<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On 19/06/2009, at 10:56 AM, Mark Newton wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Having trouble understanding how Optus (or any other carrier) can </div><div>distinguish between tethered access using their $10 per month paid-for</div><div>option, and tethered access using <a href="http://tetherme.lstoll.net/">http://tetherme.lstoll.net/</a></div><div>that the end-user has set up without consulting them for free.</div></div></blockquote></div><br><div>Well they will be able to distinguish the access to the special APN that the tethering service will use and which will only be accessible to customers who pay the fee.</div><div><br></div><div>They won't be able to distinguish normal iPhone traffic from unofficial tethered traffic using the above tool or <a href="http://help.benm.at/help.php">http://help.benm.at/help.php</a></div><div><br></div><div>But they may spot the usage pattern...</div><div><br></div><div>I am fairly certain Optus and others have various DPI and cache boxes sitting behind each of the various APNs that they could use to pessimise traffic in creative ways.</div><div><br></div><div>Nice to see the mobile carriers have found a new way to blatantly extract rents from unsophisticated users, not that Optus has the spare on-air capacity for this. It may help to pay for the "second frequency" project that will only indirectly help iPhone users since they can't use 900MHz anyway.</div><div><br></div><div>jsl</div></body></html>