For a while now USB tethering using Android phones is a supported feature of Mikrotik RouterOS, but iPhone users are still left out using USB (only wifi tether). Wifi tether behaves different since IOS 14 private SSID/MAC changing features...

Tethering via the USB on iPhone can be done officially for a while using Windows and MacOS computers (with iTunes installed) but recently even a HDMI video Mixer/Streamer/Encoder unit called the "Atem Mini Pro" from BlackMagic Design can do this out of the box by itself using its USB-C port!

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/atemmini

This Atem video mixer is not even a network router, however I can already confirm since I tested it with a USB-C to lightning cable using a iPhone 6 and IPhone 11 that tethering is working without the need for a Windows or MacOS machine or other network equipment!

The point I'm trying to make is, how can Mikrotik not implement this even with a seperate package while its RouterOS is Linux based? Inofficially USB tethering for iPhones was supported on Linux based machines, desktop, laptops and routers by "libimobiledevice.org". OpenWRT does supply packages which makes iPhones USB tether working using the following HOWTO and using a couple of MegaBytes of libs. The process is very straight forward, but compared to a android device you might have to Authorize the iPhone every time you connect.

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/net ... .tethering

Most of the Mikrotik devices come with a huge amount of free disk space so that should not be the issue, also see requests for iPhone USB tether earlier made on this forum:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=172776&p=845493&hi ... sb#p845493
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=164437&p=808964&hil ... sb#p808964
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=79320&p=813938&hili ... sb#p813938

While I support the plea for USB tethering (although I don't use it and don't need it), I beg to differ:

Most of the Mikrotik devices come with a huge amount of free disk space

Quite many recent Mikrotik devices (e.g. hAP ac2, hAP ac3, wAP ac, cAP ac, etc., not to mention low-end devices) have really tiny disk space with size of 16MB ... which sometimes isn't enough even for current ROS v6 upgrade, much less for additional packages. As things seem now, ROS v7 will require more disk space than v6 because most of current packages will be merged into base package.

Most of the Mikrotik devices come with a huge amount of free disk space

Quite many recent Mikrotik devices (e.g. hAP ac2, hAP ac3, wAP ac, cAP ac, etc., not to mention low-end devices) have really tiny disk space with size of 16MB ...

Thanks for your interest. However I do think our perspective of huge/small free disk space on the Routers differs. Right now I'm comparing apple's to oranges, but a dated TP-link 1043NDv1 with 8MB ROM 32MB RAM does run latest stable OpenWRT 19.07.7 with webGUI and USB iPhone tethering and have been tested and used for more than half a year. Having 16, 64 or even gigantic 128MB rom seems promising.

Offcourse Mikrotik ROS offers many more features than a simple/stripped OpenWRT image. Its good to know modern hardware even HexPOE only has 16MB ROM but since a lot of USB related libs are already in RouterOS size may not even be an issue?

The 4th beta of RouterOS 7.1 for mipsbe is around ~11MegaByte, seems doable?

It's probably not a big deal to support USB CDC Network, but I'm not sure you will find that support on other network equipment vendors. It's quite a nische feature. especially when Mikrotik does many proper LTE routers to begin with.

...I'm not sure you will find that support on other network equipment vendors. It's quite a nische feature. especially when Mikrotik does many proper LTE routers to begin with.

Sofar indeed the only vendor that can do this ootb is "Netgate" while running pfsense, after that you probably get reflashed OEM brands with custom OpenWRT solutions. Even Ubiquity came to my mind but haven't found this feature yet for their edge routers.

Its nice that mikrotik also offers special in and outdoor LTE devices, however just having the luxory to connect a mobile device which may already have a DATA PLAN from your pocket is very handy therefor Mikrotik implemented the Android USB tether feature ;-) in the first place.

Both of us are on the same line that it probably can be done, but how to get the attention of the developers and show there is a real demand/need.

As a new strategy for theoretical purposes only how about reformulating this a new "feature removal request" about removing the Android USB tether support and see how much and what kind of reactions it would bring just to see and measure the demand of current android users?