Related
Hi there, i am on a t-mobile htc hd2 with android, MDJ's 2.4 version. I would like to know if i have both wifi and data plan turned on, does that mean i will use wifi first over data when wifi is available and no data usage? and should I turn off data when wifi is available to save battery or it just drain the same amount?
yes, wifi will be used instead of 3G if you are connected to a network, and don't bother switching off data you won't notice any difference as wifi drains so much more than 3G anyway
Can anyone explain to me why tethering uses more data? I am replacing my head unit in my car with a Nexus 7. While I plan to have plenty of downloaded podcasts available, I also want the option of using streaming music services. When tethering I am using my phone as a WiFi hotspot, Nexus is running the latest version of SmoothROM.
So, for an experiment I set up tethering on my phone, checked the current data useage, opened Slacker on the tablet and played music for 15 minutes. In that time the Tablet (according to the phone data useage) consumed about 24MB of data. Did the same but then using Slacker on my phone, this time after 15 minutes, only 7MB of data. At that rate I would only get about 30 hours of music before starting to run into the ridiculous 3GB cap. While 30 hours is a lot, I have 6+ hours of commuting a week. As I wrote above, I plan to have a good number of downloaded content available, but am curious as to the difference between what on the face of it, should be the same.
Looking in a little deeper, on the phone it shows 5MB of foreground data, and 2GB of background data, on the tablet its about a 50/50 split showing 12MB for both foreground and background. I checked the settings, and the only differences were that I had Overnight refresh on the tablet switched on (not that it should make any difference as first, it was not overnight, and second I don't have any downloaded content for it to refresh) and off on the phone. On the phone I also have audio quality set to Best, but only set to Good on the tablet.
If someone can explain the difference to me I would appeciate it.
Thanks.
Edit: So upon further research it seems that Slacker changes the bitrate / codecs it uses when using wifi vs cellular networks. Even though the phone is using cellular data, the Nexus thinks its connected to wifi and so requests the higher bitrate. Wondering if there is a way to force it to use one vs the other.
Tethering via Bluetooth seems to convince my N7 that it's on a mobile connection.
naiku said:
Edit: So upon further research it seems that Slacker changes the bitrate / codecs it uses when using wifi vs cellular networks. Even though the phone is using cellular data, the Nexus thinks its connected to wifi and so requests the higher bitrate. Wondering if there is a way to force it to use one vs the other.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This was going to be my suggestion, glad you figured it out. Some other apps have ways to adjust the data quality, not sure about Slacker. FYI, if you have an Android ICS+ phone, you can use Bluetooth tethering. It uses less power both for the phone and the tablet, and since it's not wifi, it might use a lower bitrate codec. Dunno.
Your phone is doing crap in the background. Its common.
Sent from my MB612 using xda app-developers app
khaytsus said:
Some other apps have ways to adjust the data quality, not sure about Slacker. FYI, if you have an Android ICS+ phone, you can use Bluetooth tethering. It uses less power both for the phone and the tablet, and since it's not wifi, it might use a lower bitrate codec. Dunno.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Slacker has an option to change the quality, but it appeared to make no difference (I had both set to the lowest setting). My phone does have ICS, so I will give tethering via Bluetooth a try and see how that goes.
BlackFire27 said:
Your phone is doing crap in the background. Its common.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But the phone used less data than the tablet? Did you mean to write that the tablet is doing more stuff in the background? regardless, I looked specifically at the data useage of the Slacker app only. Which ruled out anything the phone/tablet may be doing in the background.
So, tried again this afternoon tethered via Bluetooth (which was a pain to get working for some odd reason). This time 15 minutes of Slacker useage only increased the data useage on the phone by 15MB. I am guessing that along with Slacker the tablet was trying to do background updates as well, I plan to turn on the minimize background updates later and try again. Either way it would appear Bluetooth streaming is the way to go.
Does the Data usage item still appear in Settings on a non-3G Nexus 7? If so, in that menu you can tap the menu button up top and choose "Mobile hotspots". Here you can select which wifi networks are in fact mobile hotspots rather than actual unrestricted Internet connections. When you are connected to these, at least in theory it will tell apps to stick to the low bandwidth features.
Anyone agree that its safe to assume if I setup my own private vpn at home I can vpn through that as an encrypted session which will stop att from snooping my data, then in turn if I vpn first then run a hotspot they'd be none the wiser?
Screwbal said:
Anyone agree that its safe to assume if I setup my own private vpn at home I can vpn through that as an encrypted session which will stop att from snooping my data, then in turn if I vpn first then run a hotspot they'd be none the wiser?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would say a resounding NO. They don't care if your data is encrypted or not, VPN will do absolutely nothing to mask the amount of packet data your device is sending/receiving. You most likely don't have unlimited data (if you did before) and will probably be charged per gigabyte if you go over your monthly allowance.
From my understanding, carriers really cant stop you from tethering without a "tethering plan" once your device is rooted. I believe that's why most carriers got rid of unlimited data and moved to the tiered data plans. If you happen to somehow still have unlimited data and generate a lot of bandwidth, once they realize that your using an absurd amount of data without a tethering plan, they will hit you hard with overage charges. I think Verizon charges per kilobyte, not sure about AT&T.
I still have unlimited LTE data with AT&T but know if I hit 5GB in a month they throttle the hell out of me since I've hit it before. The reason I ask is if/when I'd ever use it then it would be more for a light connection like say if the GF wants to use the ipad in the car on a road trip. Or if I get some on call issue for work where I need a connection for my laptop on the go but not as a replacement for any large data transfers.
I just thought part of how the carriers tell that people are tethering would be say if you have an android phone and they start to notice traffic from your device to say Windows Update or the ITunes store and hence the VPN encryption if used day to day would mask any calls later that would be tethering related.
They can't tell if you're tethering plain and simple.
Your phone is sending and receiving the packets so thats all they see, if an app or your phone broadcasts those packets it doesn't matter as your phone is the connection point.
At the end of the day your phone is asking to go to youtube.com if it gives youtube to your iPad all you carrier see is that your phone wants youtube, not why.
The safest way to tether is to always use a VPN on the client that your tethered to your hotspot with. There are some great super cheap VPNs out there that have great bandwidth and good security.
Carriers can definitely tell if you're tethering - this isn't rocket science when you're using packet capturing tools. If you're constantly going to websites with a desktop browser they can see from the browser stats that it's a desktop vs mobile.
The other method is perhaps capturing the mac address off the packet isn't from a mobile-branded device. Since the phone hotspot is NAT'ing all the traffic from your own little private lan to the outside public addressing it *should* only contain the phone's IP and MAC, but depending on the packets it could also contain information from a device within the private lan (mac addresses). I have never tested this but in theory it's possible.
It's one thing to tether a tablet or another phone, most likely seems you would probably not get caught doing that.. but still possible. Tethering your desktop/laptop.. yea you'll get caught.
Like I said, use a VPN and you most likely won't be caught.
I think no need to. ived been tethering since 2010 using rooted phone(or non rooted using foxfi) and my 3gb data plan limit is the same. no notice from att that they detected that I am tethering and sometimes I over 2gb so I pay extra 20 bucks though
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using xda premium
Yes so I have changed cell phones from an LG K425 piece of garbage to a Motorola Razer 2 phone but now I am getting notices that I have gone over my 10 gigs a month hot spot which I haven't EVER gotten in the past almost 2 years or more of service. Guessing the Razer 2 has somehow reported this usage whereas the old LG didn't? Any suggestions or comments about what to do about this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Sprints new plan includes unlimited everything EXCEPT tethering, that's limited to 3gb, does anyone have a suggestion for an app that limits or at least monitors tether usage so I can avoid the overage fees?
Just go into settings and data usage and it shows tethering how much data it uses. Also to bypass sprint checks for tether in your builprop put this net.tethering.noprovisioning=true
I tether over 500 Gig's a month on my original nexus 6 on Sprint with that build prop edit. I use that phone hooked up to a router for my Internet. Haha. Sprint hates me.
I am running Android O on Nexus 5X.
VPN, SSH, Proxy, all are blocked by my college and I have tried all sorts of things but nothing works. So, my only option for playing CSGO MP online is to use my mobile data (LTE). The problem is the background apps, system or otherwise, consume data and I start getting high ping rates. Like game will run fine for some time then in between it will get high latency. So, I want to disable all mobile data usage except that consumed by tethering. I have tried enabling data saver, and blocking for individual apps doesn't work.
So, there a way do it?