Database Users

T-Mobile and Tethering

TMoNews is reporting that they've received word that T-Mo will stop allowing tethering of devices. It hasn't been officially announced, but they received an anonymous tip today about it.
Do any of the U.S. carrier allow it?

How will they know if we're tethering? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see this impacting any of us who are rooted.

If it hasn't been officially announced, and just from a so called "anonymous" source, I wouldnt worry about it.

phatmanxxl said:
If it hasn't been officially announced, and just from a so called "anonymous" source, I wouldnt worry about it.
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Click to collapse
Yeah, hopefully it's just a rumor. Who knows?
We'll find out soon enough I guess.

uansari1 said:
How will they know if we're tethering? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see this impacting any of us who are rooted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not really sure if this applies or not, but ...
http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?p=1078

uansari1 said:
How will they know if we're tethering? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see this impacting any of us who are rooted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Deep packet inspection can see the user agent in http headers. That's the quickest and most direct tipoff. Performing UA spoofing should be enough to bypass.
blueheeler said:
Not really sure if this applies or not, but ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It does not apply at all, because apps allowing tethering over 2G/3G were removed from the Market a while ago. The "killswitch" cannot remove applications not installed by the Android Market (e.g. preloaded in a "ROM" or installed from sdcard, etc).

jashsu said:
Deep packet inspection can see the user agent in http headers. That's the quickest and most direct tipoff. Performing UA spoofing should be enough to bypass.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You know the kind of resources they would have to apply to checking each user running an android device to see if they're tethering? There have been hundreds of thousands of android devices sold on TMO alone, and even if 25% of those are rooted, thats a hell of a lot of people to monitor 24/7.

kusotare said:
You know the kind of resources they would have to apply to checking each user running an android device to see if they're tethering? There have been hundreds of thousands of android devices sold on TMO alone, and even if 25% of those are rooted, thats a hell of a lot of people to monitor 24/7.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I doubt they care if a subscriber using 100MB/month (or even 1GB/month) is tethering. But for those consistently reaching the 10GB cap and then going over on EDGE... It's more likely they'll flag that account for packet inspection. All this is just speculation of course.
That said, the dedicated hardware to perform packet inspection exists and doing it for just the traffic generated by mobile devices is trivial. It's often referred to as "traffic shaping" hardware.
BTW root is not strictly required for tethering. PdaNET can perform tethering in userspace.

jashsu said:
Deep packet inspection can see the user agent in http headers. That's the quickest and most direct tipoff. Performing UA spoofing should be enough to bypass.
It does not apply at all, because apps allowing tethering over 2G/3G were removed from the Market a while ago. The "killswitch" cannot remove applications not installed by the Android Market (e.g. preloaded in a "ROM" or installed from sdcard, etc).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
User agent means nothing and can't be used as a tipoff. Anybody can run a browser on their phone that has a custom user agent -- and this is actually quite LIKELY for a couple of reasons; 1) there are already several browsers with different user agents, 2) in order to access the "normal" pages, sometimes it is necessary to set a user agent like regular firefox, 3) some websites are intentionally hostile to non-MS browsers and filter browsers by user agent (even if other browsers will work perfectly/better).
Also, due to the nature of the device, other kinds of deep packet inspection can NOT be used to distinguish the network traffic as being due to tethering. Really, this is a regular (albeit very small) computer that can run all kinds of neat stuff.

lbcoder said:
User agent means nothing and can't be used as a tipoff. Anybody can run a browser on their phone that has a custom user agent -- and this is actually quite LIKELY for a couple of reasons; 1) there are already several browsers with different user agents, 2) in order to access the "normal" pages, sometimes it is necessary to set a user agent like regular firefox, 3) some websites are intentionally hostile to non-MS browsers and filter browsers by user agent (even if other browsers will work perfectly/better).
Also, due to the nature of the device, other kinds of deep packet inspection can NOT be used to distinguish the network traffic as being due to tethering. Really, this is a regular (albeit very small) computer that can run all kinds of neat stuff.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All very good points by lbcoder and Jashu
I agree here. And we need to understand that everything is cost vs. return driven.
Will the costs to implement any particular detection/prevention system go beyond the returns gained (actual or projected)?
What does TMO see as the impact of tether users? That's the real question. I can see that they want to eliminate the gross offenders that are trying to use tether as their primary internet connection rather than those of us using it for convenience.
Jashu has a good point, 1GB users will not likely see any action by TMO. I feel less than top 5 percent users or so will probably be looked at. To look at a larger population would be to costly. So, think about it if you fit in the top 3%, you might be a target for action.

lbcoder said:
Also, due to the nature of the device, other kinds of deep packet inspection can NOT be used to distinguish the network traffic as being due to tethering. Really, this is a regular (albeit very small) computer that can run all kinds of neat stuff.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I imagine they could guess with confidence I was tethering if they saw multiple gigs of access to hulu.com or 20 simultaneous connections to Giganews NNTPS.
But you're right on the part where smartphones basically are small computers. The whole notion of "tethering" will become more and more irrelevant as heavy bandwidth consuming activities are more and more natively done on the phone. To continue to offer tethering-specific plans seems like nothing more than a money grab at this point. The logical and honest way to penalize heavy network users is to either institute hard caps or bill in tiers. Carriers are just reluctant to do so because "unlimited" carries greater psychological emphasis.

Need Help Understanding My HD

is there any kind of option or tweak or whatever for the mobile internet use of this thing. On any other normal phone you would get they ask for permission to access your internet if it needs to. this thing ends up costing you a fortune when youre new to it. yes ive now unchecked update weather and stock things but it still does it in some instances without me knowing. when i was on google maps i think even though i was using wifi at the time!
while im on one the text messaging on this thing is a joke. why the hell is there like 2 interface sort of things with it. the one on the sense thing sucks as when you go to reply and it says 'tap to compose text' it takes 20 million taps to do anything. not to mention when you do eventually hit send after having to rewrite half of it coz it looks like its written in german it goes to your outbox without sending. the times i have been waiting for a reply for about 2 hours only to discover that its not been sent!

first job, go and instal either all the hot fixes on the htc website, or better still a full rom update if it will letyou.
sounds like you are still on the original rom which quite frankly sucks for many people.

About the net stuff: Smartphones like the one you just got, or an iphone to get a more popular reference ( ) are pretty much meant to be connected to the net all the time, and thus used with a data plan that suits it.
If you want to disable mobile connections just do a little search for Modaco NoData.

I sincerely get upset by this kind of messages. It is his/hers first message on this forum and it's only negative in the sense that the device is not doing what he/she wants. When do people realize that they need time to get to know what there/this device can/cannot do before posting threads with stupid titles.
Sigh!!

There *are* notifications warning the user that using apps like weather auto-update will use data connection and may incur charges. They only appear once, when launching an app for the first time. So it's not really phones fault that you didn't read them.
I believe it's not the phone that is stupid in this case.

Yeah, you need to update. The latest 1.66 ROM should fix your sms issues as well as a couple other ones.
As mentioned, these modern "smartphones" are made to be connected to the net 24/7. As some of their main selling points is the automatic updates of your social networking sites and what not. I personally do not use those features and have them all turned off. I personally have never seen an iPhone sold without a data plan as that is just pointless.
I would look into getting an unlimted data plan (which this phone warns you to have) or get that Nodata thing.

Smartphone my ringpiece. If its that smart why cant it just ask you if you want to connect via contract internet? I do use the internet on it a lot but mainly wifi so i dont see it being worth paying for unlimited usage. Wether I want to do that or not isnt anything to do with the question.
Don't get me wrong I like the phone but my main beef is that these bloody companies release most their products only half finished. If your paying as much as you are for these things you expect to be able to send a god damn message.
As for so called warning messages i didnt get any of this. And of course you expect something like this to "do what you want". You dont expect to buy a £600 phone to not be able to text someone. If you're so 'upset' by this message then why bother replying. Maybe leave it to someone who can actually be a bit more informative.

chrisman99 said:
Maybe leave it to someone who can actually be a bit more informative.
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Click to collapse
You had your answers. For the SMS issue install the hotfixes, or better flash the latest ROM. For data, delete the internet settings or get NoData, or this.
An iPhone doesn't let you disable internet connection by default either.

Orange,T-mob or 3?

Which provider buggers about with the OS the least?

T mobile installs no apps, 3 installs one, and Orange several. However, (I think) you can remove all the carrier apps from your phone, so that doesn't really matter.

Haven't T-Mobile messed with the search function?

saldawop said:
Haven't T-Mobile messed with the search function?
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No that's O2, when in the browser if you hit search it takes you to ****ty Yahoo Search. I mean really? I would even take Bing over Yahoo.

saldawop said:
Haven't T-Mobile messed with the search function?
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Click to collapse
Yes they have, they have made the default search some crappy tmobile search site powered by google.
Eugh. I hope they allow us to change this soon.

T-Mo has tweaked the search within Internet Explorer only so that when browsing the web and you push the search button, it takes you to the T-Mo Favourites page with a Google-powered search box on it. That behaviour only occurs when you're currently browsing a page.
If you're not already browsing, and you push the search button, the standard Bing Search page will appear.
Also, bear in mind that you'll get 3GB of browsing a month with T-Mobile as opposed to 1GB with 3 or 500MB/1GB with Orange, and T-Mobile isn't quite so aggressive as other networks if you exceed your browsing allowance. Generally, if you exceed your allowance by a modest amount, they'll let it go; if you exceed significantly, they may throttle your speed; if you persistently exceed by a significant amount, they'll send you a letter or give you a call to discuss your usage.
Having the T-Mobile redirect to their search page from within IE is a small price to pay for such a generous web allowance - and if that redirect really bugs you, there's a very simple workaround: just remember to press the Start/Windows button before pressing the search button. That will take you to the Start screen, and then launch the full-screen Bing Search page. One extra button-push for an extra 2GB a month is worth it.
The only other customisation that T-Mo have included on the phone is their logo splash screen, but the phone boots up so quickly that it doesn't really make much difference having it there. I half-expected them to customise the OS colour scheme with white background and pink/magenta tiles - but it was supplied with the standard dark background/blue tiles theme.
So yeah, T-Mobile every time. Hope that info helps.

T-Mobile also print "T-Mobile" on the battery cover. It's not obvious, it's not in colour (like an Orange logo would be), and if it really bothered you, you could probably swap the battery cover.
I ruled out Three, as they don't do 18 month contracts, and I don't want to be tied to a first-gen phone of a brand new platform for too long. I was already on T-Mo and they gave me a good deal to stay.
I'm very happy with my T-Mo Omnia 7. I don't have to worry about the net usage at all, and the ability to use the Orange signal means everywhere I couldn't get a signal before now gets a solid Orange connection.

T-Mobile every time for me too.
One point though -- T-Mobile are only offering 1GB per month on Windows Based Phones, you get 3GB per month with android based phones.
Can anyone confirm they have 3GB as standard without having to blag it with the SR?

For direct sales (i.e. purchases directly from T-Mobile), they give the same 3GB to Windows Phones that is offered to Android connections. Although this isn't set out anywhere that I've seen on the T-Mobile website, any number of people (myself included) have spoken to any number of T-Mobile CSRs and had this information given to them many times over.
The only circumstance under which a Windows Phone will be connected to T-Mobile with only 1GB per month is where the purchase has been made through a third-party reseller, such as Carphone Warehouse or Buymobilephones.net. Under those circumstances, however, many users have successfully had their FUP increased to 3GB by calling T-Mobile once they've received their devices, but the approval of this seems to be discretionary rather than routine.

Thanks guys, looks like T-Mob is the winner for me .

[Attention] Big Data usage have reported with WP7

We have many report for big data usage on wp7 also when i usage data connection my hd2 is too hot.. that make me sceptical..
for that reason i make this thread if is not the right place please mod move it to the right place
Microsoft say: the problem coming from 3rd party apps
Some other say the problem coming from many differnet update that use the wp7 system e.g.email update, contacts update/facebook and more
Some other report says the HTC hub is one of the reason... use so much data..
That you can do is: set all account manual about the sync
Just go to settings / account and tap every account and set it manual
Fot htc hub go to in to hub and settings , do the same..
HERE you can found what Microsoft say!
HERE the report of HTC hub!!!
PS. is simply blog but have some good news.. so take a look around for other news..
Edit
Thanks for report i fix a little bit the body of the message..

I don't know if this is true or not. I am not experiencing heave data absorption without my knowledge. I can check my data consumption on the Voda website and I have a 1Gb allowance each month. I've been using WP7 as soon it went semi-public and I'm still having about 780Mb out of 1Gb left. (last update was yesterday) It is not like I am not using the internet, but I do check on mobile websites as it just renders faster and it doesn't need the zoom too often. Multitouch zoom on HD2 is a bit of a problemchild.
I do had my concerns about the social networking integration as I thought it would pull everybody's picture gallery to my phone and would upload every picture that I have to Skydrive, but that doesn't seems to be the thing.
Overall, though the WP7 was not meant for the HD2, it's going to be here for always on my phone. sob...

do you always
write your posts
like this?
and of course
you always need to
post in wrong sections?
There is not useful information in your post. "We have many report for big data usage on wp7" Who are we? What is many? Disable Data connection if you don't like traffic. Connect on Wi-Fi, log all connections from your computer and take a look where the traffic goes and you'll know what app you need to delete.

Funnily enough I just happened to check my bill after reading this and I'm up to 750mb since the start of the month. Normally I'd average about 200mb at most.
I had the HTC hub installed which has been promptly removed so I'm gonna keep an eye on it now and see if that was the cause of the massive data jump.

Pretty old news and really annoying way of writing.
why
on
earth
do
you
write
like
this????

I did notice a single big jump in data downloading on initial setup, this was because of facebook i think, not the facebook app, didnt happen until i had set that up so my feeling is its downloading pictures and other info, if you have many many friends on FB this would be exponential. anyhow, i didnt notice this until i got a out of starage space message, because my SD card hadnt worked first time round. So, if that is indeed the case and not just a huge coincidance connect up your phone to your PC and install/setup facebook, then see what happens

Tazzimus said:
Funnily enough I just happened to check my bill after reading this and I'm up to 750mb since the start of the month. Normally I'd average about 200mb at most.
I had the HTC hub installed which has been promptly removed so I'm gonna keep an eye on it now and see if that was the cause of the massive data jump.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
so its real problem... thanks for your report... the reason of this thread is to learn if is real problem and where coming from..
i'm scary about data i have only 120mb data plan

vartp said:
"We have many report for big data usage on wp7" Who are we? What is many? Disable Data connection if you don't like traffic. Connect on Wi-Fi, log all connections from your computer and take a look where the traffic goes and you'll know what app you need to delete.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are right! we = (I some other chefs + some beta tester of our roms and some blogers)
Nice way...!!! Do you know any program that can count the traffic? Do you have count any program?

Another thing to add to the 'Reasons to avoid WM7 like the plague and stay on Android' list.

Share Wi-Fi from your computer/laptop, connect mobile through it, install any traffic counter or firewall on your PC (or use proxy that provides logs/reports), look where your traffic is going. I don't care about traffic on my mobile at the moment, so I am not going to check it myself, but that's pretty easy task.

Checked Mine
Although this may be in the wrong section, and been covered several times. I just now decided to check my usage.
T-Mobile USA
Data: 690.2357 / Unlimited Megabytes
Been using WP7 since it was released, HTC HUB was installed at first, uninstalled it last week.
As far as writing like this.
Personal Preference.
You don't like it, Don't read it.

cdguider said:
Data: 690.2357 / Unlimited Megabytes
You don't like it, Don't read it.
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Click to collapse
What is your average usage with wm6.5 or android?
+1 for your comment
maybe is in wrong section i did search before post it i did not found something + as you know when you typing the heading you can see if any other thread have the same heading
also i post it here because i want to find the problem and fix or tweak the problem together.. we do not have the kitchen but we have the registry editor maybe that can help us..

I got a text from tmobile today stating I was being capped on my data speed for the remainder of the billing cycle this month because of too much data usage ....

cabrone said:
I got a text from tmobile today stating I was being capped on my data speed for the remainder of the billing cycle this month because of too much data usage ....
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Click to collapse
too bad my friend...
but finally this thread help from problems little late but better late than never

Simple solution. Get unlimited internet without fair usage nonsense As I usually go over 1 GB with my HD2 regardless of the OS that's what I did. You pay a little more but don't have to worry that a facebook photo may cost you 1 Euro

Gents,
Keep the posts on topic and watch the flaming please, thanks.
Moved to Q&A

cdguider said:
Although this may be in the wrong section, and been covered several times. I just now decided to check my usage.
T-Mobile USA
Data: 690.2357 / Unlimited Megabytes
Been using WP7 since it was released, HTC HUB was installed at first, uninstalled it last week.
As far as writing like this.
Personal Preference.
You don't like it, Don't read it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, i have the same issue. This is a problem.

TheOnly1 said:
Simple solution. Get unlimited internet without fair usage nonsense As I usually go over 1 GB with my HD2 regardless of the OS that's what I did. You pay a little more but don't have to worry that a facebook photo may cost you 1 Euro
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
perhaps you can pay for their airplane ticket, provide food and lodging at your place so that they can experience this solution of yours.

haksam said:
perhaps you can pay for their airplane ticket, provide food and lodging at your place so that they can experience this solution of yours.
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Click to collapse
Well I noticed Mine was hogging data at 5 in the morning well I was still sleeping. I did a comparison and in 2 days My win 7 HD2 used 125 Mb data and my HD2 with win 6.5 used 60 Mb. I used them pretty much equally.

Old news to me.

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