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

[Andrew Cox]

John Lindsay wrote:
>
> 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.
I don't think they're doing anything with this at the moment thou. Ever 
since I got my iPhone I noted optus said that the contract listed I 
would be charged overseas rates for VoIP or VPN usage.
To date I've used VoIP over 3G, Skype over 3G and VPN's over 3G with no 
excess charging, so I think it's just more of their attempts to 
discourage the usage.
>
> 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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