I have unlimited cellular data on my phone but not if I use it as a hotspot.
What is the difference between cellular data being used on my phone and cellular data being used on my notebook? Data is data.
860
Comments308View original on lemmy.world
What is the difference between cellular data being used on my phone and cellular data being used on my notebook? Data is data.
This is why we need net neutrality
And more competition.
Nationalize the tubes
T-Mobile hasn’t done this for years. Att is just shit
Uh?
When T-Mobile moved to unlimited with the ONE plans, they gave You "unlimited" tethering at "3G speeds", which turned out to be 0.5Mbit/s, an unusably slow speed in 2018.
The Magenta plans gave you 5GB-50GB of full-speed tethering before dropping you to "3G speeds". The current Go5G plans are similar, with a limited amount of usable tethering data before you're, for all practical uses, cut off.
Before the ONE plans, there technically was no hotspot usage limit, but since you had a limited amount of high-speed data, your hotspot was effectively limited to whatever your plan gave you.
All the US carriers limit hotspot usage, partly to prevent someone hooking up a computer to download 50TB of pirated movies while clogging up the bandwidth for everyone else on that tower, and (moreso) partly because they're greedy.
If it were just bandwidth issues, they'd only limit you during times of congestion.
It's pure greed.
3g speeds are fine, no clue what you’re talking about. I literally tether all the time and when I hit the limit it’s still completely usable, even for YouTube. And getting to that limit is well above the 5gb from ATT. Like I said, att is shit, T-Mobile doesn’t do this and hasn’t for years.
Literally every carrier on the planet limits hotspot data in some manner. This isn’t a US thing.
Lol. They totally do. Their best plan without going arm and a leg for unlimited gives you 50GB a month before dropping to near nothing. Up to a year ago it was 40GB.
50gb is not even close to 5gb and 3g speeds are not even close to 128kbs so no, T-Mobile doesn’t do this.
T mobile has low GB plans that are far less than 40 or 50 GB and 3g is capable of over 3Mbps, so I don't know what dumbassery you're talking about.
128kbps is referring to the ATT limitation so you’re just proving my point. T-Mobile doesn’t do what att does.
I have T-Mobile. They absolutely do.
I have T-Mobile, they absolutely don’t.
This has little to nothing to do with net neutrality, which refers to back end L1 and L2 network interconnections.
what are you talking about? that makes no sense
Edit: wait, you might be right. As I understand, net neutrality is for the last mile ISPs, not the L1/L2 providers. So uh... what I explained below isn't relevant. Eh, I'll leave it in case people wanna learn stuff.
It was a bad explanation, assuming you had knowledge of network infrastructure things, but it does make sense. I'll explain things if you're interested.
Net neutrality is the idea that ISPs must treat all content providers equally. Your phone is not a content provider (most likely. You could run a web server on your phone, but... no). YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, TikTok, and your weird uncle's WordPress site are content providers. Without net neutrality, ISPs can say, "Hey YouTube, people request a ton of traffic from you on our network. Pay up or we'll slow down people's connections to you." The "neutrality" part means that ISPs must be neutral towards content providers, not discriminating against them for being high demand by consumers.
For the L1 and L2 part, that's the networking infrastructure. The connection to your home is just tiny cables. I don't recall how many layers there are, but it's just "last mile" infrastructure. The network infrastructure between regions of the country or across the ocean are giant, giant cables managed by internet service providers you've never heard of. They're the kind of providers that connect AT&T to Comcast. These are considered L1 or L2 providers. The data centers of giant companies, like Google for YouTube's case, often pay these L1 or L2 providers to plug directly into their data centers. Why? Those providers are using the biggest, fastest cables to ferry bits and bytes across the planet. You might be pulling gigs from YouTube, but YouTube is putting out... shit, I don't even know. Is there a terabyte connection? Maybe even petabyte? That sounds crazy. I dunno, I failed Google's interview question where they asked me to estimate how much storage does Google Drive use globally. Anyway, I hope that gives you an idea of what L1 and L2 providers are.
I'm not a network infrastructure guy, though. If someone who actually knows what they're talking about has corrections, I'd love to learn where I'm wrong
Net neutrality is about service to last mile customers, but it is based upon interconnection agreements across the L1 and L2 level.
ISP's pay for a connection to L1 and L2, so their users (who pay ISP's) can access content on those networks. Websites pay for a connection to L1 and L2 so their content can be available on those networks.
ISP's want to also charge websites for access into their networks of users, in spite of the fact their users already pay them for access to the website content. If some websites don't pay, then ISP's will provide a lower service to their users for those websites. Net neutrality says ISP's should not do this.
Differentiating between locally used data and hotspot data has nothing to do with this. Hotspot data is about the device the data is going to, not where the data is coming from, and typically (or at least traditionally, maybe not so anymore) a PC will use more data than a phone. A PC is more likely to have large multi-gigabyte downloads (eg games), although these days video streaming is perhaps the main bandwidth hog and is generally equal across all devices.
A home internet connection is expected to serve all devices in that home, while a mobile internet connection is expected to serve only that mobile device (excluding mobile broadband options, which serve multiple devices but are typically more expensive). The ISP's network is designed with this in mind.
It is more reasonable for an ISP to only provide data to the phone you're paying for than it is for them to throttle websites you already paid for. However, really both are kind of bullshit - usage limits in general are completely disproportionate to actual costs.
That's not what net neutrality does, and I'm disturbed by this being the number one comment.
Are you talking about net neutrality in general, or a specific campaign that used the term? Net neutrality means all bits are equal. It does not matter where a bit is coming from, where it is going to or what it is part of.
No portion of any net neutrality bill anywhere calls for hotspot data to not be capped by a cell carrier. It doesn't eliminate any caps for anything at all. Net neutrality means they can't change the speeds dependant on what sites you're accessing and that they can't block any sites, give free data to access some sites and not others, or put them behind a pay wall. It has nothing to do with general hot spot data caps, or cell phone data caps.
Sorry how would net neutrality do anything but make them reword the policy??
The ISP shouldn't care what kind of traffic is going through the network and show it down by type. It should be neutral to it
They can care about what device they're providing internet to. Net neutrality is about where content is coming from.
They provide internet to the phone. What the phone does with it (e.g. provide a hotspot), is another story.
That depends on whether the connection is sold to cover one device or several.
Right… they can still impose data caps. They'll just do the cap at the plan level, like most already do. OPs just on a cheap plan.
Net neutrality isn't going to do a thing about this kind of stuff. In a best case scenario, you'll end up with overall data usage limitations - no more 'unlimited mobile data'.
ISPs meter data usage because it's pretty much the only way they can impose some form of limitation on a finite capacity to provide such data to you and other customers - other than data rate limits (read: slower speeds). They can't guarantee data rates in almost any setup, because ultimately, while 'data usage' is a bit of an artificial construct and 'data' is not in any way finite, the pipes that deliver the data certainly are of finite capacity. Mobile data capacity - and in fact, any wireless medium - is a shared medium, the more people try to use it simultaneously, the less pleasant it's going to be for each individual user. Ask Starlink users in many US areas how overselling limited capacity impacts the individual user.
Mobile data usage also has different usage patterns than if you're hotspotting your PC. You're not going to download massive games or other bandwidth hogs to your mobile. You probably won't be running a torrent client either. So they can give you unlimited mobile data because you're simply not going to put as much of a strain on the infrastructure with pure on-device usage than you will with hotspotting.
This isn't a defense of what AT&T is doing. But net neutrality isn't going to force them to suddenly be all ethical. It's not going to make them provision infrastructure that doesn't fall over at the first signs of higher-than-usual load. And it certainly can't change the physical realities of wireless data communication. In an ideal world ISPs wouldn't be so greedy and/or beholden to greedy shareholders to be cutting corners, and instead provide sufficient infrastructure that can handle high demand.
And to those who are talking about their workarounds: you may not like it but you've signed a contract. That contract stipulates acceptable use, and if you're found to be breaching the contract terms, the other party is within their rights to terminate the contract. Again, in an ideal world these contract terms would be more balanced towards the needs of the customer, but in the meantime your best recourse against unfavourable contract terms is to take your business elsewhere. And if you can't do that, everything else is at your own risk.
If they didn't have the bandwidth, I don't think T-Mobile would offer home Internet and advertise it as much as they do
But where are they offering it? Big cities and densely populated areas where people have options and therefore won't swarm to the product? Or are they offering it in small, remote towns where there's not a lot of competition?
Where I live, mobile home internet is not available outside of metro areas and larger cities, and in the regions mobile towers are chronically underprovisioned and overloaded.
100% this
This is one of those 'innovations' people mean when they say capitalism drives innovation. Not the hotspot, the pointless extra charge for something your phone can just do on its own.
How do they know if the source of data is hotspot? I'd imagine there is a way to stop your phone grassing on you.
There's different internal network configs (APNs), and hotspot uses a different one than regular mobile data. ( or at least it used to). Those can be configured and metered separately from the carrier's end.
LineageOS, and maybe some other custom ROMs, wouldn't do that and would put the hotspot and mobile data on the same APN to get around that.
Can confirm, switching to Graphene solved this problem for me a long while ago.
Doesn’t unlocking the bootloader break Google Pay?
Don't know, wouldn't touch that with a 10 foot pole.
What's wrong with Google Pay?
the Google part
You can lock the bootloader again after the flashing process is done(because it will add the signing key of the new OS), but unfortunately the NFC Payments in Google Pay still won't work because Google only allows it on 'certified' Android systems (aka only the preinstalled OS)
Isn't this dependent on the ROM, like lineage shouldn't be locked where as calyx is locked likewise for graphine os
Yes, afaik LineageOS shouldn't be locked, but I was talking about GrapheneOS specifically because @[email protected] was talking about that.
You can in theory still use Google Pay with a Magisk module called Play Integrity Fix and using a fingerprint from a different phone to pass Basic and Device integrity. I'm currently doing it on my Pixel 7 Pro.
But it has a steep learning curve and is a temporary solution that will disappear in roughly a year once Google sunsets legacy integrity methods and starts requiring Strong integrity, which can't be faked under known methods. Google is also actively disabling fingerprints that are being spoofed, making the whole thing frustrating and even more temporary even when it works.
Just let us use our devices, sheesh.
Ugh. I was dumb and got a Samsung that was offered to me for cheap on the spot. If I had done any research I would have learned that there's no alternative OS options. Now I'm stuck with it, because I'm poor, so I just try to avoid using it. I should keep an eye out for something used that's compatible.
While it's not at the same level as Graphene OS, Samsung is pretty well supported by Lineage OS. AFAIK at least in Europe Samsung phones have an unlockable bootloader, but YMMV.
Nah. Nobody's figured out how to access the ROM on my specific model, unfortunately, and I'm 900% sure Canadian telecom oligopolists will not be cool about unlocking like that.
In my defense, if it was a laptop it would have been much less foolhardy.
I'm still hoping for LineageOS on the Nord N30 but I can't Even find a stock ROM to root it.
Even on my unlocked, non vendor phone it seems to not recognize hotspot data as different for some reason.
Back when they just began recognizing it, they noted peculiar traffic. Desktop websites, batch downloads normally unavailable to that system. This assumes that you utilized the internal hotspot system and didn’t create a separate one. Now? Not sure whether their system is more robust but it should, theoretically, be possible to obfuscate your traffic using third party hotspot software. No clue where to look for that anymore.
I used to routinely use 100gb of data on my jailbroken sprint iPhone. Did that for almost 3 years. Never heard a peep from them. But this was forever ago.
If you used the package I think you did, that’s not unusual. Absolutely will not remember the name but there were numerous tweaks that just flipped the hotspot switch but a couple that allowed you to use a hotspot without directly using the inbuilt function. One was free and broadly used.
That was great, and you didn’t have to pay some extra tethering fee every month either (or something like that, it was so long ago for me).
TTL in the packet header is 29 instead of 30
Well that's an easy fix.
If you root your phone and install a custom rom, you can get around it and they can't tell.
If you're factory, it sends that hotspot info to them.
You have to turn that feature on.
Could you install a different OS like suggested here https://dubvee.org/comment/1855949 / by Admiral Patrick below?
Yeah, installing a new OS on a phone isn't something you do easily like on a PC.
You have to unlock the bootloader, which requires an unlock code from the manufacturer, then you have to factory reset it, and that's even if your phone/carrier allows it. Many don't (which is why it's so hard for me to replace my phone...grrr).
So yeah, installing a new OS on your phone is typically going to require quite a bit of effort and some level of commitment as well as a device that's bootloader unlockable and supported by an alternate OS (each device and model requires a custom build).
It's....a whole thing. It really shouldn't be, but it is :(
This is why you should buy the phone outright yourself then get a SIM only deal, rather than paying for your phone in contract.
Yeah I do, but SIM unlocked and bootloader unlockable are two different things. Sadly, not every phone (or even the same phones made for different carriers) are allowed to be bootloader unlocked; I have no idea why, but it is and sucks.
Yeah it's definitely true, even with the same manufacturer it can be hit and miss. You gotta do your research before you buy.
I haven't done it in a while, but it kinda depends on the phone, some were very easy to flash in the earlier days of Android.
Yeah, my old Moto Play G4 was a breeze. Wasn't quite "Press any key to continue" but not much more difficult.
My OnePlus was a little more work, but that was mostly because of the OP website acting up and refusing to generate my bootloader unlock key. Also had to do things differently since it didn't have an SD card to hold my install stuff like the Moto Play did.
I had one where you could literally run an app on the phone, no ADB or anything. Can't remember what phone it was now but it might've actually been a Moto Droid
One one hand, that sounds extremely convenient. On the other, I shudder thinking what a malicious app could do with that 😆
Edit: Unless you're talking about doing it through TWRP. I had to flash that over fastboot, but once installed to the recovery partition, I could boot into that and install the rest of Lineage and extra packages straight from the SD card. Updating the system was just downloading the new Lineage .zip to the SD card, booting into TWRP, and clicking install.
Maybe, but it's not worth it just for a few days, which is all I'll need it for. I just forked over $15 for another 10 gb.
$15 for 10GB?! USA phone bills are extortionate!
Yeah, it really sucks, but at least there aren't roaming charges anymore.
Lol when I travel to the US I get 12GB roaming per month included for no extra charge.
I just have unlimited data in 200 countries on Fi in the US.
You think our phone bills are extortionate? Try Canada. They're worse. Which is really saying something.
It's worth it for more than a few days, custom ROMs ftw.
Personally my minimum features are:
All the other stuff and customisation is just tasty gravy.
negotiate. i called my last carrier from my new carriers retail store front. they practically begged me to stay and said they'd give me everything i asked for.
The difference is the cellular company's profits amount.
They had this restriction in the UK where the networks would prevent hotspots from actually working. You had to buy a special additional package.
Restriction has now vanished and there are no such limits on usage. Not sure if the Regulator intervened but it was most certainly a cash grab.
These days they still manage to rip us off by annual contract increases of RPI+3.9%. That applies even during a 2 year contract.
It was an EU thing before....well you know what you did
I didn't ask for this. 😭
I think this is also an archaic model from before smart phones and the early days of smart phones. In the early days of apps, most attempted to limit data usage because most network providers charged a premium for data and the networks were much slower and smaller.
While you could tether in these early days, even before smart phones, the computer was capable of much higher data usage than the phone. These limits were put in place to protect a network that wasn't really built for this level of load.
Old rules with good purpose turned into a way to charge more money.
Fair enough. That describes the past, but not the present, or the future.
I've had great success getting around these restrictions.
CalyxOS + Always on VPN (mullvad)
The secret sauce is using a Android version that allows you to share your VPN with hotspotting. I believe only calyxos and lineage allow you to do this. Since the VPN client is running on the phone, all the traffic that originates from the phone will look like phone data, with the appropriate time to live, OS fingerprinting, etc.
This can't be done on stock Android, because it does not allow the VPN to be shared over tethering. So tethering traffic will not getting capsulated on the VPN client. There's a security argument for this, but I prefer the user flexibility of allowing all the traffic to get VPNed.
It's still possible to do this without VPN sharing on the phone, you can use normal tethering on a unlocked phone, like stock Android. You just have to modify the traffic signature to look like whatever the carrier is looking for. Setting the appropriate time to live, using a VPN, and doing other OS fingerprinting tricks to keep the traffic consistent. It's much easier to use a ROM that lets you share the VPN
Great tip.
Hmm kinda makes sense
I had a provider before that blocked tethering and hotspot, the solution there was also to increase TTL on the clients connecting to the phone by 1. The phone would lower it by 1 again, making it look like data originated from there.
It's possible to track the number of hops that a device on a network has, since TTL will be 8-bit numbers (and ususally start at 64, 128, etc.) if the TTL of a packet has 64 from the main device, the devices it's sharing with will be 63 (and so on un the chain for N+1 hops). This may not be exactly how they do it since device fingerprinting would be way simpler, but it is a plausible way of tracking that a device is using a hotspot.
Interesting! Thanks :)
My ISP's a dick, but to my knowledge, unlimited has to mean unlimited around here. There where months where we had Problems with our fibre, so I did everything over a hotspot from my phone. Used 100's of GB's no one ever complained.
Get proper consumer protection laws, people.
*Cries in American.*
This is the case in a lot of countries. In Australia, some ISPs got fined a lot of money (something like $300,000 I think?) because they advertised mobile phone plans as "unlimited" when in reality they slowed down the speed once you hit a limit.
Dunno if 300k is necessarily a lot for an ISP, but having rules and fining firms for non-compliance is pretty nice.
it's not especially in the US, i've seen ISPs essentially break kneecaps forcing the consume to pay for the initial hook up, and then immediately rolling it out to every available house in the subdivision or neighborhood.
That shit should be illegal. If you do the math on how long it would take to profit from running it yourself it's only a few years given an ENTIRE neighborhood.
The maximum ISPs could be fined for misleading/deceptive conduct (including things like this) was $1.1 million at the time, and I don't think they considered this bad enough to hand out the maximum fine. They bumped the maximum to $10 million at some point afterwards though.
And if you're homeless, just buy a house 🫶
It wasn't supposed to be quite serious, but yeah, depending on where you live it's pretty much a lost cause, at least in the short-, or even mid-term.
Bad comparison.
It really is the same energy
California is trying its best, but I'm not sure the other US states will get onboard (except New York, and maybe Oregon and Washington state).
Yeah. I mean, the state I live in right now just passed a bill to forbid officers of the state from using gender neutral, but technically grammatically incorrect language, while the ruling party is campaigning on not being a party of bans, while claiming their rivals are, so things aren't all that green here either.
I say take the wins you can get.
Where are you?
Which is bullshit. Who cares if you download something at full speed on your phone or through the hotpot? A bit is a bit, doesn't matter where it ends up when received by the phone's modem.
It’s a sneaky way of having a bandwidth cap without having a bandwidth cap. Mobile devices have smaller storage, so you’re less likely to use as much bandwidth compared to a laptop. Also a single device going to use less data than multiple devices sharing a hotspot.
Jokes on them, I have a 512GB micrSD card and I use Termux to archive videos through YT-DLP.
Was just going to say… my phone has 512GB storage and can do direct WiFi file transfer to my computer without a hotspot. All without using the mobile hotspot feature.
You can burn through a huge amount of data streaming 4K video on your phone without using any storage. You can also plug a 20TB USB hard drive into your phone, connect to a VPN and torrent away.
But most users don’t. And that’s what they’re counting on.
The carrier who's paying for your traffic. You're most likely going to use a lot more data on a computer than actually on your phone.
soooo...... what's with the monthly bill then?
I mean let’s be real, it’s incredibly complex and amazing technology. Borderline magic. And depending on where you are, yeah consistently using large amounts of bandwidth can and will impact other users.
So a policy like this makes sense, to a point. It’s when they auto charge you for hitting a “limit” that grinds my gears.
And I’m sure we can all acknowledge what would happen to prices if there were zero restrictions. A top budget blogger tip would be “stop paying for your expensive broadband service! Plug your phone in and tap “hotspot” in settings to save $50-$100 a month.“
Normies (grandmas using Facebook, not WFHers/gamers) would be frivolous to pay for two “equivalent” Internet services.
(Before you think me a corporate lobbyist, know I submitted a complaint to the FCC when Comcast first implemented broadband bandwidth caps in the USA. Saw that BS in Canada.)
Less than it would be if they expected you to go full ham 24/7.
Username checks out.
If it's an android phone, enable dev mode, install adb on your laptop, run an sshd under termux on the phone, and you should be able to set up iptables to forward packets from the laptop through the phone. The phone won't know that it's being used for tethering. Although I hadn't seen the stuff about packet TTL before. Maybe it's as simple as just adjusting that.
A less complicated method that I used for years:
-D 8888)localhostport8888It doesn't redirect all traffic (you'd want to avoid system updates, for example) but might be easier than messing with iptables.
It may be easier to just run a VPN on the phone and route the traffic through it? WireGuard runs on Android. I've never tried configuring it to forward data through it though, but it should work.
I tried that, the carrier could still differentiate it from local traffic (or at least my speed test results were vastly different).
It's possible they've gotten smarter these days.
I don't know how ISPs are allowed to do this when it's a very obvious violation of net neutrality.
If I recall correctly, they justify it by claiming they need to do deep packet inspection to balance traffic. There's a fuzzy line between them needing to optimize their network equipment and respecting privacy, and the rulings seem to favor the former.
There is an app that can change TTL value through
iptables. It requires root.Back in the day PDANet was the app to go to enable unlimited tethering.
Still works for me as of last year. Now I use rooted android with ttlfix.
This is what I've been using and it works for the most part other than the connection just dropping with too much use, only other thing I've used is PairVPN which had the same problem but was 100x worse. Is there something better around nowadays? I have a carrier locked phone and can't ROM or root
Att et al keeps throwing around the word 'unlimited'. I actually had a conversation with Verizon, before I dropped them, and actually used this exact quote to the guy...
He was like, "princess bride. Nice. But, yeah, I have to read the script."
Well that's because,
fuck you pay methose are special data packets.No, I'm far worse. I studied politics in college.
Data is data in the same way water is water and electricity is electricity; nobody should have the power to dictate how you use it. I really wish we’d enshrine genuine net neutrality and shut this kind of nonsense down.
Except there is not a physical commodity or production at the other end of which they are supplying me a portion of a finite amount. If they "pipe" is big enough to supply what is promised to every end user it is supplied to, the water company or power company can still run out of water or power if one person uses a ridiculous amount. The ISP can't run out of "data", they aren't even supplying it - it comes from a host. The ISP is just responsible for running the cables, or "connecting the pipes".
The ISPs loves using the comparison to water or power, because you get charged more for using more of either and that is how they have convinced lawmakers (who are so old and out of touch they have no idea how the internet works) that using more data should cost more. They've convinced our lawmakers basically that they have a big "tank full of data" and if I use too much, there wont' be any for my neighbors.
The truth is they are selling me something they can't provide - a 250Gbps "pipe" that can't actually supply 250Gbps if everyone they sold it to wants to use it at the same time. They sell the same pipe to the whole neighborhood and blame the neighborhood when they try to use what they were told they bought.
Except there is no 'unlimited' for water or electricity.
There used to be
you also have unlimited data, unless you hit a data cap, and then you hit a data rate limit, so technically your data is actually limited.
Can we legislate these fucks to just actual provide the bandwidth they claim to? I.E. a max cap of the max bandwidth * the max amount of time it can be available for in a billing period. Anything else is fraud IMO.
We had legislation for this stuff. Then Trump put Shit Pai in the FCC chairman spot and proceeded to gut all of the net neutrality and consumer protection regulations.
ajit pai* or however the fuck you spell it, idk im american, i have no culture.
I still feel like I should be able to sue AT&T for claiming my hotspot is "unlimited," but after 15 gb it drops to double digit kbps. Seems like that's a pretty hard limit
And some douchebag could come in and say "um, actually, it's always going to be limited because the internet speed isn't infinite" as if the 3TB my mobile data is capable of downloading at full speed is at all comparable to the 0.05TB I can get after they rate limit me
Yep, lack of broadband in this AirBnB I'm staying in is the only reason I was using it as a hotspot in the first place. The speed here is about the speed they'd throttle it at. I kind of had to fork over the $15 or deal with slow internet one way or the other.
Unfortunately, I didn't pick it. My mother is paying. And when I asked my mother if she looked to see on the AirBnB ad if this place had high speed internet, she said, "other ads did, but this one didn't." Sigh.
Unlimited with a limit
You see, this is why we need net neutrality
EDIT: see, im glad someone else said it already
Net neutrality really wouldn’t stop this, just make them reword the limit.
No differentiation of traffic. Eg hotspots vs mobile apps can’t be a separate limit. So 5Gb/month has to be for everything or it must be for nothing.
How can they tell if you are tethering?
Not sure if it's still the case today, but back then cellular ISPs could tell you are tethering by looking at the TTL (time to live) value of your packets.
Basically, a packet starts with a TTL of 64 usually. After each hop (e.g. from your phone to the ISP's devices) the TTL is decremented, becoming 63, then 62, and so on. The main purpose of TTL is to prevent packets from lingering in the network forever, by dropping the packet if its TTL reaches zero. Most packets reach their destinations within 20 hops anyway, so a TTL of 64 is plenty enough.
Back to the topic. What happens when the ISP receives a packet with a TTL value less than expected, like 61 instead of 62? It realizes that your packet must have gone through an additional hop, for example when it hopped from your laptop onto your phone, hence the data must be tethered.
This also explains why VPN is a possible workaround to this issue.
Your VPN will encapsulate any packets that your phone will send out inside a new packet (its contents encrypted), and this new packet is the one actually being sent out to the internet. What TTL does this new packet have? You guessed it, 64. From the ISP's perspective, this packet is no different than any other packets sent directly from your phone.
BUT, not all phones will pass tethered packets to the VPN client -- they directly send those out to the internet. Mine does this! In this case, TTL-based tracking will still work. And some phones seem to have other methods to inform the ISP that the data is tethered, in which case the VPN workaround may possibly fail.
You can also just increase your laptop's initial TTL by one and then they can't tell.
How do you do this?
On MacOS this will do it:
Can't personally speak for other OSes at present. Here's a SO post about Ubuntu: https://askubuntu.com/a/670276
That was a good read, thank you
That was a good read, thanks
If you're using the built-in unmodified hotspot on pretty much all phones these days, mobile data for the hotspot goes through a different apn. Your phone requests data on one channel, while hotspot data goes through another.
They must be sniffing traffic
Use a VPN. ISP are being disingenuous when they claim a data connection is unlimited at the point of purchase and then slug us with restrictions when we try and use it. If they can detect a tether, the VPN should obscure it.
128kbps is only mildly better then dial up lmao
the funniest thing to me, is that realistically, the most useful thing you can do with 128k is torrent.
ISP's literally incentivize you to torrent lmao.
Yarr!
And it's 60mbps right now. Not amazing, but also manageable. They could cut it down to 10 or something, which would still make downloading huge files or whatever a pain in the ass, but would also still allow you to do basic things like watch Netflix.
Start saving webpages for offline use like the good old days!
I'd have a lot of fun trying to get around it. For example, if the phone and the computer were on the same non-Internet-connected wifi network, and you set up an SSH server to send outbound requests through the 4G modem, would they be able to find out you're using the hotspot?
There are a ton of methods carriers use to detect hotspot traffic, from the device itself handling the categorization, to TTL values attached to requests, to other very clever network sniffing strategies.
Every method I've encountered in the past was thwarted by a good ole VPN. This was all on unlocked or rooted phones though so YMMV work carrier phones.
I'd just try to disguise the traffic as coming from something else. Someone further down says just switching to an OS that doesn't actively snitch does the trick, but if you really wanted you could make your requests look like just about anything, given added volume is free.
I used to root my phone and then could use the hotspot without my provider knowing.
It's because at&t also sells home Internet. If you have unlimited hotspot, then you wouldn't want that sweet sweet DSL or whatever shit Internet ATT sells
TMobile doesn't have a hard throttle, but they'll cut priority under congestion so that if wherever you are has someone else vying for the bandwidth, they get first shot.
Frankly, given that the limited resource is the cell bandwidth, that seems like a more reasonable way to go. It doesn't hurt them much if someone wants available bandwidth and there's no contention for it from others.
For hotspot T-Mobile does have a hard throttle. Once you reach your cap you get limited to 128 kbps. It's only phone data that has the soft cap.
I thought T-Mobile's throttle was 600kbps now?
It may depend on the plan. Mine limits it to 128 kbps after I reach the 3gb cap for hotspot.
You've used 100% of Smartphone Mobile Hotspot high speed data on your T-Mobile plan. Your Smartphone Mobile Hotspot speed will now be limited to 128 kbps until 03/05/2024. Data on your smartphone will still be at full speeds. Buy more at
Mine is the same way and I get the exact same messages.
I can assure you, the multi-million dollar organization does not need your defense of them.
They can detect you using your phone as hotspot? Creepy.
The phone reports it, yeah, it is creepy. Should be illegal to even have the knowledge to differentiate.
TTL is a part of TCP/IP.
Sometimes it's based on the TTL of packets. TTL for hotspot clients will be one less than TTL for directly using data on the phone, since the phone is acting as a router, which adds an extra hop.
I think running a HTTP proxy or VPN server on the phone would mask it (since the connections would then be made by the phone directly), but I've never tried.
Android phones don't share VPN connections through the hotspot
Ahh - that's unfortunate. A HTTP proxy should work though.
It's not hard to detect when the standard includes the phone indicating what it's doing to the carrier.
Very creepy.
My provider used MTU as a reference. I simply changed it in hotspot settings and was happy about that
If you use a VPN it can also mask it too. That's how I used to get around it before moving to Google Fi.
Same, if I have unlimited data it's none of their business what that data is
Some or all major mobile providers outright BAN hotspots in their ToS. However, they don't enforce the rule as it would be very unpopular.
And we still have pretty much the most expensive cellular data in the EU. The triopoly sucks.
Plug it in via USB cable, shouldn't register as a hotspot then. At least that's how it works on linux, IDK about other OS.
This is only possible if you get your phone from the carrier, right? They wouldn't be able to differentiate if you were using an unlocked phone you got from Google or Amazon?
Hello, The Monarch:
Your data is unlimited, the SPEED of the data is not. ;)
That's like trying to download 1 TB on a dial-up connection. It'll never be done.
Oh no I can assure you it'll be done. It's just so slow that by the time you finish not only will your modern be teetering on the ruckity precipice of death, but you'll have already upgraded to a neutral modem for direct-to-mind augmented reality. Remember to get an ad blocker and VPN for your cerebrum.
Get Google fi if it's available. Very consumer friendly. Actually let me rephrase that. More consumer friendly than most other cell providers. But it's still Google.
At least all the pricing and features are straight forward and they don't lock any features (like Hotspot) behind paywalls.
Every time the ATT sales people bug me at stores I tell them what I'm paying and that I get unlimited hotspot and they usually say "oh, you're good."
Add to this that Fi actually allows you to add data only SIMS at no cost.
Yeah, even using a hotspot internationally it's the same price, with the same data limits.
And with data-SIMs, it's possible to share that data with a few other devices, still at no extra cost.
Those features are often overlooked when people ask why it's more expensive than e.g. Mint.
Yeah. I haven't used mint, but the apps, account management and overall ease of use and transparency is legendary with Google fi. Those things are also easy to overlook. It's just so easy and doesn't get in my way when I want to manage something like all other carriers.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Visible/comments/efsmwg/warning_there_is_a_data_cap/
I know I know, Reddit post. But there is in fact a soft data cap. The guy who made the post was torrenting and received an email for reaching the data abuse threshold.
If you're using FI, and you set the device your using the phone hotspot for to metered connection you're not too terribly likely to reach the data cap on pretty much any of the unlimited fi plans. I do this for work.
I know this is going to sound like an ad. Visible has unlimited 5G, and 5Mbps* hotspot, for $25/mo. It's owned by Verizon.
Worth noting: "Visible includes mobile hotspot with unlimited data at speeds up to 5Mbps."
Wow, the 5g had me excited there for a moment
I think companies call that "innovation" these days.
Anything that makes more profits is "innovation."
If they could profit from rape, they'd do so and call it innovative.
Legislation basically specifing such has been passed for some reason, and I bet that reason is money.
Thank you for putting this into words. Verizon does the same thing to me, I've been on the same plan for four or five years, and I haven't been able to articulate it the way you did. Thank you for explaining what's happening.
Around about 2009 or so I had a mobile plan with Virgin that did that same trick (I think this was plugging your phone in to a computer as a modem as opposed to wireless hotspot but same thing anyway) and it was limited to 5 MEGABYTES after which they wanted 15pence per KILOBYTE I couldn't believe what I was reading. I never ran afoul of it because I checked this out first when buying the plan and made sure never to use that function but it just seemed literally unreal. I've been shocked at how much things cost before but that seemed more like a mistake or something, I just can't imagine they ever actually made anyone pay for that, the negative press would be too bad. It was not unheard of at the time for people to have excess charges on limited plans waived because it was a shock and they were unaware or unprepared for those charges accruing so the idea that someone might have checked emails, read a news article, checked Facebook and possibly a web video having not read the fine print and ended up with tens if not over a hundred GBP of charges just doesn't seem feasible. Really fucking crazy.
So that works out to £150 per Megabyte?! Holy fuck that's a scam. With average webpage size being ~2MB that's £300 a page
Oops
Were you downloading more ram or was that all BaNano faucet
Downloading games from Steam and binging through a few TV shows because I had a free trial of Apple TV+.
I don't play online games, so I don't care for low ping and the speed is usually fine.
Oops!
You also have a ventilation pad for your phone to keep it cool while it's serving that data traffic?
Lol, surprisingly my Xiaomi doesn't heat much even when I have my mobile hotspot turned on.
When I'm downloading a big game off Steam, mine gets pretty warm. I bricked the WiFi module of an older phone through that. Better safe than sorry.
Get a custom ROM and a VPN.
Can custom ROMs hide hotspotting?
I don't know the current state of things, it's probably more than 10 years since I've bothered with rooting and custom rooms and such.
But back then I remember my phone company tried to make me pay extra for tethering and there were a few tricks using root to get around it. I think there were a few apps out there that would work on the stock room that needed root, and I think it just worked out of the box with a custom ROM.
IIRC, at that time, my carrier had disabled the tethering options in the phone settings, and to tether you had to use their pre-installed app. My memory may be fuzzy on that though.
Yes of course, it's a software thing.
Neat
Yes, if you spend a little time on it you can slowly phase out all of the fucked up software with better alternatives. I could also help you if you have questions.
I was planning on getting a pixel with Graphene OS because that's the only one that seems reasonable.
Good choice
Yes and no. A custom kernel with a patch usually referred to as a "ttl fix" can, but a good amount of ROMs have that in their kernel by default.
Probably, but all you really need is an app called EasyTether. I wrote a big comment about it on this post.
Try plugging your phone on via the USB instead of a WiFi hotspot. It may not detect it as a hotspot.
Basically they don't want you to turn your phone into a mobile router.
Well then don't offer unlimited data. Is it unlimited or not?
Definitely not the way they structure it currently
Unlimited data, not unlimited speed. It didn’t say they’d cut you off, only that you’d be throttled.
(Yes it’s an asshole move but there is a difference)
Unlimited is by definition without a limit
5 GB is a limit
You have “unlimited data” so you can download all you want. You do not have “unlimited bandwidth”.
Unlimited data for your phone, not your computer.
Get EasyTether for your phone ($10) and you can USB tether to any PC that has the companion app installed (free).
Even a Raspberry Pi works. I have a Pi configured to broadcast as a WiFi AP, so I just plug in my phone via USB and I have instant WiFi for all of my devices. Takes a fair amount of configuration to do that, but there are tutorials online. Much easier just plugging your phone into a laptop for internet on just that laptop.
Or maybe a laptop can act as a WiFi AP, too. I do know Windows can share internet out a free Ethernet port very easily.
I use a VPN so my wireless provider doesn't see Windows update or Stream downloads, etc.
I remember when I had the original iPhone with jailbreak I was able to use it as a hotspot without the carrier restrictions. Guessing it’s the same way now that it is handled in the OS and phone makers have carrier agreements to separate the traffic so people don’t use as much of their service as they pay for.
TTLMaster was what I used to fix this a few years ago
At home i have a FWA over 5G (mobile) with 1Tb/month of traffic cap. That can be raised by 200Gb if needed. Cost 24€/month.
On mobile I have 150Gb capped 3G/4G/5G (whatever works) for 7.99€/month.
Not bad deals in comparison with what I read here.
Every carrier has it's problems but AT&T and Verizon are a nickel and diming rip off. They suck.
The difference is one hop. I think that’s how ISP’s measure it anyway. I’ll bet spoofing that number would bypass the restriction.
Or I’m hopelessly out of date.
Something like that, yeah. I recall a while back that TTL spoofing was a way to get around that kind of detection. Haven't had to deal with that lately, so no idea if it's still valid / applicable.
I have been bypassing this with Pdanet app for over 10 years. I don't think the app gets regular updates anymore, but it has worked for me on many different phones, and windows versions. Also different carriers.
Doesn't have to be usb either, I use the wifi direct setting it has and have used 100gb in a month. With minimal or no slowdown.
I still use it almost daily, as fiber or any other form of internet isn't available in my area besides satellite (not talking about starlink). I also play online games usually 80 latency, which sucks, but better than nothing.
Doesn't look like there's a Linux client unfortunately.
Ah, thats a shame. Pdanet also has an app called foxfi, which can active unlimited hotspot on some phones/carriers, so uou wouldn't need the client app.
Theres a free trial, give it a try if you haven't already
Thanks!
EasyTether+ might have a Linux client. It's a similar app
I'm sure this is an unpopular opinion, but I kind of get this one. Unlimited data on your phone is constrained a bit because it's your phone. If you make your phone a hotspot and the whole family is using it to watch videos and stuff (and not paying for their own data plan), that's a pretty big difference to the infrastructure needs.
Yeah. You have unlimited data but they don’t want you to actually use that.
They take the risk that you’re not going to use more than they want you to from your phone but it is very likely that you’ll use it from your computer or if you connect multiple devices to your phone.
I find the idea to be reasonable because they can’t actually supply everyone with unlimited data but they really shouldn’t be calling it unlimited if there are any limits.
Yeah, it's unlimited for you on your phone, and they have estimates and ranges for what that amounts to for people that they use to determine pricing. But if not it's not just you and your phone, but multiple people with multiple uses, those estimates aren't sufficient.
I've been using SecureTether https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.panjava.internet.sharing.tethering.mobile.hotspot.secure.wifi.securetether to get around it. Requires a bit of setup but works without issues after.
I dont believe something like this is possible on iOS.
Root your phone and you can manage which APN is used by tethering. If you can't do this consider trying a connecting to a VPN before enabling tethering, the connection will on some devices remain active on the normal APN because changing would disconnect the VPN and keeping connected is higher priority than updating the APN. Also USB tethering and WIFI tethering may behave differently.
In the end this is a good argument for better regulation. When you buy a car they don't get to extract more money from you because you drive out of state or use it for business. The fact that telecommunications companies have so much power and access to basically monitor what you are doing and bill accordingly is insane. You should pay for a service with a simple and clear contract and all this crap should be made illegal.
the reason is wireless network carve outs from network neutrality and them wanting to abuse their monopoly status to upcharge you for every little thing
Remember when they charged 10 cents a text for data that went through the cell tower in the same way a voice did?
Almost wish they still did but only if it meant more of us were using Signal.
Who am I kidding though, we’d be using What’sZuck like our European & LatAm friends. “WhatsApp: At Least It’s Not WeChat”
I've read somewhere that USB tethering bypasses this very easily.
Is easytether still a thing? That app saved my butt several times.
I'm not sure tbh, my ISP doesn't throttle my speed or data when used as a hotspot, luckily, so I didn't have to look into it for a long time.
Does it? Interesting. I'll have to try that. I wonder why?
There used to be other ways to bypass it as well, like PDAnet, rooting, flashing custom OSes, etc.
From what I heard is that a phone used as USB tether identifies as a modem on the computer, and then the traffic is somehow detected differently. I haven't tested this personally though since my ISP doesn't cap or throttle me when using hotpsots.
Have you tried running a vpn to your phone while tethering?
https://moonpiedumplings.github.io/guides/unrestricted-tethering/
I experimented with it a little bit, but it didn't go anywhere when I discovered my phone already proxies/NATs all my traffic.
I got hit by this AT&T usage cap for internet downloads. I went through 250GB of downloads in less than a month. Most of it was internet backups of a newly installed system. They don't offer a data tier without a cap in my area so I was stuck paying $10/10GB over that month. Next month I added a $30 unlimited data charge to my bill. That's OK as I'm consistently going over their cap again due to backups. Unless I buy much more expensive plan from a commercial provider and pay for Fibre installation, I'm stuck.
It’s to stop people from abusing unlimited data on their cellphone for all their WiFi devices at home. I know a person who did not have WiFi at home and only used their cellphone data. You are using more than a typical cellphone user and also you are cutting them from an opportunity to sell you a WiFi plan for your home. It’s annoying, but as I understand it, this is the reason.
The concept of abusing unlimited data makes no sense.
"all you can eat"
It’s unlimited data for your phone and not for all the devices you can connect to. I agree with your sentiment. Just trying to point what the companies have in their ToS. I will be glad to hotspot to all my devices from my phone and not pay for WiFi.
This might not apply everywhere, but I live in a rural area and actually most of my Internet used is through cell networks. When there are a lot of people in the area for some reason, I'm much more likely to lose service completely for web and calls.
I don't think that a reliable network is the reason why communications companies are limiting people's data, I think they're doing it for profit, but it could be a rationale to do so. It's not unreasonable to think that there can't be "unlimited" anything without some kind of impact.
But isn't limiting an unlimited service a form of false advertising? I'm sure they'd argue that a ToS was signed, but I don't know that you can legally bind people to accept a false advertisement.
Yeah you don't have to make that point to me. I'm just saying there could be a legitimate reason to want to make service limits. Obviously, if they really wanted to limit service to prevent network outages, I wouldn't be getting network outages 😂😭
But it still costs the ISP effectively nothing to send those 1s and 0s. This is like complaining about someone having a bunch of fans on because they're using more air than the average person.
I never implied that. Ask the ISP why they have separate hotspot / tablet / watch plans.
Companies even do this if you have a 5g modem.
There is a 2 hour window at the end of the month in which I am miserable.
I'm at the tip of the US's Wang and have zero access to wired internet, so I am stuck. 😞
Do they actually slow it down? I have 8GB of data and many months I use a lot more than that and they send me some messages that they will slow it with some links to purchase more data but it never happens, or at least not in a noticeable way
Using a phone purchased through them or unlocked? Locked phones will have proprietary bullshit to check if you are using a hotspot
This is why I love Google Fi. I go anywhere on earth, and I have coverage. Unlimited everything. Never worry about nothing, ever, and has carrier bonding for when you're really out there.
TMobile provides literally the same services, beat-for-beat at a lower price.
People don't think these things through. Google can't possibly be cheaper than a wireless carrier because they don't own any towers. Wireless carriers will make sure Google doesn't sell cheaper than they can sell it themselves.
Also, things like Metro PCS (before T-Mobile bought them) just have lower network priority. So "cheaper" just means crappy service. Good luck making a phone call at a sporting event or concert.
They absolutely can, several carriers who use other carriers are cheaper than who they lease service from. They won't be paying consumer prices to use those towers.
It all depends on what margins they have, what extra services they provide, and whether they have other ways of monetizing you. They might even be reselling at a loss to boost their initial market share. In Google's case, it's safe to assume they want your data and sacrifice some margins to get it.
Which ones?
I can't be bothered to research every plan to answer this question, but Mint Mobile was dirt cheap while using T-Mobile service. They probably still are, but it arguably doesn't count anymore since T-Mobile acquired them.
tmobile doesn't do free international data anywhere on earth. when I travel I have service before the airplane touches down. also, google fi uses carrier bonding so i will jump to us-cellular when I am up north which is extremely valuable for me as I am in the mountains constantly.
I also have GFi and currently still use Fi, and I'm telling you Tmobile is better in every single way, including international carrier bonding. I haven't switched over due to Fi VPN being very convenient for me (and there's better VPNs out there anyways so I'm not married to it at all).
Google Fi will throttle you after you hit a limit depending on your plan. I unknowingly hit mine after using my phone for a hotspot, watching a few hours of soccer and I think Windows downloaded a bunch of updates too. It was towards the beginning of the billing cycle so the rest of the month really sucked. Might want to double check your plan.
Its like 50g on the unlimited plan.
This is the Unlimited Plus plan. Their Simply Unlimited plan throttles you after 5 GB of hotspot usage, but phone data is unlimited.
I never said I wasn't on the unlimited everything plan.
I never claimed you did. I just clarified which plan you were on, and added how their other plan works. This could be nice for others to know. I don't know why you'd take that as a personal attack, but I certainly didn't intend it as one.
not to be a shill, but i have xfinity mobile, and they gave me unlimited tethering. there is service degradation at some point, but i haven't ever hit it or if i have i haven't noticed it.
AT&T are like:
https://youtu.be/DHgVRVeRNXM?feature=shared
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/DHgVRVeRNXM?feature=shared
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
get calyx
Laptops have large screens and windows software isn't designed to be data efficient. Unlimited data doesn't mean at full speed infinitely. They sell way more than they can support otherwise it would be impossible to support more than a few users at one time on a cell tower.
"They sell more than they can support"
At that point is where mine and your opinion diverge. In what sustainable business does one sell more of anything than they can maintain responsibility over?
Of course, there are many examples, but why?
Greed is why. Don't sell something you cannot sustain, or you have misled your customer.
I hope the user finds a way around this and burns all of the data they rightfully purchased. Plan says unlimited. Rename the plan if its a lie.
Finally, and not directed at the user to which I am replying, what concerns me the most is that this quote I took from your post would be glossed over by most because it is what we've come to expect from fucky corps. We don't have to take it, change your expectations, question the system.
What they're talking about is the mobile provider overselling service. Because they know that for the vast majority of the time, everyone isn't going to be demanding huge amounts of bandwidth all at the same time. Cable/GPON fiber ISPs do the same thing.
Doesn't change anything. If I go to a sandwich shop that advertises sandwiches with meat, but I go during the lunch rush, they don't get to sell me two slices of plain bread just because it's busy. Even if their advertising includes in microscopic text the words "up to".
And the legality of these practices is irrelevant. We're making the argument that it's morally wrong and therefore should not be tolerated.
Good addition, I guess I am making a moral argument. I was coming at it from an ethics POV but yeah. Also good sandwich analogy.
Problem is that shared infrastructure shouldn't be operated for profit. But American conservatives seem to think that's the way to go. If infrastructure is shared, then there's every incentive for a business to sell even if the infrastructure can't handle it.
That being said, it's a required thing. This is why we have society in the first place. If every customer had to have their own cell infrastructure, it would be a mess and a waste. I mean you are sold unlimited bandwidth at let's say 1Gbps on 5G. There are about 1 cell tower node for every 1000 people in the US across the country. If we build enough infrastructure for everyone to use it at full speed each tower node would then need to be able to handle 1,000Gbps. That's just not possible with current technology. So should we build one tower node per person plus all of the cabling and routers to handle that much traffic? Does everyone really need to be able to download a gigabit of data every second of every day? What would you do with that data?
What internet infrastructure is designed for is peaks of up to that speed for short bursts. Not sustained speeds. And then sharing that infrastructure. Just like if everyone were to turn on their water at the same time, no one would get more than a drip, but does that ever actually happen in real usage?
The difference is that water infrastructure is owned collectively, so it is more equitably developed to make it available to all as equally as possible, rather than just to those who pay more for it.