Clear iSpot review
Lately, the notion of getting Apple's ever-growing line of mobile devices connected to 3G and 4G networks is attracting a lot of attention from carriers that aren't AT&T -- take Sprint's Overdrive case for the iPad, for instance -- but not in a million years did we think Clear would go so far as to create a mobile hotspot designed exclusively for them. In some ways, that's taking respect for the Apple ecosystem to a whole new level. Of course, even the most die-hard Apple fanatics probably own a WiFi-capable device or three that doesn't hail from Cupertino, so the usefulness of Clear's iSpot is definitely limited -- by design, of course. In exchange for the gimping, you pay just $25 a month for unlimited, blazingly fast WiMAX data with no contract, which is insanely cheap by modern standards -- especially in an era when many carriers are moving to data caps.
So just how useful is the iSpot? Does it work as advertised? And perhaps more importantly, can it be used to... ahem, do things it's not intended to do, if you catch our drift? Read on.
Physically, the iSpot is a dead ringer for Clear's previously-introduced Spot 4G, except this one's glossy white plastic instead of black (of course, Clear would've made this thing out of aluminum if they were shooting for an up-to-date Apple industrial design cliche, but we digress). It's an imposing hotspot -- quite a bit larger than the Novatel MiFi, though it's still no bigger or heavier than your average smartphone, so it's easily concealed in a pocket or a laptop bag. A rounded, pebble-like shape makes it easy and comfortable to hold in the hand, though you really don't have any reason to hold it while you're using it -- you'll either have it stored on your person or it'll be sitting on a table, most likely.
Speaking of "imposing," there's a great reason for the iSpot's size: it's got an almost comically large, removable 2700mAh lithium ion battery beneath that pale skin. 4G networks aren't exactly easy on the juice, so it's a must-have -- and in our testing, the giant pack more or less pays off: we were able to get close to five hours of use, more than Clear's quoted four hours (granted, we were in nearly perfect reception here in Chicago most of the time). That's not bad. Granted, we were expecting more considering that we got over three hours from the EVO 4G -- which, on top of only having a 1500mAh battery, is doing much more than simply being a mobile hotspot -- but for your average use case, four-plus hours is plenty, particularly if you're careful to turn it off when you're not using it. Interestingly, the iSpot lets you configure the strength of the WiFi signal to conserve battery life if you don't need much range; the default is the lowest-power mode, and that's what we used for our testing. If you have a clear line of sight, you can use this mode and place the iSpot anywhere in a room -- you'll be fine.
Clear specifically calls out the iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad as the devices it expects you to use with the iSpot, and they're really easy to pair -- if you're familiar with other mobile hotspots like the MiFi, the process should be very familiar. By default, the device has a WiFi SSID of "iSpot XXX" where "XXX" corresponds to the last three nibbles of its MAC address, though this can be changed through the configuration page at http://192.168.1.1. The default WPA password -- which can also be changed -- is printed on the back. Two LEDs on the top indicate WiMAX and WiFi status, and a cheat sheet on the rear lets you decode what they mean if you forget (basically, you want to see two solid lights that aren't red).
So, what's it like to use the iSpot? Turning it on is a little awkward; there's a power button on the side, but you need to hold it down for quite a while to get the device to respond (once you get used to it, it's not a big deal -- we just thought our unit was broken or the battery was completely dead the first time we experienced it). Boot time is a bit longer than a MiFi, but still way faster than an Overdrive; the blue WiFi light fires up within about ten to fifteen seconds of powering on, at which point you're good to go.
Data throughput was surprisingly inconsistent, but there's no way of knowing whether the device or the network is to blame -- and thankfully, it's plenty fast on average. On our iPhone, we saw speeds ranging from 1Mbps to 5Mbps down, while uplink speeds were more consistent and tended to hover right around 1Mbps. On our MacBook Pro, the downlink was more consistently speedy, ranging from 5 to about 6.5Mbps; uplink, meanwhile, stuck around 1Mbps the whole time.
Yes, that's right: we said MacBook Pro.
Amazingly, we discovered that we had to do no spoofing or hacking whatsoever to get either our MacBook Pro or iMac to play nice with the iSpot. MAC addresses, the hardcoded identifiers assigned to every network adapter in every device, use their first three bytes to identify the adapter's manufacturer; we'd assumed that MacBooks would report the manufacturer of the actual WiFi hardware inside the laptop, but a quick check of ours revealed that it's actually being identified as Apple. We know from discussions with Clear that they're using a MAC address filter to block non-Apple devices, but from their iSpot literature, it's obvious that they intend for the hotspot to be used with mobile devices only -- in other words, not desktop and laptop computers. Unless Clear can figure out which of Apple's MAC address manufacturer codes are used exclusively on its computers and they decide to enforce the rule,your MacBooks are in the clear, which makes the iSpot tremendously more useful than you might've initially thought out of the box.
[Update: Friend of the site Dave Zatz commented on the review to tell us that his late 2008 unibody MacBook is blocked, so it seems that Clear's already targeting some of Apple's MAC identifiers, unfortunately. Dave and others have pointed out that there's an undocumented admin console for viewing the approved identifiers at http://192.168.1.1/super.]
At that point, we started to think that maybe Clear simply hadn't enabled the promised MAC filtering, but attaching our EVO 4G and trying to browse quickly answered that question.
Of course, that leads us into the second part of this review: is there a way around the block? Typically, yes, but your mileage may vary. In the case of the EVO, the only way to spoof (that's 1337 speak for "change") your MAC address is to root, and generally speaking you're going to have to get into some hackery to spoof it on any smartphone -- so unless you're used to this sort of stuff and you're comfortable with the ever-present risk of bricking your beloved handset, the iSpot might not be the best option (not to say you need it with the WiMAX-equipped EVO anyhow).
That leaves Windows-based PCs as the single biggest target. Unfortunately, Windows 7 has made spoofing considerably more difficult -- not because the operating system doesn't support the concept, but because Windows 7-certified network drivers appear to make it much harder than it used to be. That being said, we'll walk you through the process in the video below, which should work pretty reliably in Windows XP or Vista; in Windows 7, you can still do it (in fact, we use Windows 7 for our demo here), but your network adapter may simply not acknowledge the new MAC address -- it'll still show the original value when you check it. Some folks have had success by rolling back to the XP versions of their network drivers, so if you give it a shot, let us know how it goes.
If you've got nothing but Apple devices in your gadget stable -- a MacBook, an iPhone, and an iPad, for example -- you've got a need for data on the go, and you spend most or all of your time in a 4G city, the iSpot is an absolute no-brainer at $25 a month with no contract. That's just too cheap to pass up. Heck, even if you just have a MacBook and use a non-Apple smartphone, we'd still say it's a must-have. If you're comfortable spoofing your MAC address on your handset or computer of choice, it's definitely worth a look, too. What'd really take the iSpot over the top for us is if it had CDMA on board as a fallback -- but we suppose that's why they're able to get this thing out of the door for so little cash and no commitment.
So just how useful is the iSpot? Does it work as advertised? And perhaps more importantly, can it be used to... ahem, do things it's not intended to do, if you catch our drift? Read on.



So, what's it like to use the iSpot? Turning it on is a little awkward; there's a power button on the side, but you need to hold it down for quite a while to get the device to respond (once you get used to it, it's not a big deal -- we just thought our unit was broken or the battery was completely dead the first time we experienced it). Boot time is a bit longer than a MiFi, but still way faster than an Overdrive; the blue WiFi light fires up within about ten to fifteen seconds of powering on, at which point you're good to go.
Data throughput was surprisingly inconsistent, but there's no way of knowing whether the device or the network is to blame -- and thankfully, it's plenty fast on average. On our iPhone, we saw speeds ranging from 1Mbps to 5Mbps down, while uplink speeds were more consistent and tended to hover right around 1Mbps. On our MacBook Pro, the downlink was more consistently speedy, ranging from 5 to about 6.5Mbps; uplink, meanwhile, stuck around 1Mbps the whole time.
Yes, that's right: we said MacBook Pro.
Amazingly, we discovered that we had to do no spoofing or hacking whatsoever to get either our MacBook Pro or iMac to play nice with the iSpot. MAC addresses, the hardcoded identifiers assigned to every network adapter in every device, use their first three bytes to identify the adapter's manufacturer; we'd assumed that MacBooks would report the manufacturer of the actual WiFi hardware inside the laptop, but a quick check of ours revealed that it's actually being identified as Apple. We know from discussions with Clear that they're using a MAC address filter to block non-Apple devices, but from their iSpot literature, it's obvious that they intend for the hotspot to be used with mobile devices only -- in other words, not desktop and laptop computers. Unless Clear can figure out which of Apple's MAC address manufacturer codes are used exclusively on its computers and they decide to enforce the rule,
[Update: Friend of the site Dave Zatz commented on the review to tell us that his late 2008 unibody MacBook is blocked, so it seems that Clear's already targeting some of Apple's MAC identifiers, unfortunately. Dave and others have pointed out that there's an undocumented admin console for viewing the approved identifiers at http://192.168.1.1/super.]

Of course, that leads us into the second part of this review: is there a way around the block? Typically, yes, but your mileage may vary. In the case of the EVO, the only way to spoof (that's 1337 speak for "change") your MAC address is to root, and generally speaking you're going to have to get into some hackery to spoof it on any smartphone -- so unless you're used to this sort of stuff and you're comfortable with the ever-present risk of bricking your beloved handset, the iSpot might not be the best option (not to say you need it with the WiMAX-equipped EVO anyhow).
That leaves Windows-based PCs as the single biggest target. Unfortunately, Windows 7 has made spoofing considerably more difficult -- not because the operating system doesn't support the concept, but because Windows 7-certified network drivers appear to make it much harder than it used to be. That being said, we'll walk you through the process in the video below, which should work pretty reliably in Windows XP or Vista; in Windows 7, you can still do it (in fact, we use Windows 7 for our demo here), but your network adapter may simply not acknowledge the new MAC address -- it'll still show the original value when you check it. Some folks have had success by rolling back to the XP versions of their network drivers, so if you give it a shot, let us know how it goes.
Wrap-up





























From the picture, I thought it was a Mouse.
@Edmunn How cool would that be if it was a wifi hotspot/mouse combination?
@kdilkington wifi hotspot and mouse? imagine the amount of "anttenuation"
@Edmunn I thought it was a female part at first...
@Edmunn Yeah, talking about the antenna death grip built in ;)
@gballa408
That's a pretty odd looking female part you got there.
@Edmunn : No, its a 4G bar of soap for acne. :)
@One Love
Why did they limit it to iDevices only? I would love to have this for my laptop.
$25 a month for internet wherever you want? yes please
@rmbrown09
But it's only over 4G. No 3G.
@techee44
And only on your iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.
Definitely a good deal for iPad though
@keyl10
An extra $15 a month will let you you connect with any device.
@rmbrown09
Not a bad price at all. But how do you get away with using an iPhone4 with ATT and not have the data plan? I don't currently have a data plan, but I know that sooner or later, it will get added automatically to my plan.
$25+$15(cheapest ATT iphone dataplan).. I don't really want to spend $40 a month on data, in addition to the huge cable/internet bill I'm already paying at home.
@AKJ You can't get less than "unlimited" data for smartphones
@That guy 2
Cept that ATT doesn't have an unlimited plan for smartphones.
@Brad Green
Yes they do. Unlimited just means 2GB and then $10/GB after that. Duh.
Lame, not because of only Apple devices, but because of no 3G. At all.
@techee44 They have another Clear Spot device that offers 3G as well...... Of course it is much more than $25 for the device and $25 monthly.
*uses n1 to tether to iDevices*
@atGmaildotcom
*douchely posts said comment*
jk
Can it do pr0n??? huh? Can it? can it?
FYI My Macbook MAC address is blocked. So there's obviously a number of of overlapping MAC addresses covering both iOS and and Macbook hardware. I've manually changed my MAC address on my Broadcom aircard to enable access, but others have been unable to do so on Atheros aircards.
We're discussing some of the finer points of MAC spoofing and the 'super' admin web console (192.168.1.1./super) that's been uncovered thus far here:
http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2010-08/more-ispot-speeds-mac-spoofing/
@davezatz Whoa. What model/generation MacBook?
@Chris Ziegler I've got the late 2008 aluminum unibody Macbook. Others have confirmed similar both our respective situations, so there's some overlap but not complete.
@davezatz Thanks -- I've updated our review. What a shame!
@Chris Ziegler Through the Super admin web console, you can see all the acceptable MAC address ranges/prefixes. The original firmware had like 16 or 17, the firmware update from 8/5 added like another 10 (which added some additional iPhone 4 hardware as far as I can tell).
@davezatz If someone were to find a way to get custom firmware onto the iSpot that woud either disable the MAC filtering or allow the list to be edited, would it be easier to flash the iSpot's firmware or just spoof your MAC?
@CapnShiner Without knowing how to replace the firmware or edit that particular setting, I can't say for sure. At least one person who left a comment on my site states they've disabled MAC filtering, but hasn't provided any detail on how it was accomplished. Of course, any path to use the iSpot in ways in which it wasn't intended could violate Clear's terms of service though.
@davezatz
hmm, does it allow an airport express to connect?
So when is 4G coming to Boston?
@Craptorium its already there. my friend has an EVO and he sends me pics of his 4G speed just to rub it in since im in NY and still waiting to get it for my EVO.
So I don't think I understand the point of this thing. It's primarily for connecting Apple mobile devices, yes? But the iPhone and iPad already have a cellular data connection (albeit as an option on the iPad, but if you want cellular coverage on your iPad, you probably got the one with it built in). I guess it's useful for the iPod Touch, but why would you get a new device with dedicated service just for that?
I don't understand the (marketed) appeal of this device.
@acceptablerisk
It's $25 unlimited, as compared to $25 for only 2GB(new AT&T plan). That's why people may want this if they have an iPhone or iPad. I'd say the iPad especially since it eats data from what I've read and you can use on either model. No need to search around for wifi on the wifi model, and no need to eat up your plan on the 3G one. On the iPhone, if you use up lots of data(more than 2GB and didn't get grandfathered into the unlimited), same thing.
@acceptablerisk 4G obviously
Unreal this thing doesn't support 3G.
@Mongoos150 : There are 3G/4G combo devices available. But when you add 3G, you get a higher price (the device is more complex), and data caps. You aren't going to find an uncapped 3G plan anywhere in the U.S. for $25/mo.
@ccdroid
No, but you will find uncapped 3G data plans on Sprint's smartphones. I used 50GB a month for a couple months before getting Clear 4G.
So is the idea here they are giving cheap data plans because they expect you to use low data usage devices such as iPod's?
Instead of spoofing a devices MAC address could you spoof the IMEI of an iSpot on a CLEAR Spot 4G+ ?
If it works as good as the regular Clear Spot 4G did on the train (that is, a quarter of a hour-long trip, compared to Verizon's full-strength the entire trip,) then yeah, well, let's just say that 4G (and Clear's coverage mapping ability) has a way to go yet. And that's coming out of Chicago, one of the epicenters of Xohm a few years back.
Funnily enough, you couldn't walk two steps in Union Station a few months back and not see a Clear advertisement. I'm guessing they weren't assuming anybody who actually rides the train regularly would see them, though. Or something.
Here are the MAC addresses that are whitelisted on the iSpot:
001B63, 001D4F, 001E52, 001EC2, 001FF3
0021E9, 002241, 002312, 002332, 0023DF
002436, 002500, 00254B, 0025BC, 002608
00264A, 0026B0, 0026BB, 041E64, 34159E
40D32D, 58B035, 5C5948, 60334B, 60FB42
64B9E8, 78CA39, 7C6D62, 7CC537, 9027E4
90840D, C42C03, D49A20, D83062, D8A25E
E80688, F81EDF
They can be accessed by logging in as "super" rather than admin on the device when connected to the iSpot over WiFi. Type in "http://ispot/super" (or "http://192.168.1.1/super"). Use "super" as login & password when prompted to have access to the whitelisted devices.
@Rouser Those are not complete MAC addresses. A MAC address is a 10 digit hex number.
@SonicEarth Sorry, 12 digit. My previous statement still stands.
@SonicEarth Those are the pertinent bits - this is how they allow ranges. If they only allowed like a dozen MAC addresses, it's be a pretty useless device. So substitute random characters for the remaining places.
@SonicEarth
Here's a pic of super user access so you can see what were talking about.
http://tinypic.com/r/zkijcz/4
Clearly they are filtering based upon beginning of the MAC addresses. Pretty simple concept really.
@Rouser The problem is, that's not a comprehensive list of Apple OID's. My iPod Touch is blocked. Ironically, my MacBook can get on the internet, against the ToS, but it's getting the net on my Touch that is the reason I got the iSpot in the first place. I applied the firmware update, but still cant get online. And Tech Support is a joke -- even Level 2 Tech Support told me the only thing I can do is wait until they can update my firmware yet again -- and that was last week.
I'd love a contract-less device like this. Unfortunately, the limiting it to 4G only makes it fairly useless for me as I'm not near any 4G areas :(
@Vidikron
Are you sure? Their coverage map as of a couple weeks ago showed nothing around me, then suddenly my area showed up on their map last week. I ordered Clear's 4G service and since last night I'm getting 250KByte/sec down and 100KByte/sec up without even having strong signal! (Sprint's 4G map still shows nothing in my area btw.)
@electrobrains
I just checked... still nothing. Nothing in my entire state... LOL.
It's coverage is no where close to me home or work place.