Would my provider know I am tethering?

[Guest StuMcBill]

I am looking at some of the FroYo ports that are floating around at the moment, and it seems that some of them have the WiFi hotspot mode working, and I was wondering if I would have to go for o2's tethering Bolt-on, of if they would even know I was tethering my Laptop to my Desire's 3G connection?

Thanks

Stu

[Guest tatey2457]

From the amount of data that would be used I'm sure they would be able to tell but as long as you remain within the "fair usage" policy I don't see there being a problem, I never had any issues when I used to use I iPhone to tether.

[Guest SatanR1]

Like said above, unless your downloads increase significantly they probably won't even realise.

[Guest solarnz]

If they were to inspect the http traffic, they would be able to look at your user agent string and realise that it is one for a a desktop browser.

So, yes the provider would be able to tell if you were tethering or not, but that doesn't mean that they do or will know.

[Guest IIIIkoolaidIIII]

I've been tethering my mobile for years through various mobiles and the provider has never noticed or penalised me, even though it was stated that it was against the terms of my contract. So as the above have said, unless you start using it excessively you will be fine.

[Guest Rdy2Go]

Technically it is easy to detect based on user agent or analyzing TCP/IP frames (TTL value).

It's more business/contractual issue than technical one.

[Guest jdouce]

i used o2 for tethering for years now.... they dont check .... i ran up 5gb in a month and didnt even get a call

i do the same with 3 and yet to get anything said

Edited June 9, 2010 by jdouce

[Guest peter.taylor]

Technically it is easy to detect based on user agent or analyzing TCP/IP frames (TTL value).

It's more business/contractual issue than technical one.

i doubt they would bother checking the user agent, i quite often use "dolphin browser" and set the agent to desktop.

some pages just look better on desktop mode.

[Guest bcmobile]

i doubt they would bother checking the user agent, i quite often use "dolphin browser" and set the agent to desktop.

some pages just look better on desktop mode.

Sniffing packets for any sort of information would be a breach of privacy in just about any country I would imagine.

If they really wanted to find out there would be several ways to do including looking at the IP address that the packets originate from.

TTL would not be a reliable indication because if the default TTL was (eg) 64 then I'm pretty sure you could configure your phones IP stack to reset the TTL before forwarding (assuming that's not the normal behaviour)

I always wondered how telcos managed to block tethering. Off to Wikipedia now to find out :)

Edited June 10, 2010 by bcmobile

[Guest bjtheone]

Sniffing packets for any sort of information would be a breach of privacy in just about any country I would imagine.

If they really wanted to find out there would be several ways to do including looking at the IP address that the packets originate from.

TTL would not be a reliable indication because if the default TTL was (eg) 64 then I'm pretty sure you could configure your phones IP stack to reset the TTL before forwarding (assuming that's not the normal behaviour)

I always wondered how telcos managed to block tethering. Off to Wikipedia now to find out :)

Depends on the country and how awful your carriers Terms and Conditions are... In Canada (which has pretty decent/solid privacy laws), on Rogers they have managed to get away with pretty much absolute rights to inspect data traffic. OTOH, I have not heard of them actually doing that.

Screening based on IP address would not work since most tethering is just IPtables and does NAT so all traffic looks like it is coming from the phone from an IP point of view. Have to look inside the packets and see what is looks like (PC based apps, wrong user agent, etc).

AFAIK, carriers don't actually block tethering. Some block certain ports, so some standard/useful services that want to use said ports do not work. Some/most restrict/deny it in the terms and conditions but that is a separate issue. Typically all they do is try and lock down the phones, and make sure they don't have tethering function available.

No one has issues tethering with WinMobile, jailbroken iPhones or rooted Android devices, at least not in North America. Wireless tether is included in every custom ROM that I have seen for Android. If the carrier is providing a full internet experience on the phone (ie all ports open) then you can tether another device to the phone and use the data connection in exactly the same way. Everything I have tried to do tethered has worked for me.