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AT&T trying to crackdown on unauth. tethering

arstechnica.com

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Re: AT&T trying to crackdown on unauth. tethering

#21

Post by theBobMcCormick »

ben1040 wrote: post #17
kalvin wrote: post #13

Lots of discussion of this elsewhere. It looks like some people who don't tether (but use a lot of bandwidth) are also getting the message, leading people to believe to that AT&T is looking solely at bandwidth usage. http://modmyi.com/forums/iphone-news/755094-t-cracking-down-... I use TetherMe ($2 in the cydia store, instead of $10 for mywi, enables native tethering), and I haven't gotten this message.

I certainly wouldn't be surprised if that was the case that they're just going after high bandwidth users and not doing packet inspection (yet). I occasionally swap my iPhone 4 SIM to a Nexus One and use the built-in wifi tethering feature, and haven't heard from AT&T about it. On the other hand I only have used maybe 2GB of tethered data over the last year and in general run up no more than 800MB-1GB of mobile data…

Those are the people who are ruining it for everyone.

I use the Tethering on my Nexus One (Tmobile) from time to time, but I don't abuse it. I use it as an emergency backup internet access for cases like if the wifi at the hotel isn't working, etc. IMHO, that's reasonable and my usage when tethered probably isn't much more than when I run things like Pandora or Youtube on my phone.

If I were using 10+G/month, then I'd expect to have to pay for a higher priced "tethering included" plan.

Re: AT&T trying to crackdown on unauth. tethering

#22

Post by dexen »

theBobMcCormick wrote: post #21
ben1040 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly wouldn't be surprised if that was the case that they're just going after high bandwidth users and not doing packet inspection (yet). I occasionally swap my iPhone 4 SIM to a Nexus One and use the built-in wifi tethering feature, and haven't heard from AT&T about it. On the other hand I only have used maybe 2GB of tethered data over the last year and in general run up no more than 800MB-1GB of mobile data…

Those are the people who are ruining it for everyone. I use the Tethering on my Nexus One (Tmobile) from time to time, but I don't abuse it. I use it as an emergency backup internet access for cases like if the wifi at the hotel isn't working, etc. IMHO, that's reasonable and my usage when tethered probably isn't much more than when I run things like Pandora or Youtube on my phone. If I were using 10+G/month, then I'…

Some put it the other way around: you owe the ever-improving network to the heavyweight users [1]. Well, at least Cisco says that -- and you know what they sell.

In any case, it's not the other user that oversold the bandwidth; it's the ISP. They made an unhedged bet, it fell short of working out(predictably), so it's their turn to foot the costs of upgrading the network.

----

[1] http://business.financialpost.com/2011/03/04/bootup-heavy-we...

Re: AT&T trying to crackdown on unauth. tethering

#23

Post by jimbobimbo »

Unless they're performing a deep packet inspection, there's no good way to tell if you're tethering. Usually tethering option uses user name that differs from non-tethered option during authentication. If your unathorized tethering application sits on the device, it simply shares non-tethered connection, hence the user name doesn't change. The only plausible explanation w/o going deep into packets - bandwidth or some unusual ports usage.

Re: AT&T trying to crackdown on unauth. tethering

#24

Post by vetinari »

azim wrote: post #20

It's unlikely AT&T is doing anything fancy at this point, but there's potentially much more to detection than TTL. NAT devices make an attempt to be transparent at layer 4 and try not to interfere with it. Host OS fingerprinting can rely on a combination of options at that layer as well including but not limited to windowing scaling MSS. If AT&T cared to go the distance, it would be very difficult to get around detec…

Use SOCKS proxy for tethering - problem solved. (OK, it is not that transparent for client, but the detection would be much harder).

Re: AT&T trying to crackdown on unauth. tethering

#26

Post by sukuriant »

eli wrote: post #16
ceejayoz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be illegal wiretapping if it were the government, perhaps, but I'd imagine the standard contract with AT&T permits this.

"AT&T may, but is not required to, monitor your compliance, or the compliance of other subscribers, with AT&T's terms, conditions, or policies" And, of course, it's now well-known that the government WAS using deep packet inspection on AT&T internet traffic. I would assume they're just looking at how much you download in a month, though. I don't think AT&T is worried about offending outliers using large amounts of mo…

Could you provide a link to the government using deep packet inspection on ATT internet traffic. I don't remember it/haven't heard about it.

Just curious.

Re: AT&T trying to crackdown on unauth. tethering

#27

Post by sukuriant »

neilc wrote: post #15
bcrawford wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible for them to detect this if they are doing Layer 7 inspection. All it would take is parsing the user agent to see that you're not on Mobile Safari. On the iPhone side, it just does a NAT and theoretically passes all information as the public IP of the phone itself. Honestly, any respectable nerd is going to have either a) a box to SSH to or b) a VPN endpoint... if you encrypt/encapsulate all traffic ori…

Assuming the IPv4 TTL issue can be worked around (see elsewhere in thread), a phone that does GBs/month of encrypted traffic over SSH would still be a signal that something suspicious is going on.

That's where using a VPN comes in. For all they know, you could be connecting to your own, internal business websites.

[edit: changed my response.]

Also, you can connect to a VPN via: Settings > Wireless & Network settings > VPN Settings on Android

Re: AT&T trying to crackdown on unauth. tethering

#28

Post by omarqureshi »

There is a greater underlying issue here which seems to be missed.

I have paid £x to use O2's (or in this case AT&T's) network, not only that but I also had to partially pay for the handset.

O2 should not really give a damn about what device I use to access their network - sure, they may have sold me a handset with an Internet plan, but it is MY DECISION to use whatever device I see fit to use that network.

If I am allowed to use whatever device I want but it was capped to say 4GB, I would have no issue, but as it stands, I am not only paying to use the phone, but an additional bullshit cost to tether the phone which technically should be none of their concern.

Re: AT&T trying to crackdown on unauth. tethering

#29

Post by tesseract »

theBobMcCormick wrote: post #21
ben1040 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly wouldn't be surprised if that was the case that they're just going after high bandwidth users and not doing packet inspection (yet). I occasionally swap my iPhone 4 SIM to a Nexus One and use the built-in wifi tethering feature, and haven't heard from AT&T about it. On the other hand I only have used maybe 2GB of tethered data over the last year and in general run up no more than 800MB-1GB of mobile data…

Those are the people who are ruining it for everyone. I use the Tethering on my Nexus One (Tmobile) from time to time, but I don't abuse it. I use it as an emergency backup internet access for cases like if the wifi at the hotel isn't working, etc. IMHO, that's reasonable and my usage when tethered probably isn't much more than when I run things like Pandora or Youtube on my phone. If I were using 10+G/month, then I'…

Recently I was traveling a lot, and therefore making regular use of TMobile tethering (I also have an N1). At one hotel in particular where I had a long term stay the wifi was very slow and intermittent, and so I eventually hit the point - 5GB I think - where TMobile starts throttling bandwidth (supposedly to EDGE speeds, but it felt slower than that).

I recognize that's an unusual amount of usage for one month and I would have gladly paid extra money to TMobile to continue getting full speed data, but they don't even offer the option to do so - I assume because that would require them to admit that the service advertised as 'unlimited 3G' isn't really.

Re: AT&T trying to crackdown on unauth. tethering

#30

Post by juiceandjuice »

neilc wrote: post #15
bcrawford wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible for them to detect this if they are doing Layer 7 inspection. All it would take is parsing the user agent to see that you're not on Mobile Safari. On the iPhone side, it just does a NAT and theoretically passes all information as the public IP of the phone itself. Honestly, any respectable nerd is going to have either a) a box to SSH to or b) a VPN endpoint... if you encrypt/encapsulate all traffic ori…

Assuming the IPv4 TTL issue can be worked around (see elsewhere in thread), a phone that does GBs/month of encrypted traffic over SSH would still be a signal that something suspicious is going on.

"I'm an Apple developer developing XYZ application that uses encrypted traffic."

Problem solved.

They don't have to know it's just the SOCKS proxy and you're tunneling with SSH to your server as another proxy.

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