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Thread: How do mobile companies know whether you are tethering?

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    How do mobile companies know whether you are tethering?

    As you know you usually have to pay extra for tethering. I was wondering how detect this? Is it via a spike in your data or some other way? Say if you just changed your sim from you phone to an tablet would they know?

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    Re: How do mobile companies know whether you are tethering?

    User agent? Traceroute? *shrugs* if it's in the terms and conditions on a particular plan that you can't tether then you shouldn't tether. They shouldn't have to check and enforce every condition or we'll all have to start putting up with monitoring stuff.

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    Re: How do mobile companies know whether you are tethering?

    I imagine it's to do with the kind of stuff you're downloading. If you're just browsing or even going on youtube I think you'd get no hassle. If you are torrenting they'll smell a rat. Also, if you have an unlimited mobile internet plan and you go to, say, 3gb you'd be less likely to get any hassle than if you go to 15gb... not that I'd recommend doing it if you are asked not to.
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    Re: How do mobile companies know whether you are tethering?

    simple things such as even a windows update request or even browser and request type i.e mobile or desktop. but to be fair if its not occasional i dont think they care too much...

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    Re: How do mobile companies know whether you are tethering?

    In student accommodation I had an ISP which required you to pay for an addon for multiple MAC addresses on the network (i.e. multiple devices). I connected a router to bypass this limitation, and quickly had my access blocked. It turns out they were detecting the TTL value of the packets differed. This is because any device which forwards the packet decreases the Time to Live of the packet, so for example if they are expecting a packet from your machine to have a TTL of 128 on their switch and it is 127, then they know this has passed through some kind of router. It is technically possible for them to determine that you are doing this, but it seems unlikely that it is worth them investing in deploying this sort of technology to catch the minority who are doing this. They also have the associated cost of notifying these users and dealing with the associated customer service issues. I used tethering extensively for 2 years on my previous network when they would normally require you to pay for this service (I think it's excessive to pay an extra £7-15 / month for bandwidth I've already paid for) and not once did they mention it.

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    Re: How do mobile companies know whether you are tethering?

    They have software that is able to detect the type of software you are using to access online. ie they know when a windows 7 device is using their network. Clearly not a mobile phone device.

    I have an unlimited data plan on 3 for my mobile and go over 3gb every month easy using it. Watching HD youtube, TV catchup and streaming on line radio does chew through data quickly. I have tried tethering my Note 2 to my note 10.1 and it worked well, no blocking. Three would block access straight away with its software when accessing from another device. I think they have problems with detecting tethering with Android devices.

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    Re: How do mobile companies know whether you are tethering?

    Easy solution to convert video to Samsung video format and transfer the converted video to Samsung Galaxy so as to play any kind of videos on Samsung Galaxy

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    Re: How do mobile companies know whether you are tethering?

    Samsung has successfully kept its name in the ... number of galaxy mobile phones.een facility. Samsung mobile phones have some interesting features such ...

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    Re: How do mobile companies know whether you are tethering?

    Samsung Focus phone, with state-of-art Windows Phone 7 OS, a huge 4" Super-AMOLED display and photo enhanced function for better viewing, and ultrathin body for grasping. Now let's see Samsung Focus Window phone 7 phone for more details.

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