My old man's looking at getting a Hubba 3G router which has an large amplifier to provide Internet access from his touring caravan.

Looking at three's options, they do an "all you can eat" unlimited data for £12.90/month on a monthly contract. But this excludes tethering.

In my experience, tethering was using my phone as a AP to the net which then connects to other devices over USB / Bluetooth or WiFi.

In the case of the Hubba where you put your SIM direclty in it, I guess it would still count as tethering?

How do they "pick up" the fact it's tethering?

Would he in fact need another data only plan which includes tethering? Three have one at £15/month for a 10GB allowance.

I may be wrong but I think the Three £12.90 tariff is a phone tariff so this will exclude tethering. A data tariff would be more appropriate, my mate is using these in an unlocked mifi mobile hot spot which is effectively the same thing as the Hubba but without the 3G range.

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http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Three-3-3G-SIM-Ready-to-go-Mobile-Broadband-3GB-Preloaded-Data-Sim-/230997747622?pt=UK_Mobile_Home_Phones_Sim_Cards_CV&hash=item35c889e7a6

Cost £12

They include 3Gb of data with a 90 day life, when it is due to run out get another one, or buy a few in one go. The instructions want you to sign up to a data plan but it is cheaper to just get another card when it runs out or expires.

If you are in a decent Three signal area you can just use the three mifi, my mate puts his in a plastic box on the top of a pole to get better coverage out in the caravan, the mifi is battery powered. You can get an unlocked mifi on eBay for about £50.

The mifi.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UNLOCKED-Huawei-E5332-MiFi-WiFi-Modem-Hotspot-Works-with-ANY-SIM-card-WORLDWIDE-/290913323925?pt=UK_Computing_Mobile_Broadband_Devices&hash=item43bbc90b95

The Mifi doesnt have all you can eat data available and as for detecting tethering one of my friends was tethering on a non tethering allowed plan and they did detect it somehow, then whenever he tried to access a page tethered through his phone it came up with a page saying that tethering was blocked.

You don't need all you can eat data really, that is just a sales gimmic. Sounds good but is unnecessary in reality unless you want to download music and videos 24/7. I work away and use my ipad tethered a lot and have never been over 3gb in a month. The mifi can be bought direct on eBay and not locked to three.

In a caravan I would have thought a bit of browsing and emailing would be the norm, you don't go away to sit on the Internet all day after all.

He's currently living in the caravan so requires 3G data access when on a site where no wifi is available.

Also, as they're often in rather remote places where 3g signal is poor to inexistant, that was the idea behind the Hubba.

He currently has no internet access and as he's living full time in the caravan, a stronger, faster, more reliable access is required. Till now, he's been going down to the local pub for the wifi!

Best to look at the T's & C's of the service providers around tethering as they all seem to have different ideas.

Might i suggest you have a look at Giff Gaff as they do a data only sim, specifically to stop people tethering their phones.

Had a look at giffgaff, but it's £12.50/month for just 3GB which doesn't seem that good.

Three do 10GB for £15 special data only / tether enabled.

Three are generally ****-hot at detecting tethering.. although no idea how!

I somehow get away with it on my sim only plan, however SWMBO got blocked as soon as she turned it on on her phone.

If he needs more than 3GB per month and he can afford it, he will have to get a satellite system AND a 3G modem, the "requests" are sent via 3G and the data is downloaded from the satellite. As long as he doesnt intend uploading content, 1GB per month would probably be plenty on the 3G; but he would need to shop around to find a suitable satellite tariff and equipment.

THREE are @rses, I told them I specifically wanted an internet SIM for my MiFI unit, so they send me one, let me add £20 credit to it, THEN block it and tell me it is for voice use only!!!!

I now use a GiffGaff SIM; the wife was in hospital for 3 weeks while preggers, and used less than 1GB - and that was using the MIFI unit and a netbook.

Three are generally ****-hot at detecting tethering.. although no idea how!

I somehow get away with it on my sim only plan, however SWMBO got blocked as soon as she turned it on on her phone.

Could be as simple as browser UserAgent checking to catch 99% of users. Next time you have the opportunity, change your browser UserAgent string to include "Android" and exclude "Windows"/"MacOS" and see if it still gets picked up...

Yup - as gac says its not that hard to tell that your not using your mobile. I doubt just changing the tag to Android is enough as this would not catch anyone that is using an Android Tablet tethering. They also probably have browser specific stuff as well. Not sure if there are specific identifiers on Android tablets that distinguish them from phone.

The operaters are not silly and such do not give out unlimited tablet plans as they know on a tablet you can do a lot more bandwidth than you would on a mobile, your much more likely to stream video etc.

The device will identify itself and it's OS.

I think on mobiles tethered devices will show an IP along the lines of device_IP@Mobile_network_IP to the network?

Pretty sure they not expose any internal addresses through tethering. All the phone is doing is passing on the request, the operator will be sniffing the data packets for information. If you tether and run a fully encrypted session I doubt they could tell what you are doing

After doing some reading, the easiest and most obvious way to detect is the TTL. Going through your phone via NAT will effectively reduce your TTL by one and that's east for the operator to pick up on.

Although in the case of the Hubba modem, it might be clever and reformulate the TTL so it doesn't come across as a third party device using it as a gateway. A call to their help line will clarify that point

There is a reason why you can't get an all you can eat tariff data only.

I have the one plan on the three network on my iPhone and I get 5000 3to3 minutes, 2000 any time minutes, 5000 texts and unlimited data along with tethering. Tethering enables me to use my phone to connect to my iPad or laptop or any device I want to connect to and use my unlimited data allowance on my phone plan. Much cheaper than a data plan, and the cost of a 3G tablet. The one tariff cost me £25 a month sim only on a rolling contract. When I changed to the iPhone 5 32gb, I kept the one plan paid £79 up front and £14 extra a month on a 24 month contract for the phone, much cheaper than the £599 ish that Apple wanted for the 32gb iphone5

Had no problems with the phone, tethering or anything else. Forgot to say you can't tether unless you have it as part of your tariff.

Edited 3 July, 201313 yr by redcar_reds

One plan currently £15 / month "Sim only" on a 12 month contract (£18 / month on a 30 day rolling contract).