Best PAYG data sim card

[Conachair]

Tethering is not allowed on the unlimited data packages but is allowed on the 1gb £10 goodybag.

How do they know? Other than using a selfish amount of bandwidth? Does the phone send a data bit if it's tethered? Anyone know?

 

[VicMallows]

How do they know? Other than using a selfish amount of bandwidth? Does the phone send a data bit if it's tethered? Anyone know?

The tethered device will certainly identify itself with its unique address.

 

[maby]

The tethered device will certainly identify itself with its unique address.

Will it? I've never bothered to look seriously at tethering technology, but I assumed that the phone functions as a natting router in which case it is extemely difficult to detect down stream.

 

[sam_uk]

The tethered device will certainly identify itself with its unique address.

Do you mean the MAC address? I would be curious as to how this will work.

My understanding is that when tethered, your phone is, in essence, a router, and MAC addresses do not pass through a router. When a router passes traffic through it, it rewrites the data packets with its own MAC address so it can identify them coming back.

I guess network providers could look at browser user agents? Even that could be easily worked around: http://bit.ly/SLHW5S

 

[maby]

Do you mean the MAC address? I would be curious as to how this will work.

My understanding is that when tethered, your phone is, in essence, a router, and MAC addresses do not pass through a router. When a router passes traffic through it, it rewrites the data packets with its own MAC address so it can identify them coming back.

I guess network providers could look at browser user agents? Even that could be easily worked around: http://bit.ly/SLHW5S

Exactly - the network provider could try to apply some heuristics to the traffic to detect that it is unlikely to have come from a phone, but they cannot prove anything. Well, I guess that you could with an iPhone since Apple have them locked down so tightly that their fingerprint is probably quite distinctive. I can run almost anything I want on my Android phone.

 

[Richard10002]

I assure you that you _can_. Reading the thread it now seems like you are not supposed to. But it does work.

I am typing this on a laptop connected to a tethered Android phone on Giff Gaff.

Something like this would probably make it work: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lite.up.wifitether.free.update&hl=en

You are correct - the recent alteration of their price structure was partly blamed on those who tethered and used massive amounts of data. They said they would doing something to identify tetherers but you seem to be proof that that isn't happening.

I recall using a Nokia N95 to tether a T-Mobile to my laptop. One day, I tethered, and up popped a screen telling me I would have to pay up if I wanted to tether - so there must be a way.

 

[halb]

I use Virgin, £12.00 pm on a rolling contract, 150 mins, texts and unlimited data, plus it allows tethering, needed for my Asus Transformer and Netbook, some suppliers don't allow tethering.
Remember Dongles don't work on Android tablets


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[maby]

You are correct - the recent alteration of their price structure was partly blamed on those who tethered and used massive amounts of data. They said they would doing something to identify tetherers but you seem to be proof that that isn't happening.

I recall using a Nokia N95 to tether a T-Mobile to my laptop. One day, I tethered, and up popped a screen telling me I would have to pay up if I wanted to tether - so there must be a way.

If you are using a network provider subsidised phone with their customised firmware installed, it is easy for them to modify that part of the operating system that manages tethering to check the tarrif you are on and restrict access. T-mobile in America seem to have done this on some of the Android phones they supply, but there are patches or alternative router applications around that defeat the checks.

 

[Cardo]

All mobile data goes through the network's proxy. It's not difficult for the proxy to check http requests to check the user agent to see what kind of device is using the network. Yes, this can often be spoofed, but how many of you know how to do this? Also, some websites will provide a customised page for mobile phone user agents so your experience could be limited.

I am not aware of any unlimited usage tethering plans. You can try your luck and use it under the radar however if they catch you out they may supply you with a hefty bill for using data that's not covered by your data plan.

 

[charles_reed]

I get 7Gb/month for €15 off Vodafone GR.

I've been able to use my phone as modem on all my data via cellular in Italy, Croatia, Spain, Tunisia, Malta, France and Greece over the past 7 years - I fail to see how 3 (or any other provider) can check whether there is a computer attached to the phone. This has been on a variety of suppliers, WIND, TIM, Bouygues, Vodafon &, T-Mobile.
The only country where mobile data and speech were firmly separated was Finland and I'm sure that's changed now.

Malta, like the UK, is the most expensive country in Europe for data connections and for mobile speech, though France was a close rival and I heard that Deutsche Telekom exploited their monopoly to the hilt until the Germans got forced into allowing competition.

 

[maby]

All mobile data goes through the network's proxy. It's not difficult for the proxy to check http requests to check the user agent to see what kind of device is using the network. Yes, this can often be spoofed, but how many of you know how to do this? Also, some websites will provide a customised page for mobile phone user agents so your experience could be limited.

I am not aware of any unlimited usage tethering plans. You can try your luck and use it under the radar however if they catch you out they may supply you with a hefty bill for using data that's not covered by your data plan.

It's not so much the http traffic as it is other protocols. I use my laptop tethered to my phone to connect into company servers for things like RDP, FTP, Oracle SQL*NET and others. With an Android smartphone, I can do most of these things on the phone and my contract does not include any restrictions on the network protocols I run. A lot of it is done over a VPN which completely hides the content of the packets anyway. The network supplier's problem with tethering is not a bit of web browsing done on a PC, it's gigabytes of traffic on other protocols.

 

[lustyd]

Will it? I've never bothered to look seriously at tethering technology, but I assumed that the phone functions as a natting router in which case it is extemely difficult to detect down stream.

NAT is easy to detect as it's written in the packet. You'd be surprised at the number of different ways they use to detect an endpoint. I did some work for Bytemobile (now owned by Citrix) and had many of them explained to me. They are the people who reduce quality of images on mobile connections (you'll notice this when on a laptop if you hover the mouse over a picture it says press ctrl+r to improve quality). They have proxies in all of the UK networks I believe and can tell what type of device you're using and which browser, often which browser version too. The user agent makes no difference to this technology, and there is almost nothing you can do to avoid detection so it's really down to how reasonable your provider is. I've found T-Mobile to be pretty good with the various abuse I give their network/contract

Edit. Sorry all, the bit about NAT may well have been nonsense