Submitted 7 months ago by FlyingSquid@lemmy.world to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
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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 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?
There’s different internal network configs (APNs), and hotspot uses a different one than regular mobile data. ( or at least it used to).
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.
Even on my unlocked, non vendor phone it seems to not recognize hotspot data as different for some reason.
I’m still hoping for LineageOS on the Nord N30 but I can’t Even find a stock ROM to root it.
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.
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 dubvee.org/comment/1855949 ?
What is the difference between cellular data being used on my phone and cellular data being used on my notebook?
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.
Not sure if the Regulator intervened
It was an EU thing before…well you know what you did
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.
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.*
Get proper consumer protection laws, people.
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
unlimited has to mean unlimited around here.
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.
Get proper consumer protection laws, people.
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.
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.
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.
The carrier who’s paying for your traffic.
soooo...... what's with the monthly bill then?
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)localhost port 8888It 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? WireGuard runs on Android. I’ve never tried configuring it to forward data through it though, but it should work.
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, “process bride. Nice. But, yeah, I have to read the script.”
Most importantly… did you do the accent?
Hahaha! A light version of it. I already have a light accent, so I emphasized it some, but I didn’t want to offend haha
Well that’s because, fuck you pay me those are special data packets.
Ahahaha, are you in marketing?
No, I’m far worse. I studied politics in college.
It’s a really weird and very American problem. Our home broadband either doesn’t exist or is really expensive in any given market, and tends to have clauses, conditions, etc. Like Comcrap limiting people to 1TB/mon (very easy to burn through quickly by just watching some television programs) unless they pay more for “unlimited”. People, as taught by Capitalism, hunt for the best deals. Paying one bill instead of two saves money. Some have light enough home Internet requirements that they don’t need expensive home broadband.
Then the companies get pissed that we’re doing what we are supposed to do, find the best deal for our needs, so they set up false gates to make sure we follow the path they want us to follow. Then they pay off the regulatory agencies to allow terms like “unlimited” mean not unlimited, 3G HSPA+ being known as 4G. 4G being known as LTE, 4GLTE or 5Ge. 5G being known as 5G, 5G+, 5GUW, 5GUC, (even though, with the exception of T-Mobile in many markets, that 5G will actually be non-standalone and anchored to an LTE packet core, not 5G SA) and all the other damn arbitrary marketing buzzwords. All of which really mean nothing because the 5G spec allows a carrier to flip on the 5G availability flag on a phone even if 5G doesn’t exist in your market.
Most of this, AT&T is the biggest perpetrator of by far. Especially the lying about 5G.
The rules are all made up, nothing is real. Time for the arbitrary monthly bill increase for no reason! Pay up, chump!
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
Especially given:
The 15GB is going to be variable based on the link speed available. If full 5G, that can be erased with 15 speed tests in a few minutes.
From there, it’s 128kbps * 3600 (to hours) * 24 (to days) * 30 (to month) = 331,776,000 kilobits -> 41.472GB + the original 15GB -> 56.472GB is the limit each month for “unlimited”, roughly. A hard limited number.
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.
It always blows my mind going to a rental and the rental has no or lacking Internet. Yes, I’m probably on vacation, but it’s the future and life requires a few megabits. Years back I made it standard procedure to prep some kind of mobile broadband for my destination (buying a month of prepaid for a hotspot or whatever) fully expecting it to just always suck, it’s annoying that this is still a necessary procedure in 2024.
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.
You see, this is why we need net neutrality
Net neutrality really wouldn’t stop this, just make them reword the limit.
Unlimited with a limit
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.
Start the VPN from the phone though, otherwise the TTL-trick will still work for them.
How can they tell if you are tethering?
How do they even know if you use your data as a hotspot? That’s just ridiculous!
128kbps is only mildly better then dial up lmao
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 reasonable way to go. It doesn’t hurt them much if someone wants available bandwidth and there’s no contention for it.
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
They can detect you using your phone as hotspot? Creepy.
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?
I used to root my phone and then could use the hotspot without my provider knowing.
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.
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.
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.
Your data is unlimited, the SPEED of the data is not. ;)
I know this is going to sound like an ad. Visible has unlimited 5G, including hotspot, for $25/mo. It’s owned by Verizon.
I think companies call that “innovation” these days.
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.
tacostrange@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
This is why we need net neutrality
Zachariah@lemmy.world 7 months ago
And more competition.
Ioughttamow@kbin.run 7 months ago
Nationalize the tubes
tyler@programming.dev 7 months ago
T-Mobile hasn’t done this for years. Att is just shit
TWeaK@lemm.ee 7 months ago
This has little to nothing to do with net neutrality, which refers to back end L1 and L2 network interconnections.
Uranium3006@kbin.social 7 months ago
what are you talking about? that makes no sense
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
That’s not what net neutrality does, and I’m disturbed by this being the number one comment.
nao@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
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.
Nurgle@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Sorry how would net neutrality do anything but make them reword the policy??
tacostrange@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
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
Uranium3006@kbin.social 7 months ago
100% this
rainynight65@feddit.de 7 months ago
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.
tacostrange@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
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