tethering iphone to laptop

[rjpohl]

Tethering iphone to laptop, anyone have any experience in doing this?  I have an iphone 4G.  My carrier is AT&T.  I've had service with them for 15 years or longer and believe I have the unlimited data plan that is no longer available.  How do I use it to connect laptop to internet and can at&t stop me or charge me more?

thanks
Bob

[CVslots]

My AT&T store rep that it would  be $30/month more (almost like an additional line), but that was a few years ago for my Blackberry.

[brichter]

They're gonna charge you again for your bandwidth, you're stuck unless you can jailbreak the phone and install a tethering app.

Didn't have to do all that with my Android phone, though, and Verizon can .... .. for the extra fee.   

[rjpohl]

I got it working, jailbreaked it and installed an app (mywifi).  From what I could read on the internet I should be OK for hit and miss use.

thanks
Bob

[brichter]

Cool!

[rickhunter]

I got it working, jailbreaked it and installed an app (mywifi).  From what I could read on the internet I should be OK for hit and miss use.

thanks
Bob

You need to be careful, AT&T will inspect your traffic if you go over your average monthly usage.  They do packet inspection to look for the signature of the originating machine, that is how they can tell if it is originated by an iphone app or something else.  If they detect you, they will send you a text telling you to stop tethering or they will automatically move you to a tethering plan and you will loose your unlimited plan.

[Foster]

FCC ruled Verizon can not charge extra for tethering

So Verizon has changed their data plans
you pay for how many Gigabytes you want per month and if you go over it going to cost you
I have Verizon and unlimited data, as long as I do not change out of the plan they cant put me into data plan with limits.
I hope they do not try to when I get the Apple iPhone 5 in October. I am not paying $650 for it when I can wait 30 days and get it for $200


Maybe ATT customers need to make FCC aware of what ATT is doing and maybe they can rule that ATT can't charge extra for tethering

[brichter]

I'm still under the unlimited data plan on Verizon, the nice thing about the Android phones is you don't have to root them to enable hotspot functionality as you did with the iPhones. I've had hotspot enabled on my phones for 3 years without paying a tethering charge.

by the way, the only reason Verizon can't charge for tethering is because they bought 700MHz spectrum from the Feds and as a condition of the sale they weren't allowed to limit the type of device that accessed the network. The interpretation that charging for tethering was limiting device access is the basis for that decision. Since AT&T didn't purchase any of the 700MHz band from the gov't. they are not bound by that condition, nor is Verizon bound by that decision for devices that don't use that spectrum for their data access. So, depending on the device you have, Verizon can still charge a tethering fee (if the device doesn't use the 700MHz allocation they purchased).

Is there an app out for iPhone that allows hotspot functionality without jailbreaking the phone (with MAC address spoofing so the carrier can't tell you're tethering) yet?

[brichter]

I got it working, jailbreaked it and installed an app (mywifi).  From what I could read on the internet I should be OK for hit and miss use.

thanks
Bob

You need to be careful, AT&T will inspect your traffic if you go over your average monthly usage.  They do packet inspection to look for the signature of the originating machine, that is how they can tell if it is originated by an iphone app or something else.  If they detect you, they will send you a text telling you to stop tethering or they will automatically move you to a tethering plan and you will loose your unlimited plan.

Yup, need to make sure the app you use for tethering spoofs the MAC address of the device you tether. If it does, your carrier can't differentiate the source of the traffic and won't know you're spoofing.

[jdkmunch]

I got it working, jailbreaked it and installed an app (mywifi).  From what I could read on the internet I should be OK for hit and miss use.

thanks
Bob

You need to be careful, AT&T will inspect your traffic if you go over your average monthly usage.  They do packet inspection to look for the signature of the originating machine, that is how they can tell if it is originated by an iphone app or something else.  If they detect you, they will send you a text telling you to stop tethering or they will automatically move you to a tethering plan and you will loose your unlimited plan.

Yup, need to make sure the app you use for tethering spoofs the MAC address of the device you tether. If it does, your carrier can't differentiate the source of the traffic and won't know you're spoofing.

You have to be careful - if you are using an app on the computer
That isn't available on the phone - such as torrents or a browser that's
Not supported they can tell you are spoofing.

[brichter]

I'm not so sure this is a risk...  

There are many torrent clients freely available for both types of devices.  I run the Firefox web browser on my phone (it also runs on the iPad and Windows mobile devices), IE runs on Windows mobile devices, Safari runs on the iPhone and iPad, Chrome runs on iPhone, iPad, and Android phones, Opera runs on all the above, did I miss any?  

From a business perspective, in order to catch someone using that method the carrier would have to do deep packet inspection on every data flow from every device, constantly compare it to a list of supported apps for that specific device (which would need to be updated literally every minute of every day), and most apps don't even identify themselves on the network. Browsers are kind of the odd man out here, as user agent identification is done for sites that optimize for different browsers (but is not necessary and can be spoofed trivially), most apps just use specific ports for specific protocols and are silent about what the app actually is or does. The horsepower required to do this type of tracking on the carrier's network could be described as nontrivial to say the least, and encrypted traffic couldn't even be inspected.

The way every carrier tracks this is by checking MAC addresses, multiple source MAC addresses from a non-tethering device is the tipoff. It's cheap to implement, can be done without buying any special equipment, and is trivial computationally.

I'm not saying carriers can't do what you say, but I am saying that the cost, both computationally and monetarily, is the prohibiting factor, due to the fact that they'd only get a small percentage of the violators using this method and it would be very expensive to implement. I wish they all would, though, as it would be a boon for my company and our sales figures would literally go through the roof!

Also, if the carriers were actually doing this, there would be no market for tethering apps other than the one already on the phone from the carrier since the carrier would identify any violators immediately, and they would be going broke pretty quickly because the number of cheaters they catch and charge would not come anywhere near paying for the cost of implementing this.

[rickhunter]

FCC ruled Verizon can not charge extra for tethering

So Verizon has changed their data plans
you pay for how many Gigabytes you want per month and if you go over it going to cost you
I have Verizon and unlimited data, as long as I do not change out of the plan they cant put me into data plan with limits.
I hope they do not try to when I get the Apple iPhone 5 in October. I am not paying $650 for it when I can wait 30 days and get it for $200


Maybe ATT customers need to make FCC aware of what ATT is doing and maybe they can rule that ATT can't charge extra for tethering

This ruling does not apply to AT&T.  The issue with verizon is that the spectrum that they use for their service has that particular provision by the FCC, not the case with the spectrum AT&T uses.