7 ms·

There isn't and really hasn't ever been wireless net neutrality. Carriers used to (and perhaps still do) get at this data through deep packet inspection. It's

• blueskin_ 13y ago
  That's why you use a VPN.
  • eli 13y ago
    Or just pay for a tethering plan if you want tethering.
    • mindslight 13y ago
      Or just pay for answering machine rental instead of hooking your unapproved device up to Ma Bell's wires. Demarcation points were invented for a reason.
    • blueskin_ 13y ago
      Good luck doing that without being massively price gouged.
  • rahimnathwani 13y ago
    Yes, but how can you tether your tablet/PC to the VPN connection established on your phone?
    • blueskin_ 13y ago
      Use tethering, with all traffic on the computer sent through the VPN. Or just use SSHDroid with TCP forwarding to make your phone a proxy without having tethering enabled.
      • ifmw 13y ago
        On Android, when you use the inbuilt VPN functionality: no tethered traffic goes through the VPN.
• davidgerard 13y ago
  They have long been able to in theory - but do we have confirmation that they actually do so, for the purpose to hand? (distinguishing tethering from on-device)
  • personZ 13y ago
    iOS, Blackberry OS, and Windows Phone all honor carrier tethering flags -- if your carrier says "don't tether", the device will not legitimately tether. We know that. It has been the case for time eternal. We also know that carriers have long been able to detect tethering through deep packet inspection : People have been forced into upgrades, or have discovered surprising bonuses on their bill, when they tethered in defiance of that flag (whether through Android, or one of the hack tethering apps available on the other OS'). There is nothing new about this.
  • eli 13y ago
    Sure, my T-Mobile plan has "unlimited" data usage on my phone, but only 5G/month tethering. I can track my usage separately through their website. Tethering is a standard feature for them now, but they used to require an add on and would track down people tethering without it. (AFAIK it was as simple as searching for desktop user agents)
  • otoburb 13y ago
    This type of behaviour is classified as a 'revenue leak' within carriers and is a known irritant in the wireless telecom industry. The nature of the irritant is naturally completely dependent on your point of view (end-user vs. carrier). Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) has several purported benefits and use-cases, most entirely technical and usually driven by entailing cost-saving/traffic steering requirements, with a few key use-cases around which revenue generating business cases can be modeled. Distinguishing tethering from on-device traffic via DPI is one way of accomplishing this; there are other, potentially more cost-effective ways to accomplish the same behaviour as already noted in this thread elsewhere (e.g. user-agent detection). As per the OP, another detection method is to have the OEM add a special route/flag when tethering is detected. The nature of the flag takes various forms (which in this case resulted in a new sourceIP from a different subnet be assigned to the device). Anybody that operates a network (wireless or fixed) implements similar traffic steering/shaping/QoS techniques. Without them, one cannot optimally leverage their heavy network capital investments.
• Nursie 13y ago
  In the UK the common practice seems to be to set up dual APNs on a phone, and tell the phone to use one for its own purposes and one for tethering. If you bought your phone independently of the carrier and don't have their locked down firmware then you can usually just delete the bad APN and everything will go back to normal. DPI is available, but I'm not sure how often it gets used. If you want to have a play with it on your own then try writing a bit of C code to hook up libpcap to libndpi.