Android tethering Gingerbread 2.3.4 / $$$ for solution

[Dave B.]

First off: I'm willing to pay $50 (via paypal) for a solution to this issue that meets ALL criteria.  I'm sure that I could wade through forums and search developer lists and something that could be kicked into working eventually but I'm busy and lazy. :)

I have a Nexus S running the "pure google" experience of Android 2.3.4.  As far as I know, my phone has all updates sent down the pipe by google.  I have Cincinnati Bell for service.  As of this time, my phone is not rooted.  I don't have any problem rooting it if necessary to do what I want to do.

If I enable wireless tethering on my phone, it will work perfectly for a minute or two and then all traffic gets redirected to a webpage that says something to the effect of "Your plan doesn't include tethering."  Well, this is bullshit considering it wasn't this way when I got my phone and is  a major reason why I got the phone in the first place.



What I am willing to pay for is pretty simple:

1. An explanation (that can be verified with scientific experiments) of how my carrier is figuring out that I am tethering not using web on phone.

2. A way to use wireless tethering without alerting the carrier OR tunneling all traffic through a 3rd party, i.e. no proxy server, no SSH tunneling, etc.

3. Any software involved in the solution be open source and be made available to the general larger community if not already done.


I should be able to make the meeting tomorrow if you want to play around with it.


Thanks in advance!
-Dave

[Craig]

If I had to guess I would say it is detecting the user agent.  The browser says it is on android but the browser on you machine will report a different os. Try a user agent swithcer to spoof the phones user agent.

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Cincinnati Hackerspace Project" group.
> To post to this group, send email to cincihac...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to cincihackerspa...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cincihackerspace?hl=en.
>

[Blauvelt Tom]

I have the same issue. They must use some pretty serious packet inspection, which I have read is not legal, because even through an SSH tunnel they still detect the traffic... It wasn't always like this... I tethered daily for about a year. Searching the web I have found no solution besides paying the asinine $30 a month tethering fee...

My phone is running Windows Mobile 6.5. I have run a version of ubuntu on my phone as well and it did not redirect me.

---

From: Dave B. <blu...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2011 12:21 AM
To: cincihac...@googlegroups.com <cincihac...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [CHP] Android tethering Gingerbread 2.3.4 / $$$ for solution

[Tye]

Found this

from what I had read at one time on ATT's tethering crackdown, the
system was easily able to tell due to one little piece... the TTL.

here's a quote and more info on it... probably pertains to verizon as
well.

For all you wondering how they can tell:

All IP packets have something called a TTL associated with them. It
stands for Time To Live. Every "hop" along the network from one router
to the next reduces the TTL by one. When it reaches 0, the packet is
dropped. This was introduced to keep routing problems from overloading
the network. If for example, by some error a packet was going around
in a circular path, the TTL would eventually reach 0 and prevent a
packet storm.

The thing is, ALL routing devices do this. OSes use standard TTLs. For
example, let's say both your iPhone and laptop use 127 for the TTL.
AT&T will receive packets from your iPhone with a TTL of 127, but
since the packets from your laptop pass through your iPhone first,
they arrive at AT&T with a TTL of 126. They can detect a tethered
device this way.

EDIT: Some people below have suggested changing the default TTL of
their tethered device (which is possible). I would just like to point
out that the max TTL allowed is 255, and if the iPhone uses 255 as its
default TTL, well there's no way you can set it to 256.

I'm not sure if our android tethering apps take this into account and
change the TTL of the traffic on the fly or not... would be
interesting to test out though...

On Jul 5, 12:39 am, Blauvelt Tom <blauvs...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have the same issue. They must use some pretty serious packet inspection,
> which I have read is not legal, because even through an SSH tunnel they
> still detect the traffic... It wasn't always like this... I tethered daily
> for about a year. Searching the web I have found no solution besides paying
> the asinine $30 a month tethering fee...
>
> My phone is running Windows Mobile 6.5. I have run a version of ubuntu on my
> phone as well and it did not redirect me.
>

> ------------------------------
> From: Dave B. <blun...@gmail.com>

[Tye]

Fumbling through some old links. I found this http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/
it requires root, and possibly, custom ROM. All of which should be
available for the nexus. Not after the bounty, but I have had a few
links lying around for such a case.

[shadoxx]

I would be interested too. I experienced this when I was tethering
with my G1, when my home internet connection was down and they
wouldn't send someone out for two days. It worked for a bit, but then
it shut out my internet connection with that same page. It would
display that page on my device for about half an hour and then it
would revert back to normal.

On Jul 5, 8:22 am, Tye <tyesc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Fumbling through some old links. I found thishttp://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/

[☠ int eighty]

Call CBW and tell them you need an over the air reset. Then pull the battery on your phone and reboot. This has worked for me in the past on Froyo.

[shadoxx]

What exactly does an OTA reset do?

[☠ int eighty]

Alleviates my rage face and maybe also resets an arbitrary temporal quota. The latter is speculation.

[Joe Brockhaus]

I'm currently on a contract project @Bell

I remember in an off-shoot conversation with another employee that they are doing this to prevent 'unauthorized' tethering or something to that effect. It was a while ago so I've forgotten specifically what is happening/how one might circumvent it. 

I'll see what details I can turn up

------
Joe Brockhaus
joe.br...@gmail.com
------------

On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 11:58 AM, ☠ int eighty <xcd...@gmail.com> wrote:

Alleviates my rage face and maybe also resets an arbitrary temporal quota. The latter is speculation.

--

[Craig]

The Tyler thing makes sense to me.  Not sure a reset will fix this.  You can use iptables on the phone to fix this but you need root access to do that.  Although with the nexus this may just be by using adjustment (access phone as root) then making a change to init and/or proc.

Still traveling but might be able to experiment with this tomorrow.

Craig

[shadoxx]

I recently talked to a CinBell rep, and they said they didn't know
specifics, but that the network engineers put a "box" on the network
that detects traffic that shouldn't be coming from a cellphone. So,
high volume traffic, or more than what "should be coming from a
cellphone" is what it detects. This was a sales rep mind you, but any
information is useful information?

On Jul 5, 12:36 am, Craig <agent.cr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If I had to guess I would say it is detecting the user agent.  The browser
> says it is on android but the browser on you machine will report a different
> os. Try a user agent swithcer to spoof the phones user agent.

[Dave B.]

Cincinnati bell employees must submit to a voluntary lobotomy as part of the employment application.
:)
-D

[shadoxx]

PDANet. Works, verified on TMobile by Dave M. Testing it at the Hive
tonight. Verdict will be soon. :D

[shadoxx]

I redact my previous statement. PDANet works for about an hour and
then fails like the rest of the methods. Next step is custom kernel
with masquerade for TTL.

[Chris Davis]

Have you tried an ssh tunnel?

On Tuesday, July 19, 2011 10:49:00 PM UTC-4, shadoxx wrote:

I redact my previous statement. PDANet works for about an hour and
then fails like the rest of the methods. Next step is custom kernel
with masquerade for TTL.

On Jul 19, 6:11 pm, shadoxx <woo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> PDANet. Works, verified on TMobile by Dave M. Testing it at the Hive
> tonight. Verdict will be soon. :D
>
> On Jul 12, 2:13 pm, "Dave B." <blu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Cincinnati bell employees must submit to a voluntary lobotomy as part of the
> > employment application.
> > :)
> > -D
>
> > On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 2:03 PM, shadoxx <woo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I recently talked to a CinBell rep, and they said they didn't know
> > > specifics, but that the network engineers put a "box" on the network
> > > that detects traffic that shouldn't be coming from a cellphone. So,
> > > high volume traffic, or more than what "should be coming from a
> > > cellphone" is what it detects. This was a sales rep mind you, but any
> > > information is useful information?
>
> > > On Jul 5, 12:36 am, Craig <agent...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > If I had to guess I would say it is detecting the user agent.  The
> > > browser
> > > > says it is on android but the browser on you machine will report a
> > > different
> > > > os. Try a user agent swithcer to spoof the phones user agent.

[Dave B.]

SSH tunnel works fine.  Ideally, I'd like to not have to do this and chew up my bandwidth at home.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/cincihackerspace/-/FxlwwLRuzOkJ.

[Tom Blauvelt]

How do you keep other system processes from accessing the net? I know tunneling through home works for a while for me then stops.

As for changing the TTL, I have a program on my phone, WinCe 5, and computer, WinXP, to change it. I set my computer to a TTL of 129 and my phone was set at 128. I was still blocked in a matter of seconds. Any idea of a way to see if the TTL was actually changed?

---

From: Dave B. <blu...@gmail.com>

Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 10:54 PM
To: cincihac...@googlegroups.com <cincihac...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [CHP] Re: Android tethering Gingerbread 2.3.4 / $$$ for solution

[Tom Blauvelt]

I think I have finally come up with a solution, for Windows Mobile.

I found a simple proxy server program, running this allows control over what is transmitted via the cell phone. Setting up a network connection between the phone using BT, USB, or WIFI is pretty easy with Windows Mobile, I'm not sure how hard it is on Android. Also I removed the gateway setting on the computer side so there is no unwanted traffic going over the phone connection. Then I set the PC programs to use the proxy. I have been running this for about an hour now with no issues.

I am sure there are plenty of SSH proxies with packet forwarding for Android, if it isn't natively available.