4 ms·

I really want mobile networks to accept their role as dumb data pipes. I should be able to just provide a password or certificate and connect. No IEMI, no SIM.

I really want mobile networks to accept their role as dumb data pipes. I should be able to just provide a password or certificate and connect. No IEMI, no SIM. And while we are at it stop tunneling my data back "home" when I travel. I don't want increased latency.

londons_explore 2y ago
And while we're at it, how come if I have a phone without a sim I can't at least navigate to a carrier webpage to buy an esim? The phone could pop up a menu saying "Here are the available networks", and you pick one, connect and it says "Welcome to AT&T, enter credit card number here", and you type a number and hit OK and you're connected. Oh wait - just like Wifi!! Why are mobile networks so far behind?
- btgeekboy 2y ago
  Kinda like this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_SIM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_SIM
kbolino 2y ago
How would a networking stack with no hardware addresses even work? The next hop needs a way to reach back to you, before you can negotiate anything fancy like passwords or certificates. Even IPv6 SLAAC starts with a hardware address.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  rand()?
  - kbolino 2y ago
    A MAC address is 48 bits and an IMEI is about the same entropy-wise. That's not nearly enough room to avoid duplicates (even SLAAC requires duplicate address detection, and IPv6 has a lot more bits to work with). You'd need a whole new layer 2 protocol, though to be fair you might be able to strip it down to just doing collision detection/avoidance and leave addressing up to layer 3 with IPv6, but that's not going to be any kind of backwards compatible or interoperable.
    - boznz 2y ago
      Surely the uniqueness is only required at the bottom end of the stack before the first 'router' ie the cell tower
      - baby_souffle 2y ago
        > Surely the uniqueness is only required at the bottom end of the stack before the first 'router' ie the cell tower Not if you need to send a message to $thatUniquePhone. Over simplifying considerably, but if a land line places a call to a mobile, the "220-1234 calling for 220-7890" message enters the network. The `220-7890` phone number needs to map to the unique modem address so you can look up which tower the call setup data should be sent to. If - by sheer coincidence - I also have your MAC address and am attached to a tower 3 states away... which tower(s) do you forward the call setup data to?!
        vdqtp3 2y ago
        > which tower(s) do you forward the call setup data Whichever one has most recently communicated with the user in question (based on the credentials or certificate provided, in the original example)
        kbolino 2y ago
        Assuming something like VoIP is in use, you reach other devices with their IP addresses, not MAC addresses.
        thaumasiotes 2y ago
        As far as I know MAC addresses are never used to route a message to a particular recipient. They're used so that devices that overhear the message, but aren't the intended recipient, can ignore that message on the honor system. If you have a wired connection, this makes the MAC completely superfluous. The concept is sort of still valid for wireless connections (or of course for "wired" connections where you have multiple devices physically connected by the same wire, a bus, where the concept originated). It should be rethought.
- kevvok 2y ago
  The use of IPv6 in cellular devices is specified by RFC 7066. When a device first registers for a data connection, the network provides an interface identifier to use for the lifetime of the registration, which is guaranteed not to conflict with the one used by the router. The network also allocates a /64 prefix exclusively for use by the device. These two things allows the device to perform SLAAC for link-local and routable addresses without needing to do duplicate address detection. It’s also worth mentioning SLAAC does not strictly require a hardware address to function. For example, Apple devices implement newer standards from IETF to generate random but stable addresses that don’t reveal information about the hardware addresses (https://support.apple.com/guide/security/ipv6-security-seccb625dcd9/web https://support.apple.com/guide/security/ipv6-security-seccb...)
ixwt 2y ago
> And while we are at it stop tunneling my data back "home" when I travel. Oddly enough, I found this to be a plus when I traveled to China for work. My data was unmolested by the Great Firewall of China. I was able to get on websites with my mobile data that I couldn't when using wifi in the hotels.
techsupporter 2y ago
> And while we are at it stop tunneling my data back "home" when I travel. I don't want increased latency. You might not, but a whole lot of customers who aren't as technically sophisticated did. When T-Mobile first started doing included international data roaming, they didn't tunnel back. That caused a lot of confusion from customers who didn't realize why stuff they expected to work, like checking their bank balance, didn't. (It also made throttling speeds a lot more difficult.) So to fix that, T-Mobile tunnels you back to a few endpoints in the States. Banking apps are generally happy, as are Netflix and Spotify. Most customers are happy because their phone "just works" the same as it "always has". For those of us who want to avoid the latency, we get a local SIM for data (if possible).
- hunter2_ 2y ago
  This is interesting. I use Verizon Wireless from the US, and when traveling abroad on their travel pass (roaming), some large multilingual websites serve me the local language instead of English, on sites that serve me English when I'm at home. My browser (Accept-Language header) is configured for only English. I always decline location API browser popups. The only thing I can think of, assuming they tunnel as you describe, is maybe I first loaded the site from local WiFi instead of mobile data, at which point I was redirected (to a localized subdomain that doesn't redirect back) or got a cookie or something, which lingered as I continued without WiFi.
jhoechtl 2y ago
CB radio has you covered

londons_explore 2y ago

And while we're at it, how come if I have a phone without a sim I can't at least navigate to a carrier webpage to buy an esim? The phone could pop up a menu saying "Here are the available networks", and you pick one, connect and it says "Welcome to AT&T, enter credit card number here", and you type a number and hit OK and you're connected. Oh wait - just like Wifi!! Why are mobile networks so far behind?

btgeekboy 2y ago
Kinda like this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_SIM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_SIM

kbolino 2y ago

How would a networking stack with no hardware addresses even work? The next hop needs a way to reach back to you, before you can negotiate anything fancy like passwords or certificates. Even IPv6 SLAAC starts with a hardware address.

londons_explore 2y ago
rand()?
- kbolino 2y ago
  A MAC address is 48 bits and an IMEI is about the same entropy-wise. That's not nearly enough room to avoid duplicates (even SLAAC requires duplicate address detection, and IPv6 has a lot more bits to work with). You'd need a whole new layer 2 protocol, though to be fair you might be able to strip it down to just doing collision detection/avoidance and leave addressing up to layer 3 with IPv6, but that's not going to be any kind of backwards compatible or interoperable.
  - boznz 2y ago
    Surely the uniqueness is only required at the bottom end of the stack before the first 'router' ie the cell tower
    - baby_souffle 2y ago
      > Surely the uniqueness is only required at the bottom end of the stack before the first 'router' ie the cell tower Not if you need to send a message to $thatUniquePhone. Over simplifying considerably, but if a land line places a call to a mobile, the "220-1234 calling for 220-7890" message enters the network. The `220-7890` phone number needs to map to the unique modem address so you can look up which tower the call setup data should be sent to. If - by sheer coincidence - I also have your MAC address and am attached to a tower 3 states away... which tower(s) do you forward the call setup data to?!
      - vdqtp3 2y ago
        > which tower(s) do you forward the call setup data Whichever one has most recently communicated with the user in question (based on the credentials or certificate provided, in the original example)
      - kbolino 2y ago
        Assuming something like VoIP is in use, you reach other devices with their IP addresses, not MAC addresses.
        thaumasiotes 2y ago
        As far as I know MAC addresses are never used to route a message to a particular recipient. They're used so that devices that overhear the message, but aren't the intended recipient, can ignore that message on the honor system. If you have a wired connection, this makes the MAC completely superfluous. The concept is sort of still valid for wireless connections (or of course for "wired" connections where you have multiple devices physically connected by the same wire, a bus, where the concept originated). It should be rethought.
kevvok 2y ago
The use of IPv6 in cellular devices is specified by RFC 7066. When a device first registers for a data connection, the network provides an interface identifier to use for the lifetime of the registration, which is guaranteed not to conflict with the one used by the router. The network also allocates a /64 prefix exclusively for use by the device. These two things allows the device to perform SLAAC for link-local and routable addresses without needing to do duplicate address detection. It’s also worth mentioning SLAAC does not strictly require a hardware address to function. For example, Apple devices implement newer standards from IETF to generate random but stable addresses that don’t reveal information about the hardware addresses (https://support.apple.com/guide/security/ipv6-security-seccb625dcd9/web https://support.apple.com/guide/security/ipv6-security-seccb...)

ixwt 2y ago

> And while we are at it stop tunneling my data back "home" when I travel. Oddly enough, I found this to be a plus when I traveled to China for work. My data was unmolested by the Great Firewall of China. I was able to get on websites with my mobile data that I couldn't when using wifi in the hotels.

techsupporter 2y ago

> And while we are at it stop tunneling my data back "home" when I travel. I don't want increased latency. You might not, but a whole lot of customers who aren't as technically sophisticated did. When T-Mobile first started doing included international data roaming, they didn't tunnel back. That caused a lot of confusion from customers who didn't realize why stuff they expected to work, like checking their bank balance, didn't. (It also made throttling speeds a lot more difficult.) So to fix that, T-Mobile tunnels you back to a few endpoints in the States. Banking apps are generally happy, as are Netflix and Spotify. Most customers are happy because their phone "just works" the same as it "always has". For those of us who want to avoid the latency, we get a local SIM for data (if possible).

hunter2_ 2y ago
This is interesting. I use Verizon Wireless from the US, and when traveling abroad on their travel pass (roaming), some large multilingual websites serve me the local language instead of English, on sites that serve me English when I'm at home. My browser (Accept-Language header) is configured for only English. I always decline location API browser popups. The only thing I can think of, assuming they tunnel as you describe, is maybe I first loaded the site from local WiFi instead of mobile data, at which point I was redirected (to a localized subdomain that doesn't redirect back) or got a cookie or something, which lingered as I continued without WiFi.

jhoechtl 2y ago

CB radio has you covered