[AusNOG] 'X' carrier tethering on iPhone v3.0

[John Lindsay]

On 19/06/2009, at 10:56 AM, Mark Newton wrote:

> Having trouble understanding how Optus (or any other carrier) can
> distinguish between tethered access using their $10 per month paid-for
> option, and tethered access using http://tetherme.lstoll.net/
> that the end-user has set up without consulting them for free.

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.

They won't be able to distinguish normal iPhone traffic from  
unofficial tethered traffic using the above tool or http://help.benm.at/help.php

But they may spot the usage pattern...

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.

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.

jsl
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