you have brought it up, I will probably mess with it this weekend.
03-27-2015, 05:11 PM
#3
Member
Thread Starter
If I want to use a laptop or iPad I would just use my Mobil hotspot on my phone. The wireless network connection for sync has to be for something. Updates maybe? I will be researching this weekend also.
03-29-2015, 08:41 AM
#4
Senior Member
I'm pretty sure the wireless network in the car is for just that. Once you connect your phone and enable it as the internet access for the car, other devices in the car can then access the internet by connecting to the car's network. Of course, as you pointed out, you could do this entirely without the car/truck in the loop and just make the phone a wireless hotspot.
I'm guessing this functionality was added several years ago before wireless hotspots were common in phones. Back then, the hardware available for this was USB connected (you can still get USB hotspots). Ford probably enabled this thinking you would plug your hotspot hardware into a USB port and then the truck could provide a wireless network for other devices.
As the technology to support this has improved, most devices like this are now capable of becoming a wireless hotspot on their own. This has made the truck technology sort of obsolete. There is a lot of lead time in the truck-tech, so it's not surprising some of the features just aren't that useful today.
I'm guessing this functionality was added several years ago before wireless hotspots were common in phones. Back then, the hardware available for this was USB connected (you can still get USB hotspots). Ford probably enabled this thinking you would plug your hotspot hardware into a USB port and then the truck could provide a wireless network for other devices.
As the technology to support this has improved, most devices like this are now capable of becoming a wireless hotspot on their own. This has made the truck technology sort of obsolete. There is a lot of lead time in the truck-tech, so it's not surprising some of the features just aren't that useful today.
03-29-2015, 09:19 AM
#6
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03-29-2015, 10:33 AM
#10
I could be wrong but I think it's for wireless USB modems that would normally only give you a single connection through your laptop. If you have a modem like that you can plug it into one of your USB ports and your truck becomes the hot spot. If you have a wireless hot spot already you wouldn't need to connect it through your truck.