Which phone for tethering?

bubblesmoney

Link to the T-Mobile app issue http://m.pocketnow.com/android/t-mobile-claims-android-im-app-threatened-its-network

regarding packet data labelling... is it possible to identify from data packets if tethering is via usb or WiFi or Bluetooth respectively.

Also do you have any comments on the issue where upto 3 users sharing same IP address due to some issue with mobile networks and this being the reason why the copyright issue was not being enforced on mobile data networks in the UK. I remember reading about this when the law changed a few months ago. I am not a techie so only know what I read.

gjchester

bubblesmoney wrote: »

Link to the T-Mobile app issue http://m.pocketnow.com/android/t-mobile-claims-android-im-app-threatened-its-network

And?

Doesn't it just show my point that a badly coded app (or one intended for wifi) will jabber a lot whereas once coded for 3g should update then cease.

A lot is down to the phone too. Smartphone makers are getting better at turning on the radio, sending a 3G burst then shutting the radio off, but that puts more strain on the network as it has to pickup the bursts then drop the connection. It's not purely down to either party but something the industry needs to fix if we want to use more data intensive apps.

bubblesmoney wrote: »

regarding packet data labelling... is it possible to identify from data packets if tethering is via usb or WiFi or Bluetooth respectively.

Not as far as I'm aware, the phone doing the routing would hold that info internally. You could tell it's a different device but not how it's connected. The headers would tell you how to get back to the routing device (the phone) and it then has tables to work out how to get it to the original device. These routing tables won't be set outside the routing device (ie the phone).

Similarly you can't tell if this PC is connected by a wired or wireless connestion to my router.

Remember it's not just the IP header that they can get, Go take a look at http://mybrowserinfo.com/detail.asp?bhcp=1

That will tell you what the browser gives away, it's not rocket science for the network to pick that information up. In my case I have an iPhone and this PC runs IE8 on XP, so if the phone is identified as an iPhone and the browser as IE8 on XP its pretty obvious that the user is tethering.

bubblesmoney wrote: »

Also do you have any comments on the issue where upto 3 users sharing same IP address due to some issue with mobile networks and this being the reason why the copyright issue was not being enforced on mobile data networks in the UK. I remember reading about this when the law changed a few months ago. I am not a techie so only know what I read.

Thought it was more than three, the nature of the mobile network means they can use an IP repeatedly as long as they are not likely to be in the same cells. My home router issues IP's in the range 192.168.xxx.xxx, yours probably does the same. The issue with copyright is if say EMI said it came from ip 123.123.123.123 then EMI can trace it to the ISP who can then tell them where it came from (what subscriber). With mobile internet they can't identify who that was as they may have used the IP in multiple places. Now if this was home broadband EMI could pin it down to my house but not the computer it came from. Effectivly Vodafone is the house, thats where the IP trail ends then they manage traffic in house.

However as the data is going through the mobile network and they know how to get it to you they'll be able to tell exactly where it's going and what it is. I would almost certainly think they could tell you exactly where the traffic ended up, but remember mobile move and we use a lot of data, your home address probably has a IP assigned to it for weeks unless you pwer down the router. Phones tend to move cells a lot more and may get a lot more address's over a day never mind a week. Also the nature of starting a session sending data then dropping it means even the same internet browsing session could give you a lot more IP's over an hour than your home router gets in a year.

Look at the Microsoft research paper http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/maheshba/papers/ephemera-imc09.pdf

Figure 2 shows how over the course of a 7 hour period a phone showed different address to a server. Each 30 minutes they turned thee radio off and on and get a new range of IP's, but it looks live over the seven hour period they got a whole range of IP's. This means it would be VERY time consuming to track every request if the IP chages every few minutes.

However remember the phone also has two unique numbers that it uses to identify you, the sim card carries a subscriber number and your phone has an IMEI. If you think they can't identify uniquely you and your data useage consider the fact they always manage to log and bill you for all your calls? Whislt my Data is in a bundle they always tell me on my statement when I connected, how long for and how much data, even though it's rated at 0.00p a session.

However the difference between billing and packet scanning will all cost money in hardware to put in place, and so I return to the original point that unless you really hammer it they are unlikely to care or check too hard. There are just too many subscribers on a service to check every one, they'll just investigate the heavy users.

gjchester

gjchester wrote: »

Thought it was more than three, the nature of the mobile network means they can use an IP repeatedly as long as they are not likely to be in the same cells.

Juat reread it and realised that sounds silly, let me clarify it...

An IP address can only be in one place at once. but just like your home broadband they can put the phone equivalent of a router on is so the IP shown to the internet may be providing a connection to many mobiles. To the external internet there can be many devices (like your home boradband) sharing the same IP.

And as I said later that IP many only be constant for a few seconds or minutes, making tracking for copyright infringment monitoring reasons nearly impossible.

Parva

gjchester wrote: »

Juat reread it and realised that sounds silly, let me clarify it...

An IP address can only be in one place at once. but just like your home broadband they can put the phone equivalent of a router on is so the IP shown to the internet may be providing a connection to many mobiles. To the external internet there can be many devices (like your home boradband) sharing the same IP.

And as I said later that IP many only be constant for a few seconds or minutes, making tracking for copyright infringment monitoring reasons nearly impossible.

I wouldn't rely on that argument. My son has received a letter from a law firm that is claiming £295 for infringement of copyright for downloading one track from a 'Various Artists' album. Ironically, he has the CD's which he purchased but chose to download over P2P to use on his iPod (in MP3 format) and it's this one track alone from the CD he was trying to download that they are persuing. They have the IP used at the time (the IP changes daily due to router reboots) and the program used (and version number) in the claim against him. I would have course directed him to an audio to MP3 convertor but hey ho....

Sorry, not trying to derail this thread and I'm not looking for answers to the above statement but don't for one second think that they can't pin you down to your online activities, even if you're mobile and constantly switching IP.

gjchester

Parva wrote: »

I wouldn't rely on that argument. My son has received a letter from a law firm that is claiming £295 for infringement of copyright for downloading one track from a 'Various Artists' album. Ironically, he has the CD's which he purchased but chose to download over P2P to use on his iPod (in MP3 format) and it's this one track alone from the CD he was trying to download that they are persuing. They have the IP used at the time (the IP changes daily due to router reboots) and the program used (and version number) in the claim against him. I would have course directed him to an audio to MP3 convertor but hey ho....

Sorry, not trying to derail this thread and I'm not looking for answers to the above statement but don't for one second think that they can't pin you down to your online activities, even if you're mobile and constantly switching IP.

First if it's ACS Law or Davenport Lyons do a web search, they tend to send the threatenening letter first before anything. Many people have not even used p2p and recieved a latter and it no worse than the 419'ers as a scam.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2010/01/27/acs-law-uk-accused-of-sending-wrongful-isp-piracy-threat-letters.html?cpage=15


Secondly there a world of difference for a home and mobile broadband. Your home IP may not even change IP depending on the capacity of the local loop, even though you reboot the router.

My point was it's entirely possible to tie you down for your web searching, but the sheer volume of traffic on a mobile service along with the fact connections change IP frequently means it will take a significant investment at the networks end to do so.

They can tell what device you are using and the data type through it but unless you really hammer a tethered connection chances are they will never bother about it.