Kicked for using pdanet???

[thom7215]

Has anyone heard of or know anyone who has been kicked from sprint for using pdanet???? just curious at how far you can push the usage.

thnx

[rudeboy]

i have not yet actually hear from somebody being booted for it but i can imagine it's more or less based on fair usage policy...

even w/ Sprint, unlimited most likely has a limit :}

[toenail]

plus how would they find out... just say you use the net more then the phone itself.. i really dont think there is a way for them to find out how you are using the usage if you do not tell them....

[n99hockey]

im almost positive they could back track to figure out your daily mb usage....and do the daily math...
ust my opinion

-Sent from my Q

[Pony99CA]

Originally Posted by toenail

plus how would they find out... just say you use the net more then the phone itself.. i really dont think there is a way for them to find out how you are using the usage if you do not tell them....

Do you have a networking background to back that up? I'm not a network engineer, but have a rough idea of how TCP/IP works.

One way it could be done is to check the MAC address of the device accessing the carrier's servers. If it's not the MAC address of the Q, they'd know you're tethering. Of course, that would imply the carrier would have to record the MAC address of every device they sell, which they probably don't do.

However, they could do something similar without recording the device's MAC address. They could check the MAC address used for a given phone number and, if two different MAC addresses showed up for the same number, they'd know one of those two was tethering (assuming you didn't switch from one device to another on that number).

That said, I've read that PDANet works invisibly by somehow making it look like the device issued the network request (perhaps by spoofing the MAC address). I don't know if that's true, though.

Steve

[kscwv]

I used it as much as I could until it asked to buy/register. I never had an extra charge or question about my usage. I haven't bought it yet because I plan on getting cable soon so don't want to pay for something that will be useless in the near future. I wonder sometimes if they looked at that one week or two and see a major jump in my usage, but im on the net at least 10-15 min every hour for email and my beloved EQ..

[TheBigCheese]

Originally Posted by toenail

plus how would they find out... just say you use the net more then the phone itself.. i really dont think there is a way for them to find out how you are using the usage if you do not tell them....

There are a bunch of ways they can tell. Your laptop web browser will send different headers than the Q and they could detect other things in the data stream that could not have originated from the Q. Most likely, they would go with data volume.

[Pony99CA]

Originally Posted by TheBigCheese

There are a bunch of ways they can tell. Your laptop web browser will send different headers than the Q and they could detect other things in the data stream that could not have originated from the Q.

The user can change the User Agent string (the headers you mentioned) with a registry hack.

Also, data volume isn't necessarily conclusive. For example, if Sprint allows streaming, watching Slingbox on the Q for long periods of time will probably use large volumes of data just like watching Slingbox while tethered would.

But, in general, I agree that there are ways to catch people. Whether a carrier actually implements any of those (beyond checking data volume) is another matter.

Steve

[DrQ]

Originally Posted by thom7215

Has anyone heard of or know anyone who has been kicked from sprint for using pdanet???? just curious at how far you can push the usage.

thnx

Back on point, I have heard on Qusers of users being contacted from Verizon for going over their 5 gb limit but no reports on either the Q forums or some of the other wireless forums about anyone being brought to bear by Sprint for excessive usage.

I had read about Sprint noting some customers were roaming on too high a percentage of their talk time but no data hassles reported that I know of as yet. I'm sure we'll hear if there are as I have read here of some members are using this as there only internet connection.

Fred

[K3SRK]

I often roam on data, does that count?