Is the end of "free" tethering near??

[Mutiny32]

Originally Posted by Jocelyn84

Exactly! When we (WinMo users) tether, Sprint thinks whatever we're doing is on the phone's browser.
This thread is silly.

That's not true at all. The HTTP protocol uses TCP port 80 or 8008/8080 as in accordance with official IANA port reservations. It can use other ports, but only when the server is configured to use an unofficial alternate. HTTPS is TCP 443 officially.

As such, traffic can be reliably classified and usage monitored by a carrier. It is extremely easy to do so. Other applications use other TCP/UDP ports, as there are 65536 ports for either protocol.

Basically what I am saying is that Sprint could easily determine if a user is tethering if they wanted. The reason people can get away with it is that Sprint has better fish to fry, so to speak. They only pay attention to tethering when bandwidth for a user spikes and gets flagged for possible abuse of service. After that, the account's usage can pulled up and monitored for unusual port usage, number of connections, and possibly even packet inspection to determine the program that is using the connection; as most communications are sent in cleartext.

So no, they don't just think it is the phone's browser when you tether.

And yes, I do that kind of stuff for a living No, not for Sprint. But I do know their type of firewall system, as they are oficcially a reseller of the product; Nokia IP security devices running Check Point. Yep, Nokia makes (or should I say made, they just sold that division to Check Point this year) the most badass firewalls in the world. Great people to deal with.