this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024

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Mildly Infuriating

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I have unlimited cellular data on my phone but not if I use it as a hotspot. (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

320 comments fedilink hide all child comments

What is the difference between cellular data being used on my phone and cellular data being used on my notebook? Data is data.

(page 4) 50 comments

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (9 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 103 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)

How can they tell if you are tethering?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

That was a good read, thanks

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can also just increase your laptop's initial TTL by one and then they can't tell.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How do you do this?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

That was a good read, thank you

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

They must be sniffing traffic

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Visible has an unlimited hotspot

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Get a custom ROM and a VPN.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Can custom ROMs hide hotspotting?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Probably, but all you really need is an app called EasyTether. I wrote a big comment about it on this post.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

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