Can you use a mobile hotspot with a PlayStation with a Pay As You Go Plan

[JW43]

I have a PlayStation 4 Pro and my mobile is a Vodafone Original Smart E8.

I need to connect my PS4 to my mobile hotspot but it won't connect. My PS4 gets an IP address but just won't connect to the internet.

I've tried with other vodafone smartphones on Pay As You Go plans and it doesn't work with them either.

I know Pay As You Go will gobble up data use but I'm not worried about that. I'll switch to a monthly contract if I need to I just want to see if I can get it to work.

So my questions are

1) Do you need a monthly plan before you can use a mobile hotspot for gaming?

2) Is the phone just too low spec for gaming?

3) If you can use the hotspot then why isn't it working?

[Josh]

@JW43 This is a tough one, especially with it having something to do with the PS4...

1) You should be able to HotSpot your mobile data, even on Pay as You Go. The APN settings don't restrict this, you just need to be using a phone capable of hotspotting.

2) If the phone has a hotspotting feature, it won't necessarily be low spec/not work with hotspotting to the PS4. However, it wouldn't be ideal and would probably have a lot of latency/low data speeds.

3) The hotspot may not be working on the PS4 with your 4G, due to the NAT Type. There's various posts on our forum that cover ways you can try to bypass the NAT type restrictions.

[JW43]

I don't think this is a NAT type problem.

My phone does have a hotspot feature and when I try to set up my playstation it does recognise the hotspot network and I can select it and go through the set up options.

However after using either manual or automatic set up and testing the connection it only gets as far as recognising the IP address and then fails to connect online.

I think this might be a DNS issue. I tried going into manual setup and using the 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as the primary and secondary DNS and that didn't work either. I just can't figure it out.

[Beth]

@JW43 Just to make you aware, Vodafone uses ivP4 which means that you won't be able to go online when you're gaming using the hotspot, we are looking into updating this to ivP6 though which will hold the online capacity. 

In regards to the hotspot in general, it should be fine with pay as you go phones as Josh said, but if this isn't working for you, it's definitely capable of this on a pay monthly contract. Please click here to view our current pay monthly options.

Are you able to hotspot to anything else, another mobile, a laptop etc? If you're having issues with that, please click here to speak to an agent via social media and we can take a look at your account with us 😊

[JW43]

So ivP4 means vodafone has no way of connecting to the PlayStation network from a hotspot?

[MarkD]

That's correct @JW43 as you will need to be online to access PlayStation Network. 

Apart from the PlayStation, is everything else connected?