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How-To

How to Hide Data Usage and Get Truly “Unlimited” Tethering with T-Mobile

T-Mobile One’s unlimited data plan isn’t quite as unlimited as advertised—especially when it comes to tethering. We’ll show you three ways to get what you paid for while using mobile data on your PC.

T-Mobile’s new standard all-unlimited talk, text, and data plan is called T-Mobile One. Supposedly, it’s simplified now without tiers of data caps, just one simple plan without limits. But is that really the case or is this a false embellishment?

t-mobile-data-tethering-sucks

The first thing I noticed after lucubrating through the terms and conditions was the tethering. If you’re a farmer like me and you don’t live in an area with high-speed internet access, the tethering becomes a make-it-or-break-it deal. With the new T-Mobile One, there is unlimited tethering at only 2G limacine speeds (512kbps), which stultifies any meaningful use. Getting decent speeds requires an additional $15 add-on for 4G tethering and has a data cap set at 5GB per month.

Your data still isn’t truly unlimited even if you’re just planning on using your phone or tablet—which, by the way, T-Mobile and other carriers still fail to understand that there are Windows and OS X powered tablets, not just Android and iOS. But anyhow, if you are using what T-Mobile considers a “phone or tablet” the data cap is effectively still set at 28GB because after exceeding 26GB, speeds slow way down from throttling. T-Mobile doesn’t specify how slow it’s going to be after 26GB, but from my testing with previous T-Mobile data caps it’s looking like less than 512kbps.  With that said, the tricks I have below aren’t going to offer you truly “unlimited” tethering data either because that 28GB soft-cap will result in T-Mobile slowing you down if you go over in one billing cycle. Not everyone will experience the post-28GB throttling, but do keep in mind that on previous versions of T-Mobile’s unlimited data plan (if you’re lucky to be grandfathered in) this throttling wasn’t present.

Update: We were contacted by a T-Mobile representative who clarified that only 3% of their customer base may see throttling above 28GB on a single line.

The next thing is HD video. The new T-Mobile One plan offers “unlimited video” data, but it’s only at 480p. True HD (720p or greater) requires an extra $25 add-on PER LINE. This feature was previously free and only required activation with the My T-Mobile account settings.

Now if you find T-Mobile’s fine print to be anathema, here are three different ways to work around the tethering limits.

Editor’s Note: Before you use these tricks, make sure you don’t abuse them. T-Mobile CEO John Legere has announced his intention to go after “Network Abusers” who are using as much as 2 TB of data and are circumventing T-Mobile’s throttling and data caps. Abusers get kicked off the unlimited data plan. If you only use a few extra GB, you shouldn’t raise any red flags. Just don’t go nuts. Do the data equivalent of driving 5 MPH over the speed limit. Or, if you fear the wrath of John, maybe skip this tip.

Method 1 – Dun = 0 [Android Only]

Requirements: Windows PC, USB cable

  1. Download the ADB and Fastboot installer from XDA-developers. Select Yes when prompted by installation options (install ADB and fastboot, install system-wide, and install drivers).
  2. Enable USB Debugging on your phone/tablet.
  3. Connect your phone to your computer via USB cable.
  4. Open up the command prompt.
    • Click Start, in the search Type in cmd.  Next, Click on the program cmd (or Command Prompt)
  5. Type “adb shell” and press enter.
    • Don’t type the quotation marks “”, just the text inside them!
  6. Type “settings put global tether_dun_required 0” and press enter.

Note: If you see “error: device not found” it is usually because A) you need to update your phone USB drivers on your PC or B)  your USB cable isn’t capable of transmitting data because it is only designed to charge the phone or C) USB Debugging isn’t enabled.

ADB DEVICE NOT FOUND

Method 2  – PdaNet

Requirements: Windows PC or Mac, USB Cable

  1. Install PdaNet+ from the Google Play store.
  2. Install PdaNet desktop application on your Windows PC or Mac. Start the application.
  3. Open PdaNet+ on your phone and check the Activate USB Mode box and also Hide Tether Usage.
  4. Connect your phone to your computer via USB cable.

pda-net-playstorepdanet

Note: If you find PdaNet isn’t working, or T-Mobile is severely throttling your connection, installing a custom Android ROM like Cyanogenmod can help. This is in part because, on many phones, T-Mobile has pre-installed network monitoring software designed to detect extracurricular data use.

Method 3 – VPN

Requirements: Monthly fee

While it may slow down your connection a bit, one sure way to get around any sniffing T-Mobile might be doing to detect your tether usage is to tunnel your traffic through a  VPN (virtual private network). This can be done on the individual PC you want to tether, or you can tether phone’s entire data stream. There are too many options here to list them all, but when it comes to simplicity PIA (Private Internet Access VPN) is the best and easiest to set up and will run you about $39.95 a year ($3.33 a month). PIA has a Mac, Windows, iOS and Android client which just works. 

So that covers it. For me the Dun=0 trick and PdaNet worked well enough, I didn’t have to resort to a VPN, but your mileage may vary depending on what phone you have and the total network traffic in your area. Please post any questions or issues you have below, and I’ll do my best to help out!


308 Comments

308 Comments

  1. Jay  

    Or just method 4, just edit the ttl of the system you will be using it on, thats is all T-Mobile checks to determine of the data came from the phone or a device connected to it, Android and ios have a default ttl of 64 so if you change the ttl of your Windows/Mac/linux machine to 65 when it gets routed through the hotspot it will have a ttl of 64 inline with the phones data, the reason they do this is some apps send data with either no user agent string in the header or a “spoofed” firefox,ie,or other “desktop” user agent, also it is a common practice to use a desktop user agent to get a desktop only webpage and many people use such features.

    • I had attempted using TTL but still had issues with the WiFi hotspot being throttled. Interestingly enough though, it appeared T-mobile was sniffing the header because the throttling went away when I used a user-agent switcher to spoof the desktop Chrome browser as a mobile android version of itself.

      • jay  

        I know they don’t solely use user agent strings anymore(they use to,back in those days i used a pfsense box to remove any “desktop” user agent s that went through my firewall on the fly)since some of the apps i use use desktop agents to acess data from sites that dont support mobile and things like chromes desktop site feature, but i know they do seem to pass most andriod/ios user agent packets along just fine, often even if they dont pass one of thier other data checks. Idk what their current rules are on thier network all i can tell you is for the last 10 months my network has been editing ttl only and getting by fine, unfortunately this is a game of cat and mouse i have to play since i live in a dialup only area and i cant afford nor deal with the latency associated with satellite internet. There is a possibility that T-Mobile devices have a flag sent before a teathering session and somehow mark data from the wlan interface but i would not know since i use either unlocked devices or one that can be flashed to aosp

        • Right on.

          I was also using Cyanogenmod when testing with the built-in hotspot utility.

        • Michael  

          hey, can go go into more detail on pfsense box. did you use squid to mask the user agent? thanks!

      • jay  

        Also if you edit ttl you need to make sure to do it right, its easy to use hex on accident when editing it on Windows. Since hex is base 16 65 would be 101 not 65, the remedy would be to use either a decimal value(65) or enter the correct hex value that would equal 65(or 41 in hex)

  2. Jay  

    Can’t edit my comment-editing tll also has the advantage of being device agnostic, not requiring root and also being possible to do with dedicated hardware so a entire network can be run behind it even on devices that can not have their ttl edited(Android tablets, chromcasts,tvs ect) this can be done with a a router running ddwrt, tomato, a pc running pfsense to act as a firewall or just a good old linux machine set up to work as a router

    • joshua  

      I’m wondering if using EasyTether via USB with AdvancedTomato firmware is a possibility to avoid going through the PC… EasyTether has an option of using openWRT firmware routers without having to do a ICS connection via the pc first.. takes some programming though.

      check it out on the easytether website

  3. Jay  

    Also im on metropcs(a T-Mobile mvno) and have used this trick on both T-Mobile and Metro, my current useage this month with 13 days to go is 658GB with my network eed verying between 17Mb/s and 45Mb/s depending on time of day, i had no issues useing this a year back on T-Mobile and have never had speed drop to below 4g speeds outside of network issues, because MetroPCS is a T-Mobile mvno and already has lower priority over T-Mobile data and the same 26GBs for them depriortizeing your data when under load i find it unlikely that amyone will be throttled to the speeds stated unless the system is heavily underload, something i have never encountered in my 4 years on both T-Mobile and MetroPCS. End pf the story unless is a huge city also with under served amounts of towers it is unlikely you will go under 8Mb/s the lowest i ever have to deal with

  4. I’m going to note here I’ve been using T-Mobile’s Unlimited data plan ($150 monthly for 4 lines, unlimited everything) for 1 year. The most data I’ve used on a single line in a month was around 160GB. T-mobile did at one point begin throttling my usage with the Dun=0 trick. However after switching to PDAnet the throttling stopped.

    I ended up using an energy efficient PC left on 24/7 to share the connection with a router creating WiFi at the house. I don’t recommend that setup, but if your only other option is dial-up like it was for me then desperate times call for desperate measures.

    • Jay  

      Im not saying you didn’t have dial up speeds in your case, all im saying is that it is perfectly possible to have speeds above that when teathering and past 26GB, It seems to be a fairly soft throttle yeah my data seems to have a much larger variance in speeds after 26GB but they certainly don’t throttle it to heck, and as me and some other users on XDA, and Andriod forums determined with packet sniffers and messing around TTL in the main and for the most part only way that traffic is being glaged as hotspot data currently, and the best Android tethering apps do just that edit ttl along with a few other edits to the header to get ps3 / ps4 data hidden. For most things editting the ttl covers it completely

      Proof
      usage
      https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B559FIpi6uslN1BMMmRfcms0N0k/view

      speedtest
      https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B559FIpi6uslNTFjb2ZQSW83bFE/view

    • Shawn  

      Like you Austin, I live in the county a few miles away from a large city, and chances I will ever see a fiber line ran to my house is zilch.

      Would any of the above suggestions work for using a T-mobile sim card on their One plan, and plugging that into a MOFI4500 sim4 router (band 12)?

    • Jordan  

      If you don’t recommend the PC left on all the time, what would you recommend. I find myself in a similar situation as you and am running out of options.

      • Pash  

        How about sharing the connection through a RaspberyPi-type of device, if you’re concerned about energy consumption?

  5. Tony  

    I understand you need a USB cable to enable these hacks but is the USB cable necessary for the actual tethering? My understanding is, wifi tether is faster than USB. Thank you

    • JCwarez  

      Tony, No USB cable s needed at all. for wndows, follow these steps:
      1. Open Registry Editor (regedit.exe).
      2. From the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE subtree, go to the following key:
      \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters.
      3. In the right pane, add the following value:
      Name: DefaultTTL
      Type: REG_DWORD

      Then double click it and add value 65 as hexadecimal.

      4. After that, please restart the computer and check the result.

      • Jay  

        65 as decimal, remember that hexadecimal is base 16 so “65” is really 101 ,use 41 if you use hexadecimal

        • Jay  

          Not to say it doesn’t currently work, just that the traffic looks clearly different then what the phone makes, all it would take is a simple firewall update and your tethering wouldn’t work, they seem to currently be redirecting ttls 65,128,256 and somemore in-between.

          The phone has a ttl of 64(in base 10) so just add 1 per hop and your good usually you are just one away(wifi hotspot)

  6. Tony  

    JCwarez, what method am I using for this? Also, nothing has to be done with the phone first?

    • Jay  

      No nothing on the phone needs to be done, so long as you can turn on the wifi hotspot. Just open up a administrator command prompt and paste in “netsh int ipv4 set glob defaultcurhoplimit=65″(without the quotation marks) and restart the computer, this is functionally equivalent to his instructions since all it does is add a registry enrty into the same place you would if done manually.

      • John  

        Jay….
        You RoCk!!
        Thanks…
        😉

        • Jay  

          fiy, the command prompt way, doesn’t always work for some reason, so if it doesn’t just manually edit the registry to change the ttl

  7. Michelle  

    Thanks Jay. I did all those 3 steps in the article and none work for me in the last 2 months. Jay’s step works perfectly on the desktop side. I don’t understand all this but this may help someone in trouble like me. Mine is Nexus 5x 6.01. Tmobile unlimited.

    • Jay  

      Honestly though since you have a nexus device, i would recommend rooting and useing teather router(playstore) sonce that would allow teather bypassing on any device, but you have to be comfortable with doing so, its a better long-term solution though

      • JCwarez  

        IF you have a phone that can be rooted. I am running a Zmax Pro, and every thing i have tried on the root side was a no go. been doing the ttl trick for a few months and never got close to my 8GB limit, and i run 4 PC’s off my hotspot. I have noticed a little bleed thru (i think from my kali box) may have to run command on it to make it recursive. but im at 12 GB of data being shown used on my phone data and 3 gb of hotspot, but if i go into data usage it shows 12 GB of hotspot been used.

        • Jay  

          Yeah seems they dont like linux user agents or something, tried mint, Ubuntu,redhat, elementary and all of them didn’t let hotspot through properly even when i proxed the connection to the phone, only solution i found was to edit the us strings in a separate box , luckily i do t need linux to much, so i can deal with it

    • Frank  

      I was wondering if you could give me a little more information regarding what I need to do to implement the modification you made to your asus router? I have a rt-n56u and I’ve tried to enter net.ipv4.ip_default_ttl = 65 via telnet, but I’ve been unable to see the expected results. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

  8. Michelle  

    My nexus 5x 6.01 was rooted and have tether router apk. And all those 3 methods. None worked. XDA people ran out of idea.Just about to give up. Did one more search and found this post. Tried it and it works for now. I dont know what this method does to the desktop? Your post wad simple for me to follow so i tried. And it works!!!. I have no problem with other mobile devices connecting to my Nexus 5x, just supper slow on my desktop. Before the change, desktop speedtest.net couldn’t even load 0.01Mbps. Now I get 19Mbps. I have window7

    • Jay  

      The TTLstands for “time to live” it is a counter on the data you send for its maximum hop count, or the number of devices it can travel through, for ever device it goes down by one, windows has a default TTL of 128, while Android has one of 64, if you change the TTL for windows to 65 when it gets to the phone the TTL will go down by one makeing it equal 64 the same as the phone. There are more adwanced way to do this so you can run a whole network off this by using a router with either DD-wrt, Tomatos or open-wrt or a dedicated pc running either pfsense, linux, or freebsd to act as a router and mangle the TTl on the fly, the benefits of this is it gets ALL of the data(windows seem to miss a small amount arohnd 5%) and its possible to edit the User agent in ways that dont mess up websites with squid and just appending the device.

  9. Michelle  

    FYI, today my tether counter is restarted. My desktop speed is 73.58Mbps. Big diff. Is there any mod to get this speed on desktop after throttled?
    Nexus 5x, tmobile unlimited w 1G tethering. I’m willing to use a custom ROM, kernel, apk and any combination Etc. As a Ginnie pig?

    • Jay  

      As far as i know the ttl is enough, if that doesn’t work you can always install a local proxy sever on the phone, and set that as the proxy server for the pc.

    • Jay  

      How much data did you use last month? And did you test the speed on the phone and compare it to the computer?

  10. Michelle  

    Would you mind show me how? Trying to learn more about this stuff. Thanks

  11. Michelle  

    I used 30Gigs last month. I’m making a WP website so I do use it more than usual but not in a 100gigs or so. WP admin loads slow when I try to make changes. The phone speed is always above 50+Mbps. I already used up my 1 gig for this month and it’s only 5 hrs

    • Jay  

      1gb of tether? Or of highspeed data? If its highspeed your out of luck. Also if you makeing a WordPress site it would make more sense to do the dev work through local host and one push when you have tested it thoroughly and are happy with it. As far as showing you how, the proxy doesn’t work that well for anything other than web traffic and apps that run on port 80. I never get much more then 30Mb/s myself because im on metropcs. If you want to try something, see if have a wifi router that can be flashed to dd wrt, tomatos, or open wrt, around you house and use it to mangle the ttl on the fly, but that starts to go down a rabbit hole, you would need a bit to learn how to manually configure wifi repeaters/clients in ddwrt(and or the others) how to mess with telnet, finding Interface names, ect… Its not to hard just took me 2-3 days to start getting the hand of it without fumbling for 2 hours. And if you wanted to be real sure they cant tell you teathing then find a spare laptop buyusb Ethernet adapter and modify the UA strings so they appear to come from the phone, you just need to append them at the back with some basic cellphone identifers and then set ip the box as a proxy server seting tthe ttl as data passes through.

  12. Michelle  

    That is 1G of tethering and unlimited Mobil data. I have vpn on my desktop but it makes its slower. I have lots of old laptops. I have a USB dongle on my desktop. Will need to ask Google more “how to” questions? Any links you would suggest for “modify the UA strings so they appear to come from the phone, you just need to append them at the back with some basic cellphone identifers and then set ip the box as a proxy server seting tthe ttl as data passes through”

  13. Michelle  

    I also have many old routers!

  14. JCwarez  

    Sorry about delay, I have been using this method for 4 months now, last month 78K on teather and Ive used TBs of data. for some reason still not working on Linux for me. i have updated /etc/sysctl.conf with line “net.ipv4.ip_default_ttl = 65” and still counting data on mymetro app, until mymetro broke and i cannot see my account info any longer. that happened after the last update…. but as far as my windows box still burning up data with no usage on account.

  15. Michelle  

    This may help someone out there. My hotspot have been working well for the last few months on my Nexus 5x,plus Asus n31u router (w/ net.ipv4.ip_default_ttl = 65, bridge mod). No throttle untill I reset my phone back to the factory reset.
    I learned that I need to root my phone and add the methode 1 mentioned in the article “dun=0” in order to make it to work

    Don’t know how: but only combination modifications ONLY work for my set up:

    Nexus 5x – rooted 6.01 with “settings put global tether_dun_required 0”
    PLUS
    Asus n31u router (w/ net.ipv4.ip_default_ttl = 65, bridge mod)

    • Micah  

      any chance you could email me directly to help me with a problem?

  16. JCwarez  

    @Michelle, Sorry i just got the notification of your reply. Yes I forgot to say im on MetroPCS $60 unlimited plan also. no throttle issues til I hit the magic secret number of GB’s (I think thats BS too) Ive hit well of 40GB in a month and not been throttled (or if i was i couldnt tell) here is some screenies that i just took (see my post above for the method (i didnt do anthing to my phone) its STOCK Zmax Pro right out the box, I did the above method on my Windows lappy and my Linux boxes I just appended #~”net.ipv4.ip_default_ttl = 65″ (no quotes) to the end of my /etc/sysctl.conf

    If i was everybody else reading this, i would try this method and see if it works for you
    again WINDOWS users
    1. Open Registry Editor (regedit.exe).
    2. From the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE subtree, go to the following key:
    \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters.
    3. In the right pane, add the following value:
    Name: DefaultTTL
    Type: REG_DWORD
    Then double click it and add value 65 in decimal, (thx Jay)
    then restart

    https://goo.gl/photos/JntMr9LawXj229ZYA

    https://goo.gl/photos/EXcFSq6vBQzCjoUB8

    so far so good, but im waiting on the troll, so b4 anyone calls BS theres the puddin..

  17. JCwarez  

    Speedtest this is with seti@home running and going thru my VPN server on my mint box, NOT PHONE

    https://goo.gl/photos/cuVLVzvScsn64Ays6

    ps
    pls dont comment if you know what *may* be laying around on that workspace…

  18. J  

    Can this be done for iOS

  19. Jay  

    It’s platform agnostic as far as I can tell but I have done zero testing on a iOS hotspot, it should work but don’t quote me, iOS should have a default TTL of 64 if I remember correctly so setting Windows to 65 should work but I don’t know if iOS changes the counter as the data passes through or if it flags the data in some other form. You can give it a shot is just a simple edit to Windows and it won’t effect your phone anyways, there are also steps for Mac but you will need to find those on the net

  20. Jay  

    Ps: I recommend looking into running ddwrt on another router if you have one laying around that can run it, it’s pretty simple to setup the proper firewall filters to mangle the TTL on the fly with the plus sides being that a entire network can run behind it with if you set it as a repeater/repeater bridge. If you have a extra PC laying around I also recommend using pfsense(it’s based of BSD and can do tons of high or low level filtering because of its extensive networking support the down side is it’s wifi hardware support isn’t the best) unless the phone is explicitly marking the data coming through the hotspot there is not a single thing that pfsense shouldn’t be able to get around as far as filters go.

  21. Mark  

    I have an iPhone on the T-Mobile One plan. I’ve tried PIA VPN but tethering is still throttled to 512kbps. I also tried VPN Unlimited with the same result. I presume whatever VPN work-around that used to work, doesn’t work anymore.

  22. JoshB  

    *bump*

    i second mark, the first and third options didn’t work for me. I’d like to skip using pdanet and get it to work via the first method if possible….

    • Jay  

      Try just editing the ttl, its fine if your just trying to connect a laptop, if you want to use a tablet just download a proxy app(icecoldpapps make the one i use) and set up a manual proxy on your tablet

    • Jay  

      Does your router support the proper telnet commands by default? All the one i have dont so i had to change the firmware, i use advanced tomato specifically, ddwrt is good too

  23. JoshB  

    Update: I even tried PDAnet with Hide tethering option enabled, it STILL didn’t work… T-mobile must have changed the way they detect usage…

    Samsung Galaxy S7 On 6.01

  24. Michelle  

    My COMBO works for me on T-Mobile unlimited.

    Nexus 5x – rooted 6.01 with “settings put global tether_dun_required 0”
    PLUS
    Asus n31u router (w/ net.ipv4.ip_default_ttl = 65, bridge mod)

    Works for Window 7 desktop and laptop, chromebook, and tablets. All about 80 Gigs last month

  25. Jay  

    Multiple people have tested and it works, the issue is some phones definitely do some extra stuff in the background to mark teather data- nothing that can be done about that, if you can root go for it but even that might not bypass marking of data without flashing a os, just to make sure you follow exactly (if you add registry edits in the wrong spot it will do nothing) and then reboot. Its honestly easier to run command prompt as admin and run “netsh int ipv4 set glob defaultcurhoplimit=65″(no quotation marks) and thwn reboot, it doesn’t work without a reboot.

    • Jay  

      Just gonna say again some phone might not work, noth can be done for that

    • bumma  

      Unfortunately did not work for me. What is the command prompt to get settings back to default?

  26. Michelle  

    For my set up I have to do 2 things for it to work on T-Mobile unlimited.

    Nexus 5x – rooted 6.01 with “settings put global tether_dun_required 0”

    PLUS

    Asus n31u router (w/ net.ipv4.ip_default_ttl = 65, bridge mod)

    Works for Window 7 desktop and laptop, chromebook, and tablets.

    It didn’t work just one mod

  27. Dee  

    please Michelle tell me how to root my phone to put those settings I have LG phone MetroPCS

    • Kurt  

      I have LG phone. Metropcs unlimited 60$ plan. I use PDAnet. Hide teher usage for most work. For a year now. I have used 60gig or more many times with no issues.

  28. Michelle  

    Google n XDA are best sources for LG phone rooting info. I know how to root Nexus phones.

  29. Jay  

    The same just change the number to 128, not that it matters the internet does not care so long as your TTL is above 32, does your phone have issues using the internet over wifi? If not neather will your PC.

  30. Dee  

    hello people PDA work now .at first it wasn’t working I listen to you guys on settings put global tether dun…….
    now it working. my phone is MetroPCS and it’s not rooted and it’s locked and still working

  31. Dee  

    wow PdaNet works now. it wasn’t working for a year as a three days ago I got it to work now I can USB tether all I want using Metro PCS phone not rooted .if anyone wants unlimited tether let me know I will help

  32. T  

    Deep what do you use to have that working and not slowing up tethering

  33. Dee  

    HELLO T:I’m using PdaNet on USB mode if you need help let me know

  34. T  

    Two questions are you rooted and what android version are you cause they took away a lot of things with dealing with this in nogout that are in marshmallow

  35. Dee  

    no not rooted using Android version 5.1 and phone is locked still working with PdaNet

  36. Junior  

    Does anyone know how to bypass metro pcs hotspot throttle with out a computer? I need a way that just uses ur phone. I have tried vpn but it didnt work. Any help would be great.

  37. Dee  

    hello Junior you can download FoxFi for Android

  38. Junior  

    Dee i have tried foxfi. Does not work with any metro phone above 4.0 i have 5.0.2

  39. Junior  

    Can you just tell me on here?

  40. Rick  

    Great article and great info in the comments everyone!
    You guys that use PDANet to hide tethering, do you still get a notification when you hit 26-28 GB? We are using an Alcatel One Touch 7 for our device.

    Things seem to be working OK, though, we only notice slowdowns when using it as a hotspot to watch Netflix on the TV.

    When we check data usage it’s all accounted for, but lists PDANet with most of the data. Is this normal?

    Finding that tethering is definitely faster than Wi-Fi hotspot. We can watch hi-def videos tethered directly to desktop with no buffering, while TV via hotspot is crap.
    I just need to find a cheap router to load one of the open firmwares to it, any suggestions?

  41. Dee  

    just use PdaNet USB mode

    • Rick  

      With a router? I hope it really is that simple. When we connect to the desktop, we also have to start the PdaNet app on the desktop as well, how do you do that with a router?

  42. Dee  

    you don’t need a router you just need a phone with unlimited data and use your phone as a hotspot to power up your laptop

    • Rick  

      Our device has unlimited data. We are using are using PdaNet for tethering and using it as a hotspot. But it is super slow in hotspot mode. Much faster with USB tethering, which is why we would like to tether to a router and connect that way – but still hiding our tethering.

  43. Dee  

    Rick why don’t you just use your phone to power up your laptop usb that’s what I’m doing with PdaNet you don’t need a router

  44. Rick  

    Right. We do that when we need to use our desktop. But we have other devices that don’t have unlimited data. That is why we more frequently use it as a hotspot. But the device Wi-Fi hotspot is sloooooow. We also watch Netflix via our Smart T.V., which is also via Wi-Fi hotspot. If we could tether to a router, we would be able to take advantage of the faster tethering speeds for Wi-Fi for all devices. That is why I wanted to know if PdaNet to hide tether usage works with a router.

    I guess I could always upgrade to the ONE Plus plan, but what’s the fun in that?

  45. Dee  

    Rick just read the comments at the top page and scroll down a little. they tell you how to do that with a router

  46. Rick  

    Dee, I have read all the posts, but it wasn’t clear if using the router with that method would hide the tethering usage.

  47. Michelle  

    I did these 2 things and have no problem connecting all 5 devices to my router. Used 80gigs last month without counting toward my T-Mobile hotspot counter.
    —–
    For my set up I have to do 2 things for it to work on T-Mobile unlimited.

    Nexus 5x – rooted 6.01 with “settings put global tether_dun_required 0” thru a window 7 desktop

    PLUS

    Asus n31u router (w/ net.ipv4.ip_default_ttl = 65, bridge mod)

    Works for Window 7 desktop and laptop, chromebook, and tablets.

    It didn’t work just one mod

  48. Rick  

    Thank you Michelle! I retried the “settings put global tether_dun_required 0” today and I didn’t get an error message with it, so hopefully it took and will help.

    When you tether to the router, do you just simply use the tethering option under settings? I plan to try a router in the near future and may be rooting if necessary.

    Thank you again Michelle.

  49. Michelle  

    After making the router set up with modification, I just turn on the tethering wifi hotspot on my phone nexus 5 setting and all devices “talk” to each other thru the router connecting to internet

    Just did what Jay n others explained on this thread.

    2 things combined to make it work for me. Don’t know the logic but maybe someone here can explain.

    Now I have 3 routers, one for home, 1 for work to share w my workers, 1 in my RV to share w my teenage kids. Just any old router that can be modified using dd-wrt. I bought my routers thru Craiglist for less than $10 each. Good luck

  50. RUBEN  

    Hey i would like to know if these methods would work with sprint “UNLIMITED” data plan, since i received a data usage notice.

  51. Rick  

    Very cool!

    Just to clarify, are you USB tethered to the router?

    Have you found one router that works better? Off to look for cheap routers…

  52. Michelle  

    Not USB to the router. I wifi hotspot my phone. 3 routers I have that work: tplink MR3420, Asus N13U n Asus N56U.

    • Tom M.  

      Michelle, So then is your ASUS router set up as some sort of bridge mode so that it can “connect” to your WiFi hotspot, and then forward that wifi signal to all wireless connected and wireless devices to the ASUS router?
      I have an ASUS RT-N16 router and RT-N66U router (running Asuswrt-Merlin firmware) that I can mess with, if that is how you are using them. Thanks!

      • Michelle  

        Yes, I set them up as bridge mode. Those Asus routers should do it

  53. Ralph  

    Thank you

  54. Tony  

    I currently have the Alcatel Linkzone, but I’m capped at 6Gb monthly. Is there a way to use an unlimited SIM in that and tether through my Asus AC3200? I live way out, satellite Internet is garbage, but I have a nice Tmobile signal.
    Thanks

  55. JOE  

    Does anybody know if it works with SPRINT?

  56. Mildew  

    The main issue I see people having is the lack of apn editing. This has been my setup for four years now:

    Dd-wrt with iptables to edit the ttl value to 65
    Changed apn of hotspot to match the apn of normal mobile date. Doesn’t matter if you use fast.xxxx.com or alpha/beta BUT YOU CANT USE THE ORIGINAL HOTSPOT APN it’ll say mobile web or some shit. If you do you will be routed through their hotspot server and tracked. I’ve done this on iOS and android.

    ALSO FOR THE FOLKS THAT SAY THE VPN DOESNT WORK. Once again you MUST change the apn AND you have to make sure that your traffic is actually being routed through the VPN, in my experience on both android and iOS hotspot traffic bypass your phones VPN, and VPN on the router/computer traveling through the phone can be tracked if the phone isn’t the one using the VPN, to make it force traffic through the VPN I had to use the for data option in the tether me app on iOS. These things all work if you do it properly.

    Like I said I use the dd-wrt/iptables and apn option.

    • Tom M.  

      “Changed apn of hotspot to match the apn of normal mobile date. Doesn’t matter if you use fast.xxxx.com or alpha/beta”

      Did you really mean to say “date” in “mobile date”? I’m trying to understand what you’re doing, but I think me/we need a little more info.
      Where specifically in DD-WRT settings do you change the APN? And how did you find -what- to change the APN to?

      And are you connecting to your DD-WRT router via USB cable (tethered) or are you using a wireless connection to your mobile phone (hotspot)?

      Thanks,

  57. Mildew  

    NOW ONTO THE REASON IM HERE.

    I’m currently switching to a BSD box OPNsense (not my first choice but saved headaches involved with PFsense). My issue is I have changed the ttl to 65 using sysctl but I’m still being tracked. I noticed some posts abut it also not working on Linux machines. It works just fine if I use a VPN but I got it of using one to bypass hotspot tracking a LONG time ago for many many reasons.

    So does anyone know how or in what way I’m being tracked?? Anyone know a way to get this working on a BSD box (PFsense, FreeBSD,opnBSD, etc., etc.) I would really really appreciate ANY insight or thought. I see many folks that have this setup working but can’t seem to get any input as to how.

    Thank you,
    MILDEW

  58. Dee  

    Hello bumma- all u have to do is download PdaNet to use your phone to power up your laptop

  59. Billy  

    I have a tx3 pro box and it’s eating up My tethering data and I don’t want itbto…..help

  60. DaveUk  

    Great thread! Can someone help me please, Ive managed to change the TTL on my ageing macbook and can now connect it to the internet via my phones hotspot, but I’m struggling with my ps4… It will not connect to the internet through the phone hotspot wirelessly, or even through an ethernet connection via the macbook… Pda will not work for me as I cannot use my phone as a usb modem because my macbook os is not supported with the correct drivers.. Its running Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63b) and will not support a newer os. Is there a simple(ish) way to repeat the TTL trick for the data coming from the ps4 through my mac via cable or direct through the phones hotspot? Any advice would be much appreciated, and although I want to get as fast a link as possible I’ll be happy if the ps4 will connect at any speed , as sony won’t let me play any games or use any apps unless I have a connection of some sort to their servers… Thanks… D

  61. Mildew  

    My bad, Tom M. I meant to write mobile DATA. You change apn on your phone. Look at your current sons and use the same one that is for mobile web for the hotspot. This will circumvent that part.

    As for dd-wrt I’m tethered through the usb port.

    At this current time I have quite playing with the Opn/pfsense as I gave up. I am currently using Zentyal 5.0 (based on Ubuntu server 16.0.4.2) and changed the usual lines in its led to mangle the ttl in the fly like I did on dd-wrt. It’s a lol over kill but I have yet to overload it as I have every router I’ve owned.

    If I where to recommend a set up , I would have to say go for the the Netgear Nighthawk r7000 and flash it with the latest Kong build of dd-wrt. Very well supported and tested. Lots of possible goodies. I was running transmission and a ton of other services on the box.

    As for pda net, from my testing years back, it does three things. Normally it changes the ttl, and apn but in private mode?? Or whatever it’s called it also changes the user agent string. I don’t recommend it personally as it uses a lot of overhead on the phone it’s self and then also some on the device tethered. No sense in adding more load and battery drain on an already overly stressed setup. To each there own.

  62. Mildew  

    Second sentence I meant to write “apns” not “sons”. Look at your current “apns”
    Can’t figure out how to edit in mobile.

  63. DaveUk  

    BOOM — I used pda AND easy tether at the same time, and the overkill worked… hours of uninterrupted hidden tethered PS4 multiplayer Lan based BF1 action, excellent speeds, perfectly reliable, as close to DSL as you will get with a £20 phone and a restrictive lycamobile bundle… Thanks to all of the above for the advice, now to re-read the whole thread, dig out that old netgear router, and do the job properly. Anyone out there struggling just d/load == PDA NET and EASY TETHER and you are well on your way.

    • Rick  

      Dave, I just downloaded EasyTether last night but haven’t tried it yet. I have been using pda with some success. Did you use the paid version of EasyTether?

  64. Dee  

    Hello Dave UK I’m using PdaNet alone, if I install easy tether and use it at the same time it will be faster?

  65. Mildew  

    DaveUk
    How can you stand the latency and slow speeds with PDAnet?? from my expire vr there is a noticeable lag between when I pull my trigger and when I fire it on screen. It’s just like having a tv not set to game mode or trying to play online with a lcd/led tv and getting monitor/screen lag. At least for me. The best I could get out of PDAnet was 62ms latency/ping 24mbs down 10mbs up. That was ridiculously laggy on XBone, PC, and PS. Still fully playable but if you pay attention to fast paced battles it’s ruff. Not to differ people from this method, which I disagree with for many reasons, because it is a valid method. I was just curious how you stand it and wanted to make everyone aware that from my testing. You will get a lil over half a second of lag. Any gammer will know that that’s way to much for pvp. now that that’s been aired out. I’m curious why you wouldn’t just use a VPN, if you wanted to do it the lazy way, expressVPN had me sitting at only 28ms lattency/ping and a hair higher on Dn/Up.

    Trust me, break out the Netgear and use it. Make sure you have at least two cores at 1ghz and 256mb ram or you are wasting your time. Also make sure to tether not bridge the wifi as the latency is horrible and the battery won’t last over twelve hours on any phone I’ve owned. If you must use a standard router I recremend the r7000 Netgear. Honestly though an old ‘top with zantyal seems to be the best. I’m getting speeds over, what according to the Internet, the “lte standard”. And latency/ping is down to between 12ms and 21ms.

    Just doing my part. Have a great day.

    MILDEW

  66. Mildew  

    Dee,

    I’m not Dave and I can’t say that it won’t but I can’t Fathom it being faster when you add more overhead, destinations, and processes in general.

  67. Chris  

    So I’ve tried all of these, I tried changing the APN, but that didn’t work, many times as well. I tried using PdaNet, but I don’t have iTunes, and it takes so long to download with this kind of internet speed. I tried using my VPN and also my proxy neither worked. I do not have money for Pfense. And I tried changing the TTL in the Registry Editor, in both Hex and decimal. Restarted multiple times and nothing happened. Also tried doing it the Admin cmd prompt way, many times. Still nothing, I think my phone has other ways of doing things. Is there any other ways of how to bypass this?

  68. Mike  

    I’m having some issues with tethering from a Oneplus 2 unrooted smartphone running android 6.0.1. I get great speeds on the device itself but when trying to tether to my laptop or another smartphone it seems like I’m capped at 512kbps. I also have a Huawei b593u-501 router I’d like to get working on this unlimited T-Mobile plan, but until I can fix the tethering issue, all I’m getting from the router is the excruciatingly slow speed of 512kbps. Weird thing though is that when I put my Sim card in the router I can still get 50mbps on Speedtest.net but everything else is super slow. Any ideas on how I can fix this.

    • PASH G  

      Mike, perhaps you’re teathered via USB and WIFI hotspot simultaneously?
      When I forget to disable my wifi hotspot (Tmobile app), or to at least disconnect from it, my traffic goes through the slow WIFI hotspot by default.
      As long as I’m connected by USB (PDAnet) only, I get the full unrestricted 20 to 30+ mbs

      The only other thing I did previously for my PC was the 64 TTL thing described above, which I’m not sure if it actually made any difference, as I wasn’t able to test it before changing it.

      Hope this helps, good luck

  69. Dee  

    Hello Chris PdaNet does work I’m using it right now to power my laptop on my MetroPCS phone make sure to install the PC drivers and phone drivers. My phone is not rooted and it still working with PdaNet

    • Chris  

      I wouls try and use it, but it takes so long to download Itunes, if there is a version that does not require it, please link it.

  70. Dee  

    Chris download connection stabilizer booster from Play Store it’s a white app with a antenna on it that makes your phone data connection faster see if that works

  71. dappad  

    Is this still open?

  72. Rajesh Khuntia  

    Anyone please give me any solution for jio Telecom. By the way i’m from India. Thats why jio. I have tried pdaNet+.But it didn’t work for me

    • Jay  

      i doubt anyone can tell you, as far i know this blog is almost exclusively meant for people in the us and this post was meant for T-Mobile explicitly, nothing on here is guaranteed to work with other Telecoms, and everything on here starts with the prerequisite that you have a unlimited data plan for your phone, all this does is help bypass hotspot restrictions, outside of that you need to know how your provider filters the data,

      is it sent through a second anp?

      does it mark the packets coming through the wlan interface?

      do they filter by user agent strings?

      do that view the ttl?

      do they block urls that phones do not use?

      they can do any number of these in any combination, and the commenters on this page will almost certainly not know how a idian telecom filters traffic. you will either have to find info on your telecom or find the info yourself sorry.

  73. Kunal  

    I have a question. Can this work with broadband service?

    I live in a place with poor net offers from ISPs. My connection speed is 8Mbps for first 30GB and then 512kbps thereafter (and they call it a broadband con3ction?!?!?!)

    Can these steps work fron broadband connection or r there any ways to get arround it? Cos end up ising 30Gb i first few days of billing cycle, n then stuck iwth 512kbps:(

  74. Jay  

    I doubt it, that seems to be a direct limit on all usage, if say you were limited to only one device on a broadband connection, you could use ttl edits to hide how many devices are connected to the endpoint, but total bandwidth is something you can not fake.

  75. Kunal  

    Cheers for reply.

    Looks like i shall be stuck with seroiusly crappy speeds.

  76. Josh  

    The TTL stuff worked on my Windows laptop. Not an expert in any regard, but thanks!~

  77. Cortez  

    Just signed up with MetroPCS, unlimited plan, LG Aristo phone running Android 7.0. Hit my 8G limit yesterday. Spent the past 4 hours with these methods. Dun=0 not working. PdaNet not working. Tried trial version of TunnelBear VPN, not working. Tried the registry method Default TTL to 65, not working. My tether connection is still throttled to 2g super slow. The phone’s data is still fast. Looks to me like T-Mobile has figured out how to deal with all these methods. I wonder if there are any companies out there offering unlimited tethering? Or maybe I can look into satellite. Ah well! Frustration.

    • Soapguy  

      Cortez, I also have Metro, Aristo, 7.0, PdaNet+, and I’m currently at 28.9G data usage for the month. I have used 0G of the 8G hot spot use because I use the usb option with PdaNet+ to hook to my computers. I have done NO MODS AT ALL to phone. I have done NO MODS TO MY COMPUTER. I have PdaNet+ set to NOT HIDE TETHER USE, both on phone and computers, even though PdaNet+ on my phone says hiding is required with my provider.. I do get notification of data usage at 28G, warning me that at 30G I MAY experience occasional slow down when cells are congested, but I have not noticed any issues. I consistantly use a little over 30G per month, sometimes much more. I have used PdaNet+ for several years on 3 different phones with AT&T, T-Mobile, and MetroPCS with no real issues.

      • Cortez  

        Thanks for this info. I was going to give up, but it occurred to me that while PdaNet+ was connecting via wifi, the usb connection was failing, and this is what’s necessary to hide the tether. So I went back this morning and got the problem (windows driver) figured out. So far working great. Thanks for your comments!

        • Soapguy  

          Fantastic! PdaNet has been great for me. Biggest headache is that it needs to be tied to computer and I sometimes forget it and then don’t have my phone with me!

    • Cortez  

      Update… I went back to the PdaNet+ method because the problem was that it was not connecting via USB. Spent some time with the driver help section on their site. LG phones apparently have some issues with the driver. But I finally got it correctly installed (no idea how) and my USB tether is giving me full high speed data. Thanks for this blog post and commenters.

  78. Michelle  

    Once u reach the tethering limit, in my experience none of the mod would work because your act is locked. Wait for the next billing cycle. For my system to work, I do the combination of ALL 3
    -1) tethering data is available on T-Mobile
    -2) ddwrt bridge router or laptop/desktop w ttl mod
    -3) rooted phone Nexus 5x – rooted 6.01 with “settings put global tether_dun_required 0” thru a window 7 desktop

    • Jay  

      i have regularly went over the hotspot limit and still been able to bypass and get the unlimited hotspot working

    • Jay  

      from time to time i somehow use 9 or even 10GB of my 8GBs of hotspot according to metropcs not sure how that works

  79. PASH G  

    So with TTL 65 + PDANET trick, I do get MUCH better speeds than my normal Tmobile hotpot, but some websites only want to show up as mobile version on my Windows PC
    Any way to fix this? I want the regular desktop version of all sites to show up.

    I’ve tried user agent switchers without luck

    • Jay  

      thats stuff pda net has done, not much you can do other then switcing to something else

      • PASH G  

        Makes sense, thanks for the response!

        Any recommendation on what to try besides PDAnet, to avoid the issue?

        • Jay  

          tether router works well on some phones not at all on others, clockwork tether is a usb only solution, or just use the built in usb tether, the best option is to install a custom rom and just use that with the ttl trick, haven’t had a issue yet with metropcs and my custom galaxy s5, works via wifi and built in usb tether. honestly your options depend on your phone

          • Andrew  

            Hey so I applied your ttl cmd prompt for 65 and have a rooted note 5 custom rom. What should I do on the phone side, tetherdun=0 or net.tetheringprovisioning=true. Tmobile is still counting my hotspot data. When I go to regestry I see that your cmd mod defaultTTL (65) appears there so what else should I do?

    • Soapguy  

      I used to have that issue. Tried several different things, user agent strings, etc. but found that by checking “None” under PdaNet “settings”. “Hide tether usage” worked to go from mobile site to desktop site.

  80. Mildew  

    I swear, I tried to help you guys but you guys just do t get how your methods are screwing the network and even more so your selfs. The day you guys realize that what I route above is thE ONLY way I’ve ever found to give you 200-280Mbs. Filks are talking about pad net anD routers still. You won’t even get a 40 with thaT setup. In about 20% of areas tmobile/metro is already set up for 300+ lte. Learn or just move on. Lucky I saw an email remInding me to come back. Lucky to see me again thoUgh.

    • Jay  

      metro only has 90Mbs(max i get around 40Mbs after i use a ton of data) as the max where I live, but i easily get the full bandwidth, i user a routersetup with no issues. its i highend 250$ router though and supports 300Mbs p/s on the 802.11n frequencies, i just use it to connect over 2.4ghz and edit the ttl and pass back through to the 5ghz, ive been doing this for years and using 800GBs-2TBs of data each month no issues. routers will only limit you if your using a crappy router, trust me bee. messing with this stuff since 2012

  81. Mildew  

    Chris pfsense is free jusT like all of the other nix.

    • Jay  

      pfsense works too, though i only use that as a fallback when they do deep packet inspection, and i need to mess with the headers, T-Mobile use to mark all desktop UA strings as hotspot (even data coming from the phone directly) back then i had to mangle parts of the user agent to bypass that tracking while still not making sites unhappy, was a pain in the ass honestly, glad tmobile went to a simple filter(we
      l for the most part, they still can somehow tell linux machines apart from the rest, but its not a big deal to me)

  82. Mildew  

    Pash that’s because you are going through fast, alpha, or beta channel instead of the pcweb channel.

    • PASH G  

      so what can I do to get desktop only versions of websites?

  83. Mildew  

    Pash
    That’s because of the settings you have on pdanet. (Mobile only sites) you can also change a few strings in the pea net code to fix that but the steps are there to help hide usage. You could do it though as it doesn’t flag red only yellow on tmob/met, for now. It has to dO with the sites setup. Just like with XBOX being used flags yellow and makes the hotspot AND regular data go up. It’ll hit your 8 giG limit and RARELY go over as a bug on their end but it still will go past 8 through the normal data because it’s only a yellow flag on your account.

    • PASH G  

      I cant figure out which settings you’re referring to with PDAnet, there arent any to change regarding mobile/desktop traffic

      Also, I’m on Tmobile ONE plan, which is pretty much unlimited (full 4G speed up to 32GB of data used, then “traffic prioritization” after 32GB), so I’m not sure what the 8gig limit you speak of is

      • Soapguy  

        The $60 MetroPCS plan includes 8G of “tethering”.

        • Soapguy  

          Sorry, should say :Hotspot”.

  84. Mildew  

    Jay you are partially right on the filter system but that’s because of the flagging system TheY use now and I understand ALL about pfsense but its limits are horrid use Ubuntu server or its flip off sent yal if you want gui I prefer my own build though. You are VERY VERY incorrect on the limit of 90. It’s hitting well past 200 on the new system.

  85. Mildew  

    That are still tracking but it only flags yellow for certain sites. Like XBOX that’s why sometimes folks will see their hotspot data go up as well as the regular data. Also different systems and channels flag differently. I know in fl it does it to sites for ps but not XBOX as I have a buddy I built a systEm to get him internet across his 8 acre lot.

  86. Mildew  

    ill try to remember this site and come back later but look into my info folks. Y’all are doing it extremely off note. I can’t hangs out as I’m trying to mod the new 29.x carrier update that Apple has plaster on the private ax site. The public is still only going up tO 28.x if anyone wants tO Know but itS got wifi calling and VoLTE already humming. Also if anyone has to use a comm patch instead of manually signing the bundle you can use the one Chinasnow is testing out. think its build 10.3.1?? Can’t remember pwn24k has access. I’m out.

  87. PASH G  

    Mildew, you sound like a smart fella, and your input is appreciated,
    but would you mind elaborating the steps that need to be taken in order to achieve the desired effect?

    Otherwise, it’s all useless theory, no offense

  88. Mildew  

    Pash referring to masking settings, depending on pad net version depends on if you can access or if you have to mod a few strings. I’ve really got to go though. I was referring to the hotspot side of your data plan. Can’t remember what the one plan was but I’m pretty sure it was metros 60 plan or was it the one like the 50 plan where you can’t get above 480p resolution on marked sites and codecs also there is no hotspot allowance. See ya guys.

  89. Mildew  

    I went Into a good bit of detail last time I’m pretty sure either way I know I have enough for a google battle to fight your way to freedom. Really g2g
    I’m gone

  90. Mildew  

    I went Into a good bit of detail last time I’m pretty sure either way I know I have enough for a google battle to fight your way to freedom. Scroll to top. Really g2g
    I’m gone

  91. Mildew  

    I went Into a good bit of detail last time I’m pretty sure either way I know I have enough for a google battle to fight your way to freedom. Not theory Been doing this for many years. Started with Cingular. For most needed info Scroll to top. Really g2g
    I’m gone

  92. Mildew  

    Jay you running that N at 20 or 40 wide?? At 20 youl only get up to 150 max bandwidth. Ac does good but I bought a 800 router 3 yeaRs ago with it and a book or a few sheets of paper would deflect the sign but you can get 80 wide with proper multi ac. Ethernet is much more reliable for this type of setup.

    • Jay  

      40mhz wide for the 2.4ghz, i have tomato installed and was able to up the TX power and am using channel 13(not really legal in the us) so i get good coverage covers the 100ft radius i need and anything that need really good bandwidth i have Hardlined fro. the router anyhow with a powerline adapter to a get 100Mb p/s connection out to my shed, honestly not having a issue with my setup at all,

    • Jay  

      the router also supports ndis(Ethernet over usb) which is nice, right over a usb 3.0 connection, so i can use the built in usb teathering directly to the router, did that for a time but the charging of the phone was flaky and its more convenient to just have it pick up the hotspot automatically.

    • Jay  

      the only thing im still thinking of doing is upgrading the antennas on the router to something​ higher gain to increase the effective power, not really nessary but would help

  93. Mildew  

    The latency with the hotspot option always was above 30 for me. I’m a gamer so that got me killed almost as much as when I bought one of those bullshit OLED tvs with hella screen lag. I’m using a QLED now with no screen lag and hard wired. Helps a lot. I had too much white noise with my gain anything over 20 way back when I was testing out the r7000 myself. If it works it works, I just like to make sure all knowledge is available to the people reading. I also had a pretty hot phone with the hotspot option over the tether. And depending on the antenna setup of the phone you might not even be able to get full bandwidth. I know the i6+ cant run across 40 wide it’s limited to 20 even though everywhere I read said it could. My set up these days is two “modems”>Ubuntu server with added zentyal gui and modified load balancing>Devices, r7000, and servers

    • Jay  

      my latency is around 45ms, but its not like I could hope for better in North Florida anyhow, even at my sister’s house with a good 350Mb p/s the latency is around 50ms, i play a ton of bf1 with no issues, but I’ve never played on anything lower latency as far as i know other then lan parties,

  94. Mildew  

    I would defenantly go with the antennas and run as low juice as possible on them.

  95. Mildew  

    Pash
    My bad I was trying to get stuff done fast, I’m still working on it know but I’ll try to check in from time to time. What is it that you needed clarification on?? I’ll do my best to help you out.

  96. SideChula  

    A big Thank You! to Austin for the original article and the great comments from Jay, JCWarez, Mildew, and Michele (and others…I’m sure I missed somebody). You all have made a big difference in my life. No kidding. My internet access situation is much the same as Austin’s. The easy part was changing the DUN setting of the phone and then using it as a USB Tether into a Windows 7 computer. The hard part was changing the firmware of an ASUS RT-N66U router I bought for this project. I had to downgrade the firmware from ASUS, and then I was able to install DD-WRT. I’m using the Router in a AP setting rather than Repeater Bridge. It’s what I got working first. I could NOT get the android (version 5) phone working as a USB tether plugged directly into router. If anyone did, please post any links that might be useful. Going through the Win 7 computer cuts the speed in half. No way around that.

    • jay  

      no need to go through windows, just add a firewall script to edit the ttl, information can be found here – https://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Iptables_command

      • SideChula  

        I did do this based on your previous post. Still can’t get the USB Tether directly into the USB port of my Asus router. So my setup is: USB Tether >> Win7 computer with Internet Connetion Sharing enabled>> hard wired into WAN port of ASUS router w/ DD-WRT v24-sp 2 big (latest version for RT-N66U router).

        Firewall command is entered to mangle the TTL. The TTL is set for 63 since it’s two hops down from the phone. Phone=65 TTL automatically, Win7 ICS router is 64 TTL (made by the above regedit), and the ASUS router mangles the TTL to 63.

    • jay  

      if you can’t get it to work over usb you can always just get a cheap wifi extender and use that and you current router to get full speeds, if you don’t need full speed(you should still get 40-80Mbs per sec) you can use the dd-wrt router as a repeater bridge and have it pick up the wifi hotspot and do all the edits and send out a second wifi signal that you would then connect to

      • SideChula  

        I’ve got a Linksys 54G w/ DD-WRT installed lying around but wouldn’t you recommend a newer router for all the fancy MIMO features?

        • jay  

          the problem with a 54g isn’t the lack of mimi its that it’s limited to 54Mbs bandwidth thats 27Mbs when using it in repeater mode + overhead, get something that supports n at least for full speed preferable AC also, not saying it doesn’t work in a pinch, iv’e used a old 54G to do the same task before it just got bogged down because of the relatively slow cpu and low ram, only managing 10-15Mbs at times

  97. Mildew  

    Who’s build did you use?? If it doesn’t have the drivers for android you can add them. It’s been a while I’m not even sure what driver it is these days. I know iPhone’s are still ipeth anyone remember the android driver?? I would shoot for the usb>router for sure some people seem to have really good luck with repeating, though.

  98. Mildew  

    I wouldn’t say that there is “no way around that” but you would just end up stripping it down into Windows server; at that point you might as well have just installed Ubuntu server and modded it a lil.

    If I remember right it comes with most drivers on hand.

    But you went this far with the router; might as well use it for a few months then build you a server and just end up turning off dhcp and just using it for the wifi connections to your sever or as a torrent box. I have one for each. You get into it and you’ll be surprised the addiction and builds you’ll come up with. Right know the best setup I know “modem” wise is the s7 you can get well over 300 on met/tmob with its lteA and 256 qam setup. Of course you have to have all variables and conditions just right but 300+ is achievable theoretical is WAY WAY up there.

    • jay  

      300+ is only possible if your using a tower supporting that speed, also 300Mb’s is the limit of the spec, and i doubt that any higher would be achieved on lte(outside a some custom mu-mimo solution), that’s going to have to wait for the 5g roll out, and the largest part of the whole network is 100Mbs or less out side of a few huge cities. it maxes out at around 90 here and avg’s 50, even Verizon the supposed best net work can only get the same, there just is’nt enough lit fiber where i live(there might not even be enough dark fiber to expand for all i know)

    • SideChula  

      I really want to limit my learning curve here, as in, I’m not ready to study up on Linux. But I will if it means I don’t lose half my bandwidth. So my question is this: If I switch my Win7 computer that connects via USB Tether to Ubuntu server, then will I get full speed?

      On another note, with these adaptations are you saying I can comfortably torrent from time-to-time? In another post Mildew you mention how Xbox URLs get flagged. Wouldn’t torrents get flagged also?

      • jay  

        while not everything, almost entirely all of the tracking is done via TTL, torrents can be ran from both a phone(i use flud) or a computer so they can’t say your abusing the TOS, not saying that xbox doesnt show up in some form on their network as weird traffic, but iv’e downloaded 1300GBs of data one month on my xbox one without issue, phones also connect to the xbox domain so they can’t block it, and the only thing the isp can tell is what domain your are visiting not the content(as long as the page/content is over https).

        short answer is torrents are fine

        also the only reason to use a ubuntu “server”(this can be any pc/laptop, its just acting as a server) is it’s easier to edit the data coming through, you don’t need to know anything other then how to enter a string of text into a terminal, or at worst use vi/vim to edit a file so the config is saved permanently if you don’t want to re enter it ever time the computer is rebooted, it 10-30mins of research max.

        • SideChula  

          <>

          If I use a ubuntu setup, will my MB per second speed increase?

          Or is it a situation where I need two routers to keep the speed close to the USB speed?

          • jay  

            ubuntu can manage whatever you throw at it, the limiting factor will be the wifi card at that point, if you have a old laptop you could just connect the ubuntu machine via wifi and share the internet via Ethernet to a router(or just use the built in android usb tethering, ubuntu supports it natively and just share that via ethernet or wifi from the pc) , it should manage to get you 100Mbs at least if the towers in your area support that, download the speedtest app on your android to compare, some degradation is normal, but on a good lte connection 30Mbs would be the min(if you are deprioritized) and i would expect 45-50+ depending on what the towers can provide in your area

  99. jay  

    android uses normal ndis at this point over a generic driver, windows has support built in since at least windows 8(haven’t tested with anything older)

  100. Andrew  

    I tried the ttl method in cmd prompt on my windows 10 but tmobile still tracks me. Only method working for me is connect cable and fire up pdanet on my rooted note 5. But I want to just wifi hotspot tether without cable and not get tracked. Some people on xda said with a vpn you can. Also was thinking about a user agent switcher. Any help?

    • jay  

      a user agent switcher doesn’t really help much anymore, if you tried it via command prompt go back and check the registry settings to make sure it stuck, for some reason it doesn’t always apply,

      other steps to go through

      -some phones need the phone set to dun=0

      -i would recommend that you use a custom rom

      -change the apn

    • jay  

      dun=0 just make sure that wlan data is routed through the standard cellular interface with the rest of the phones data,

      • Andrew  

        I checked registry and the ttl stuck.
        ok so what do you think about notetheringprovisioning=true in build prop. Also I am using a custom rom based on the s8 DR Ketan. I tried to Dun=0 with sqlite editor but did not see the settings.db file will have to do it via twrp or terminal. Also I might start using wifi tether router what settings you reccomend for that.

        • jay  

          you can change dun setting via adb shell,

          and if your going to use wifi tether router the settings depend on the phone, that app while it works good for some phones requires different setting for each device, but iv’e had some phones that i couldn’t get working at all with it.

          honestly if your rooted with a recovery installed i would just backup your rom and install a custom one, that should work out of the box with just the ttl edit and it it doesn’t work you can just restore the back up, it’s hard to know whats been done with the default rom that marks the data.

          • Andrew  

            ok will try and find ways to make adb shell commands work I think I need to boot into twrp then adb I’ve only done fastboot commands in bootloader, will research it.
            Also your comment on being on a custom rom, I am on a custom rom, do you mean i should flash an aosp rom, the rom I am on is touchwiz based. Thanks for your help.
            Also I came across something saying that switching over to ipv4 instead of ipv6 and the dun=0 trick will work.

          • jay  

            no reason to boot into recovery, just boot the phone and type “adb shell” to get a shell prompt then the command “settings put global tether_dun_required 0” that all

    • SideChula  

      I have USB Tethering to Windows 10 working with two different G3 phones: one with Android 5.01 and another with Android 6. For the Win 10 computer I made the registry edit post by JcWarez in this thread. Both phones were modified following the original post. I did have to download the LG USB drivers from the LG website, install, and reboot the computer.

      • SideChula  

        Both phones are stock ROMs with no root.

  101. Cortez  

    Hello folks, I thought this might be the place to ask this question given how knowledgeable you all are. Last week I tried all these methods when my connection got throttled: Dun=0, trial version of TunnelBear VPN, Default TTL to 65 via regedit, and now I’ve found success with PdaNet via USB. So here’s the issue: I’m getting a black shell terminal window flashing on and off a few minutes after I open my browser everytime. It doesn’t cause any problems, but I’d still like to know what it is. Would the PdaNet driver do this? I uninstalled the VPN and erased all the other changes. Should I be worried? Or just ignore it? Thanks

    • jay  

      pdanet does that, its running a shell to convert the custom usb driver to a standard Ethernet interface

  102. Mildew  

    someone said they only get 40 but how?? My 5s with 144db sig gets 90 on band 2 even on a bad day. It’s the slowest of the bunch.

    • jay  

      my phone directly in the middle of the night only manages between 60-85Mbs, thats it, thats all the towers around me supports, the connection speed to the tower is likely 300Mbs but that doesn’t help me or others in such areas if the tower wont let us use that bandwidth, good for you you live in a major city, you know what the avrage lte bandwith for T-Mobile is 18Mbs, the speed of your connection isn’t only determined by your phone, the area your in affects it also

  103. Mildew  

    Sidechula
    I torrent 24/7 no flags on results p2p it’s the sever adress that they flag on XB anything through that gets a yellow flag and counts toward hot spot but will still get access even after it hits cap.

  104. Mildew  

    Jay
    The reason for Ubuntu sever isn’t just to mangle the strings. I use it because of the speeds, latency, and ease on phone. I can use any simple ddwrt nerf ear for mangling. You show me a strait phone or router that can run under 20 latency, over 90 dn, over 30 up for hours on end without hick ups hot phones or a jittery connection graph, with the average phone. I could be wrong but in all these years with all of my trials I’m gonna have to say I’d love to see it but I HIGHLY doubt it.
    While you’re doing that I will touch base on the question that was asked about speed being cut in half. NO the speed will remain full speed within a Meg or two unlike you’re Windows set up. The problem with the current setup is all of the resource channels having more traffic.

    There are many pros to running a server setup as well.

    • jay  

      sppeeds will onyl be cut in half if you are running a repeater bridge with one antenna, especially a old as dirt linksys 54g, that barly has the power to run ddwrt to begin with(that had to make a light build to get it working on the thing)

    • jay  

      any thing you add as a go between will increase the latency, if you wanted the lowest latency why don’t you just connect directly to the pc, with it’s ttl edited there will be no extra processing, the only need for a server or router to mangle the data is to allow more devices to connect, it also simplifies the network for me, but it’s not a requirement in any sense

  105. Mildew  

    Jay
    Why on earth would he need another laptop with wifi to get Ethernet?? He could either hook the Ethernet directly to the server or use the wifi off the server or another router used for wifi only. I’m confused on what I missed.

    • jay  

      a desktop also works im just talkign about a use case, wifi tether to a ubuntu machine and share that via Ethernet, simple, also i can’t tell if your talking about server in the software sense or hardware, any old pc world work, just a laptop is the easiest to manage

    • jay  

      i was talking about using a ubuntu laptop, im getting tired of correcting your assumptions when you seem to not be reading what i type,

  106. Mildew  

    Andrew
    Make sure you are going through the right apn AND spitting out the right ttl. Those are the main to things that WILL hold you up. And yes a VPN will work but you have to have it on the phone its self AND make sure that the tShe’s connection actually runs through the data connection WITH the Vpn which most phones do not do without tweaking (think tetherMe iOS)

  107. Mildew  

    Cortez
    Did you run the Vpn on the phone?? If not then that’s why it didn’t work. You had the phone outside the private tunnel. Think of it as a package being carried one says nothing and the other says it’s a package of nothing from somewhere else.

    • Cortez  

      Interesting. I did run the vpn on the phone, then I tried it on the pc. But now that you mention it, I didn’t run it on both concurrently. I found success with pdanet via usb, but it would be nice to ditch the cord. I’ll try the tunnel again and see what happens. I’ve been reading the news and how they’re planning on dropping Internet privacy laws, so now would certainly be a good time to get started with that.

  108. Mildew  

    Jay I’m in Madison county Georgia, that’s all boonies for acres and acres, sounds like congestion to me and once again you are forgetting that new phones run multiple connections so your 30, or whatever you said, would be much higher with the right set up. As far as Congestion goes and speed I can only say this I have a sever set up in my 94 caprice so I can stream music, movies, tv, and my XBone on the road. Everywhere I’ve been with at least -156db sig from Valdosta ga to aspen Colorado has gotten over 50dn and 10up but most of this was on major interstate. From the boonies to Atl I get great speeds everywhere I get decent sig. Are those the actual speeds on the phone and are you using a “true” minimal speed tester, ookala or a p2p speed test from one setup to another on the same tower?? Best way I know to test true speeds are to build to setups, set them up p2p, and run download and upload tests under minimal to crazy extreme and rigorous speed testing.

  109. Mildew  

    Jay
    With the sever I’m doing most of the processing and routing Before the “modem” you are thinking strait speed but continuously seem to forget strain on device and other variables. It’s like this; take a router, make it a gateway with dhcp, dns, etc, etc and record the speed through the device, now take the same setup and make it just an access point and let a seperate modem handle the wan traffic and record the differences. On top on that slowly go down in hardware models of said “router” and record that. No way that a phone can process as much, cleanly and as fast, as a proper built sever. Don’t even get me started on the great uses of local Dns and proxies that can keep you from having to even send out as much data in the first place….

  110. Mildew  

    Jay
    What I’m saying is he can just plug the phone into the server and ANYTHING into the back of the server and get the best connection. Using wifi just slows down the communication speed especially if the phone only has one and antenna for tx/rx

  111. Mildew  

    ASSUMING, O’ our God here we go, you meant a wireless reapeater; I don’t feel that saying it only get cuts in half with a single antennie repeater bridge is fair. The 54xx had two I know what you meant though. You mean less than one for each tx and rx. Which would mean four to be minimally optimal which would fix the theoretical “in half” but the unit would still introduce retardation as you touched base on previously. the 54xx main issue was being easily overloaded. Sad really, I still have a few with some of the old 9db antennas and huge fans laying around, he’ll actually there is one bolted above my head right now right next to the cordless phone neither of which I use anymore.

    • Jay  

      you are repeating the exact same thing i said, it has a slow cpu amd low amounts of ram, you clearly aren’t reading what i say and assuming what i mean, case and point

      wifi only slows down when its the limiting factor, a rarity even for lte (the average speed of lte on T-Mobile is around 18Mbs) the only real lose is 3-8Ms latency not a huge toll for the convenience, also for all your talk of servers you are likely confusing others, anything can be a server and you are coming off like you mean a rack mount, all i am doing is giving options to people (of which there a multiple) from the simplest of just editing the ttl of the end point, to the simplest that would allow a whole network to run off it using a router, to the most rebust a pf sense box or linux based machine, all you have done is repet somthing i said on this forum 8 months agoand saying it is the only way that makes sense not having a understanding that for most it doesn’t matter either because of usecase or because the towers in their area couldn’t even give them more if they wanted, not everyone needs a pc running 24/7 and 90% of the people that have visited this forum could never see any bandwidth benefit from running​ a server anyhow

  112. SideChula  

    How to get VPN working? I bought a subscription to Private Internet Access VPN. Successfully set up VPN on Android phone (Android 6) following their instructions where I also downloaded the OpenVPN Connect app. Works great when I turn on the VPN connection but everything behind the phone loses internet.

    I also setup their desktop application on my Windows 7 computer connected by USB tether to the phone. When I turn on the VPN connection, and fire up a browser, navigate to What is My IP? and I can see the VPN is working BUT the Router connected by ICS is unable to connect to the internet. I turn off the VPN and the Router begins working again.

    I’m close but no cigar on this. Any help is appreciated.

  113. Jay  

    i have not used any insults against you, and you are degrading your own position but lowering yourself like that, assuming while not being the perfect word is close enough, to what i was getting at, you extrapolating what i was saying while only reading half the comment

  114. @jay & @ Mildew – Let’s keep the conversation focused on helping the readers. I appreciate your contribution to the article. No doubt, you’ve greatly improved the article and helped many readers.

    I will probably go back and purge a few of the comments that don’t add to the discussion. So, let’s stay focused here and end the back and forth. 🙂

    Thanks!

    -Steve
    groovyPost

  115. Mildew  

    So the tethering works (normal throttled tethering) without the Vpn?? If so then o don’t see it being the incoming hop count. The only thing I can think of is that you need to make the hotspot data route through the regular cell data path, not just the same apn on the tether side of thing (not sure if that makes sense). In this case I think we will have to pass this on to jay as I don’t use a Vpn on any devices except iOS and the above was my issue but on iOS. The only other thing I could see is an extremely far stretch and makes no sense at all for countless reasons but if the carrier somehow lowers their out going hop count when a Vpn is involved but I use expressVPN on my gaming network so it would make even less sense for them to somehow only target PIA.

  116. SideChula  

    Regarding the VPN question I will contact PIA support. When I get it working, I’ll report back here.

  117. S  

    The first method didn’t work for me…I have an LG Aristo for T-Mobile (Not MetroPCS brand) with the $45 unlimited monthly prepaid plan and I’ve tried the first step with the dun=0 thing and I’m able to get into adb shell settings on my Windows 7 64-bit laptop via command prompt (had to install it by downloading the 1.3 version of adb tools since the latest version 1.4.3 didn’t work for me) but I get this error after I type in “settings put global tether_dun_required 0” and press enter – http://imgur.com/fQNSP9K (please ignore the blank user lol I just edited that out during screenshot) can someone tell me what I’m doing wrong? I’ve already gone past my 4GB a month limit and are now being throttled at 2g speeds as we speak, I really need someway to bypass this if it’s not too late and would appreciate some help.

    PDANet method doesn’t work for me anymore either, used it in the past along with Fiddler2 to change the user string agents in browsers but it seems T-Mobile has caught onto those tricks as well since then and I definitely cannot afford a VPN now or ever in the future.

  118. Michelle  

    From my experience, if you make mod changes AFTER u reach your limit, the changes won’t take effect till next billing cycle. May be the system already flagged your number, and will keep it on that mode till next month. This seemed to happen in my cases in the past.

  119. Iman Kamal  

    For those who failed using PdaNet, you can try connecting to VPN (psiphon free etc) before enabling PdaNet usb tether. Aftee the connection is success you can turn the VPN off at anytime.

  120. Mildew  

    S
    As long as you have a hotspot limit and not a 4g/lte limit then it shouldn’t be too late. When testing my settings I use a sim that’s already over its limit and tweak until I get lte speeds. I’ve never had it not work until reset.

  121. Rachele  

    Dear NerdGeniuses,

    Until early this morning I had a multi-year incredibly sweet deal where a friend literally loaned me their extra Verizon MiFi Jetpack which had a legacy unlimited data plan. Cost me absolutely nothing except for the occasional expensive thank-you gift.

    That ship has sailed, though, and I’m looking for a replacement. T-Mobile and AT&T have pretty good coverage where I am (I have a cell amplifier as well) and the above discussion re: bypassing any hard/soft data limits is right up my alley.

    I want to purchase a replacement plan (/and device, likely needed) today. In order to take advantage of the PDANet/other workarounds, *what is the least expensive plan I can sign up for*? Device recommendations?

    Thanks!

  122. Mildew  

    Metro 50 is nice but you don’t get over 480p even tethered, otherwise metro 60. That’s my thoughts.

  123. Hector Marando  

    For those of you using USB Tether to Windows 7 computer, I recommend updating the Network Adapter to the latest version.

    One option for updating:
    https://www.groovypost.com/howto/microsoft/make-windows-7-automatically-find-new-device-drivers/

    I did a manual update of the driver. I noted the type of Intel driver on my computer, and downloaded and installed the latest driver directly from Intel. This helped clear up weird Internet Connection Sharing issues with my attached router.

    By the way, I found it’s best to reboot the Windows 7 computer once a week. BEFORE rebooting unshare the network connection (disabling ICS). Reboot, connect phone to computer, turn on USB tether, go into Network settings on Windows 7 computer, and then share the USB network connection to the LAN.

  124. Mildew  

    Yeah, Intel is known to be finicky;about the drivers, sometimes older ones are better, sometimes newer ones are better, sometimes none of them are any good.

  125. Zach  

    I have an ASUS AC68U router flashed to merlin firmware version 380.66_4. I am tethering my phone to the router’s usb to provide a wireless hospot for two ipads and two laptops. I wrote a script for the JFSS/scripts location to set all TTL to 65:

    [code]
    #!/bin/sh
    #Set all outgoing TTL values to 65
    modprobe xt_HL
    modprobe xt_hl
    iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -j TTL –ttl-set 65
    [/code]

    I am not throttled on my linux machine and two ipads. However when I run my linux machine in Windows10, or a laptop on Windows 10, it throttles, even though if I ping the local ip address 192.168.1.77 for example, it shows TTL is 65.

    Question 1 – Anyone know why this is?

    Question 2 – Why is my ip address still showing as ‘Tmobile’ even when running PIA vpn through router as described here:
    https://helpdesk.privateinternetaccess.com/hc/en-us/articles/227852327-Setting-up-an-Asus-Router-running-Merlin-Firmware

    I’m still getting spotted as Tmobile ip address (but not throttled). If I activate PIA on my desktop, it properly disguises my ip, but then weird things happen, such as webpages sporadically not loading (timing out), and if I run speedtest, the DL portion is still fine, but the UL portion is zero or hangs indefinitely. I really want all my traffic routed through the VPN.

    Anyone know why this is happening?

    I feel like I’m so close to making this all worh it.

  126. Alex  

    Zach – I can offer my input on Question #2 although it won’t be a complete answer. I’m using the same VPN service (Private Internet Access – PIA) on a DD-WRT router (converted ASUS N66U) . I followed these instructions from PIA.
    https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/client-support/dd-wrt-openvpn

    I’ve noticed when I enable the OpenVPN Client service on the router, I must reboot the router. If I don’t, the VPN service will work for a few minutes and then the internet connection stops. I’m no expert but maybe when the router reboots a cache is cleared. No reboot means old cache with old ip info which causes a lockup a few minutes into the vpn session when the cache is accessed.

    After rebooting, if I login to PIA, it will show “You are protected by PIA”. I use a USB tethered phone into a Windows 7 Pro laptop. The PIA android app is OFF on the phone, and the tethered Win 7 machine is not running the windows program for PIA.

    DD-WRT does not seem to handle USB Tether directly into the router USB port for Android phones (I tried). As an alternative test scenario, have you tried the USB tether phone into Windows 7 (connected to the router)? I did add the below firewall command into my router (notice the difference in TTL):

    iptables -t mangle -I POSTROUTING -o `get_wanface` -j TTL –ttl-set 66

    Everything works well for me and I’m using a combination of Windows 10, Win 7, Android, iPad, Google Chromecast, and iphones behind the router with no issues. 180 GB used last month.

  127. Zach  

    Well, I solved the issue of being masked, but now I’m throttled while on the VPN connection. I have no rightly idea what is going on. Further complicating things is that in Windows, even though the TTL is 65, everything is throttled. If I tether directly to the computer, and activate the vpn, I am not throttled, but if I don’t use the vpn, then I am throttled.

    What the heck is going on?

  128. Chrissy  

    On an LG K7 w/ metropcs 8gb plan, android version 5.1.1. Had gotten by a few weeks with PDAnet+editing ttl trick until metropcs started tracking my data usage after I used up 30gb of 8gb plan and then throttled me. I managed to get around it using same trick for a few hours until I was throttled again. Anything I can do about this or do I have to wait it out until the next cycle?

  129. Mildew  

    As I stated before; with the way a VPN works, to my knowledge, you HAVE to run the VPN on the phone. Think of it this way: droid hands package to tmob and says this is mine. Tmob says thank you (normal)
    Droid hands package and says hey I’m sending this package for my buddy his information is on the sticker. (Normal tether)
    droid hands a package and says hey I have this anonymous package from an undisclosed location that I’m sending for someone else, give me the return package and I’ll make sure he gets it. (Tethered with VPN before the phone, like your situation)
    Droid hands package and says don’t open this don’t look in it don’t ask any questions just drop it at this adress and bring me back the other. (VPN on phone)

    The last option is your best scenario.

    As for the Windows Thing there could be two reasons one it’s obviously going to still be popping up as a Windows machine in every aspect except the ttl so it’s a lil obvious it’s not your phone (same reason why Windows phones use to have major issues with companies thinking they were tethered devices especially when their TTL was also 128.)

    One thing I’ll add is this:
    With iptables I always had to use the increment (inc) command on the in coming traffic from WAN (phone)

    Decrement (dec) the packages coming from lan (‘puter and other local devices)

    AND THEN

    Set the unit to spit out 65 (to be converted to 64)

    This is redundant but has not worked properly many times when I only set to 65.

  130. Mildew  

    That last one was for zack.

    This is for alex.

    Alex
    With you having the ttl set to 66 and it working in thinking that you must have another hop in line before it gets to the network server. So I feel that if you set it to 67 then you could use it indirectly with your rig like you started trying to do. Maybe even 68 because I’m still unclear as to your setup.

  131. Mildew  

    Chrissy
    You got yellow flagged because you half assed your setup instead of blocking every way possible. Now your account seems as it’s getting monitored and was manually given a red flag. I suggest you start a new account and do it right this time. the only thing that they don’t really use any more is the user-agent strings BUT IF YOU GET THEIR ATTENTION THEY STILL CAN PHYSICALLYLOOK AT THESE.

    Honestly I think if you’re going to do it go all the way or don’t even bother Because otherwise it’s just a hassle. I don’t want to think about it or have to hook it up when I get home. Everything has been set up for years now to where I just walk in the house when I get off work and start watching movies playing games or doing anything else I want to on the Internet without plugging anything in or playing with any devices/wires. I also have the same setup, but more compact, in my car and never have to play with it either.

    Everything I stated here assumes the 8GB you refer to is your hotspot allowance and not your normal 4G LTE allowance.

  132. Zach  

    @ Alex – (Sorry, I missed your response earlier). Perhaps you, or anyone else knowledgeable with iptables scripting could answer this:

    Here is the code I am using :
    [code]
    iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -j TTL –ttl-set 65
    [/code]

    Here is the code you (Alex) said you used:

    [code]
    iptables -t mangle -I POSTROUTING -o `get_wanface` -j TTL –ttl-set 66
    [/code]

    Now obviously the ttl value is different and I understand that you add one to 64 for every connection between your device accessing the web and your phone. What I don’t understand is the
    -o ‘get_wanface’ portion of the code. For example, if I try to input your code into my router, I get the following:
    [quote]
    Failed with return code 2 and error message
    get_wanface: not found
    Bad argument ‘TTL’
    [/quote]
    I’m using Merlin-WRT, not DD-WRT, so I don’t know if that makes a difference?

    @Mildew
    I was under the impression that android tethers cannot occur within the VPN tunnel. According to this article, they were using the router to accomplish this:

    https://www.vpnuniversity.com/tutorial/how-to-share-unlimited-4g-data-with-your-router

    At any rate, could you post your iptables script that works for your setup? I understand the concept of the inc and dec, but the utilizing it in coded form, I am going to screw up without a template to start from.

    Cheers to all for the help.

  133. Alex  

    <>
    Correct. For others reading this my setup is:
    DEVICE TTL
    Phone 64
    Win7 65 (registry regedit described by jcwarez above)
    DD-WRT Rtr 66

    <>
    I don’t know either. I just copied it from the below link. The only modification in the copied firewall command was changing the TTL to 66
    http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Iptables#Modifying_the_TTL

    Mildew
    <>
    Didn’t work for me. I had to follow PIA steps for using VPN on DD-WRT router. Everything I use is behind the router so I’m not too worried. I only use VPN when I’m using bittorrent. With VPN on, if I try to use Netflix, it hangs up. Other connection issues crop up with Chromecast.

    Zach
    Your VPN University link gushes about connecting a 4G phone directly to the USB port of a DD-WRT router. It doesn’t work. I spent hours trying to do this. My current setup works well and without issue. Furthermore, the article talks about using a VPN to avoid video throttling. In my case (Tmobile w/ OnePlus unlimited data plan), I see NO video throttling when I turn off the VPN. Most of the time, it’s more of a hassle to have VPN on.

    Also, I have no idea what VPN University means when discussing “bridge connection”. USB tether to Win 7 pro laptop, share the USB connection to your LAN. Even the static IP advice is wrong. My advice is to ignore that VPN University link.

  134. Alex  

    From Zach
    Now obviously the ttl value is different and I understand that you add one to 64 for every connection between your device accessing the web and your phone.

    Correct. For others reading this my setup is:
    DEVICE TTL
    Phone 64
    Win7 65 (registry regedit described by jcwarez above)
    DD-WRT Rtr 66

    From Zach
    -What I don’t understand is the -o ‘get_wanface’ portion of the code-

    I don’t know either. I just copied it from the below link. The only modification in the copied firewall command was changing the TTL to 66
    http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Iptables#Modifying_the_TTL

    From Mildew
    -As I stated before; with the way a VPN works, to my knowledge, you HAVE to run the VPN on the phone.-

    Didn’t work for me. I had to follow PIA steps for using VPN on DD-WRT router. Everything I use is behind the router so I’m not too worried. I only use VPN when I’m using bittorrent. With VPN on, if I try to use Netflix, it hangs up. Other connection issues crop up with Chromecast.

    Zach
    Your VPN University link gushes about connecting a 4G phone directly to the USB port of a DD-WRT router. It doesn’t work. I spent hours trying to do this. My current setup works well and without issue. Furthermore, the article talks about using a VPN to avoid video throttling. In my case (Tmobile w/ OnePlus unlimited data plan), I see NO video throttling when I turn off the VPN. Most of the time, it’s more of a hassle to have VPN on.

    Also, I have no idea what VPN University means when discussing “bridge connection”. USB tether to Win 7 pro laptop, share the USB connection to your LAN. Even the static IP advice is wrong. My advice is to ignore that VPN University link.

  135. Marc  

    I have three and recently they limiting my tethering as I watch Netflix 4k but is has been working for months. I installed FoxFi and seemed working but after a while, they slowed it again. I’m not sure VPN will work but maybe this is better than the one I been using as I have to pay? Thanks

  136. Alex  

    Marc – I’m not sure what you mean by “I have three”. PIA was around $40 for a year’s worth of service. Personally, I prefer flying under the radar as much as possible. Steaming Netflix in 4K mode, IMO, is begging for manual review. For the majority of users speeds from Tmobile is soft throttled after 30 GB. Smarter people than me figured out a work-around and shared it here. That’s a good thing. But don’t kid yourselves: Tmobile can see the total monthly data you’re using as well as GB per hour. If I can fly under their radar using 300 GB monthly for all my devices, it still beats a 30GB limit. Netflix 4K slurps down so much data, I would be nervous a manual review might be tripped.

    From Gizmodo
    Streaming in 1080p on Netflix takes up 4.7GB/hour. So a regular one-hour episode of something debiting less than 5GB from your allotment is no big deal. However, with 4K, you’ve got quadruple the pixel count, so you’re burning through 18.8GB/hour. Even if you’re streaming with the new h.265 codec—which cuts the bit rate by about half, but still hasn’t found its way into many consumer products—you’re still looking at 7GB/hour.

  137. Mildew  

    Alex

    Am I correct in assuming you don’t actually needs VPN on your setup?? I may have got confused (it’s not hard.) that would explain what I think I’m reading.

    Zack

    I can’t remember if want ace is the proper when you use the jab port give me time to see if I can remember to give you more info. My server doesn’t have a head right now I I’ll have to log it remotely and I’m on the other end of the property. If I remember I’ll give you more info and try to explain my tags.

    • Alex  

      Mildew – You are correct. For me No VPN most of the time. Plenty of speed and no throttling. Again, everything runs behind the DD-WRT router which mangles the TTL using the firewall command I post above.

      When I turn on the VPN, speed goes from 40 MB/s to 6 MB/s.

  138. Mildew  

    Zach

    Normally traffic is routed around the VPN through the hotspot channel. This is on BOTH iOS and android. You can work around it manually or use an adroit equivalent of “TetherMe”, as it has an option to force all traffic through different channels and vpn’s. Honestly I don’t use android as much as I once did. The incompatibility between devices was a waste of time for me when all iOS use the same stuff for the most part. When I do android now, it’s more of a set it and forget it.

  139. Mildew  

    Zach

    I’m 99% sure that wanface is the Ethernet isn’t wan interface only. I’m gonna see if I can crank up a nighthawk and see what the usb interface is named. I have been wrong before.

  140. Mildew  

    Zach

    Apologies for taking so long, I fell asleep writing a gpc script.

    I lied it is wanface. Here is my firewall commands.

    iptables -t mangle -I PREROUTING -i `get_wanface` -j TTL –ttl-set 10
    iptables -t mangle -I POSTROUTING -o `get_wanface` -j TTL –ttl-set 64
    iptables -t mangle -I POSTROUTING -o `get_wanface` -j TTL –ttl-inc 1

  141. Mildew  

    Zach

    I almost forgot. As far as the tags; let’s see how well my memory is.

    -i = Incoming interface

    -o = Outgoing interface

    -I = Insert

    -j = Jump

    -t = Table

  142. Mildew  

    Zach

    Make sure you put the firewall commands In the EXACT SAME ORDER I did. Otherwise incoming won’t properly work (usually no big deal) and your out going ttl would be off.

    In this next example “TTL” stands for whatever your native (unknown to me) ttl is, “INC” equals increase, And “=” sets/changes the value to whatever number follows after it.

    I hope this makes sense.

    Correct way with “= 64” FIRST, the sum of this equals 65:

    TTL = 64 + INC of 1

    Next is the incorrect way (out of order) with “INC” first and “=” after. The sum of the next example only equals 64 because anything before the “SET” value is mostly ignored for our purposes:

    TTL + INC of 1 = 64

    The fist line with the incoming calue set to 10 is mostly because I’ve Haden few companies send and outgoing ttl of 1 so it will only allow one hop (to the phone) and no hop after (router, ‘puter, etc, etc)

    Hope all of this helps.

  143. Mildew  

    For those worried about (as you rightfully should be) the best way to do it is to use the plan that’s supposed to only allow up to 480p (it actually allows above but scales it back to around 1080p). This plan is about $10 cheaper on metro and o forget what it is on t-mob. This goes a long way to “flying under the radar” and saves a lil money.

  144. Zach  

    @Mildew

    I had to use slightly different syntax for ASUS-Merlin-WRT

    [code]
    iptables -t mangle -I PREROUTING -i `nvram get wan0_ifname` -j TTL –ttl-set 10
    iptables -t mangle -I POSTROUTING -o `nvram get wan0_ifname` -j TTL –ttl-set 69
    iptables -t mangle -I POSTROUTING -o `nvram get wan0_ifname` -j TTL –ttl-inc 1
    [/code]

    I set it to 69 to equal 68 in order to see if it is changing the TTL. When I ping my local IP, should I not see 68 now? I still see 65 which is the default value I put into the windows registry. Even using your suggestion, I’m still getting throttled in Windows.

    I tried the free version of PDAnet, and I can get unthrottled speed, but cannot share the connection with the router in order for other devices to use it. I tried both the ‘share connection’ under the status of pdanet adapter, and trying to ‘bridge’ the connection between the pdanet adapter, and the ethernet adapter. Neither one would allow a connection to be shared.

    Any ideas, I do not understand why this is so difficult…..

    • Zach  

      I don’t know why it posted as all one line, but there are three commands in there. Also, I should have said the final TTL I expected to see when pinging my local IP is 70 (69 +1).

  145. Mildew  

    If you ping the Windows unit, though the ASUS from another PC/phone/tablet/whatever do you still get 65?? If so, id have to think about why but for some odd reason, once again if it does still ping 65, it sounds like you can just set the registry and forget it.

    This all assumes phone is direct connected to router. But if that’s true why are you setting you ttl all of the way to 70?? I forget your setup but it’s 5:36am and I need to go to sleep. Ha

  146. Mildew  

    When I said set registry I meant set it to 64. My bad need sleep.

  147. Antheros  

    I wish it worked for me..I’ve tried everything, even installing a VPN – Hide My IP and nothing seems to bypass T-Mobile’s data throttling. I don’t know what you guys are using and I don’t have/use a router, nor do I have time to mess with that kind of complicated stuff.

  148. Alex  

    Zach,

    How do you post the code syntax in your messages?

  149. Zach  

    @Alex

    The start of the coded portion must begin with the enclose block bracket [ ] with the word code written. The end of the coded portion must include a [/]

    For example

    [ code ]
    Test
    [ / code ]

    If I take out the spaces between the brackets and characters:

    [code]
    Test
    [/code]

  150. Mildew  

    Antheros

    Make sure you’re covering all the bases mentioned. If you only change the apn you’ll fail. If you only do the VPN you’ll fail etc etc you must do everything needed. TTL and VPN can be substituted for each other in most situations.

    Zack

    Any progress??

    • Antheros  

      @Mildew I did, the TTL and everything else is set accordingly, I guess none of these steps will remove the 128kbps speeds I’m experiencing.

  151. Alex  

    Zach,

    Thanks for the code bracket advice!

  152. Mildew  

    Atheros

    Elaborate because if you get more than 128 on the phone and covered all of the bases you wouldn’t/shouldn’t be having this issue. What are you running left to right and what have you done.

  153. Mildew  

    Zach

    Hopes that setup going?? I am personally intrigued by your situation and your numbers. I am stil curious when you say you’re pinging your local adressif you are using a seperate unit or if you are pinging it from the Windows PC. If it’s on the same, Windows, unit then it’s not going to be affected by the router but it sounds like you would have caught that by the way you present your self.

  154. Alex  

    Mildew – What pinging tests do you recommend?

    Setup is still working well. What follows are a few observations….

    VPN
    If you want to setup VPN on the router, read, then read again, and then hand write out these instructions when using Private Internet Access
    https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/client-support/dd-wrt-openvpn

    I say this after my refurbished ASUS RT-N66U died after 2 months. Luckily I had a donated Netgear AC1450 on hand. I flashed it to DD-WRT and set it up. When I reviewed the above link again, I caught a few implementation errors. The corrected errors meant my VPN speed was nearly as fast as no VPN.

    Quality of Service (QOS) w/ DD-WRT
    I followed the DD-WRT wiki for enabling QOS. While my measured speed was reduced, I saw no performance difference. I keep it on because others on my network can turn into bandwidth hogs (playing videos, etc) so I put myself at the front the line w/ QOS rules.

    [b]Virtual Wireless Access Point[/b]
    With DD-WRT you can create additional virtual wireless access points off one physical router. With the AC1450 I discovered it scrambles the configuration if you try to do this. Joy, oh Joy I got to setup the router twice from scratch. Restore from DD-WRT didn’t work.

    Kodi with the Exodus Add-On
    http://troypoint.com/how-to-install-exodus-on-kodi/
    Discovered this and got it working. Whoa Nellie! It’s cool to be part of the 21st century with high speed internet. Shiny objects everywhere!

  155. Alex  

    Bufferbloat – another important reason to enable QOS on your DD-WRT router (see #4 in bufferbloat explanation below)
    http://www.dslreports.com/faq/17883

    My DSL Speed Test went from incredibly poor to respectable scores.
    http://i.imgur.com/WNl1T3R.png

    DSL Speed Test
    http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest
    Be sure to click MORE and choose 4G for your network.

  156. MaxFost  

    Hi fellas , maybe I could get a little advice here . I’m on a sprint unlimited LTE plan with 10 gig hotspot .I’m wondering if I can bluetooth tether to my desktop pc and hide it . I need about 20 to 30 gig a month for my home network to survive . I have a Galaxy J3 . One is rooted atm . Does pdanet really hide the usage ? Is there any method a not as techy as ya’ll guy could use for more modest usage ? Awhile back I had pdanet setup on a tribute HD testing usb tethering . I was on ting . My testhering options vanished from the mobile networks settings . I called Ting and they investigated it and said Sprint had blocked the phone from being able to tether . That’s why I wonder if pdanet really does hide it at all . Any suggestions ? Thanks

  157. whodat  

    Thanks so much for this informative discussion. A bunch of y’all are so knowledgeable in networking, and I’ve learned a lot from this thread. TMo S8+ user (not the unlocked version–wish it was in hindsight).

    So here’s what’s worked for me: (1) TTL set to 41 hex on my laptop/pc; (2) PIA VPN. For some reason, it appears that my tether is still being tracked when I check my tether vs phone data usage. I just tried the dun=0 method to see if that will stop the tether tracking and divert it to my phone data instead. Will report back.

    • whodat  

      Also, I’ve got VPN on both the phone and the connected device (whether it is my laptop or my pc). When I turn off the VPN, data stops flowing through tether.

  158. Mildew  

    Max

    Depends on the method sprint uses. I’m not familiarized.

  159. Mildew  

    Max
    The fine print will be what makes or breaks you. Soft caps?? Throttles?? Hard caps??

    • MaxFost  

      Mildew , it’s straight LTE unlimited on the phone just like T-mobile except T-mobile might throttle you during peak hours or network congestion at about 32 gig . Sprint does the same exact thing at around 22 gig . I’m in a rural area that never seems to have a congestion problem .

      Now on the Hotstpot I get 10 gig of LTE speed which gets throttled to 2G/3G after the 10 gigs . I would like to either bluetooth or USB tether to my desktop undetected off the phones unlimited LTE data and then internet share to watch some netflix . If I could find a way to cast off the hotspot device to the tv that would work but so far I haven’t found a solution to do that . Thanks for your reply .

      • Earnest  

        Umm. PDANET has a WiFi Share option…..
        I watch Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBOGO, etc. Well over 300GB per month.

        I want to find a way to use command lines in the shell of a DD-WRT router to automatically connect to the phone via ADB like PDANet does.

  160. Mildew  

    Any ping that runs through the router. You can use another ‘puter, phone, tab, router, whatever. if you aren’t getting 64 on the device then adjust. if you have two ‘puters hooked to the same lan you can get on one and ping the adress of the other one. If you are on one PC and ping the local adress of the same PC it will just give you whatever value the PC has, because there are no hops, being its the same system/device.

  161. Mildew  

    Max
    What device??

    • MaxFost  

      Mildew ,

      Its a SM-327J Galaxy Emerge , rooted running stock 6.01 . Thanks

  162. whodat  

    Okay. So my hotspot from the s8+ does work but it continues to count toward my tether data. I did the dun=0, ttl, and vpn, but it’s continuing to count. Is the ttl on the laptop supposed to be set to 65?

  163. Thtsgoodgrimshaw  

    Hi anyone who can help. I have a top up sim, its “unlimited” internet if I top up £10 each month and I get to keep the £10. Its an old deal that isn’t available anymore. My data gets cut off totally if I use to much, normally after I use about 30gb. Its decent speeds of around 15mbs. My question is, is there anyway I can stop them cutting it off all together? When it gets capped I can’t even use the phones browser or get email’s. I get round it by buying a £5 top up then getting 500mb add on for £3 that let’s me use it normally again for a couple days (even after its used way more than 500mb) but then it gets cut off again. Also I don’t have a computer right now only have tablet, so I’m hoping for any apps for the phone that could help? Any helps appreciated.

  164. Alex  

    Recently purchased an ASUS AC1750 (RT-AC66U). Upgraded the firmware to ASUS Merlin. Attempting a DD-WRT upgrade was entirely too complicated. Now my two router network has one ASUS Merlin router and one DD-WRT router. They play nice with each other.

    In the ASUS router admin window ( General | USB Application | 3G/4G ) I noticed I could hook my Android phone directly to the router.

    After going through the setup which was painless, I did speed tests using DSL Reports and others. Noticed a BIG DECREASE in speed: 6 mb/sec download vs. 45 mb/sec download with my prior configuration. Went back to my old configuration of phone USB tethered >> Windows 7 computer with sharing USB network to LAN >> ASUS Router. All is good again in router world.

  165. Mildew  

    My guess is either a bug in the FW or jacked up settings. Atleast you have something that works.

    • Alex  

      Good thought Mildew. At some point I’ll restore the original ASUS firmware and try again. Always smart to test other options.

  166. Flex  

    OK. So I’m using iOS 10.3.3, Windows 10 and Metro 50 plan.
    Changed TTL to 65 and confirmed change.
    Activated User Agent switcher in Chrome.
    Activiated VPN in iOS.

    However, can’t change APN settings. They are not available to edit on the iPhone. Even if the phone was unlocked, the carrier bundle settings preloaded into iOS still activate when that carrier’s SIM is inserted.

    Does not work. What can I do differently?

    • Alex Ramsay  

      [Does not work. What can I do differently?]

      Buy an Android phone? This entire thread is geared towards Android owners.

  167. Jake  

    I’m confused. Why would a VPN hide your data usage? The same amount of data is being transferred over internet to whatever VPN server you are using The only difference is Tmobile can’t read the traffic in the data stream because it’s encrypted. However they can still see how much data is transferred between the phone and VPN server which is counted towards data plan. However if you could run a VPN server on phone and client on tethered device youd effectively mask the fact that you are tethering. Perhaps I’m missing something?

  168. whodat  

    **limited understanding disclosure**

    i think some ISPs have something called “deep packet inspection” that can read the data flowing from device to device. a vpn would encrypt the packets that prevents an ISP from knowing whether data is from a PC, phone, or other device. i don’t think a vpn alone can achieve the objective of this thread, but i digress.

  169. Flex Tterlikkis  

    A lot of inspiration also came from @Mildew. Who uses the same plan and has said experience with not only android, yet iOS. There’s no such thing as luck, yet perhaps @Mildew (or others) perhaps might have tips to the indigent.

  170. Jay Kay  

    Please don’t slaughter me for not understanding a lot of what’s said here, but, how do I hide my tethering usage from Three mobile when connecting my Android phone to my PS4? I’ve downloaded pdanet+, and select ‘hide tethering’, but when I connect to my PS4 and check on data usage it’s still showing as increasing. It does state that the carrier may have a different figure than the one showing on my device, so maybe it IS hidden? Or should the number NOT be rising on my device at all? Please help me hide it somebody!

  171. Mildew  

    @FLEX

    you should be able to push a new carrier bundle with a higher number through iTunes I believe. This will be one you change any setting in. This will cause the signing to become invalid and because it will be on a no. Jailbroken device it will read it as corrupted and discard it. This will cause it to revert to the “unknown” carrier bundle. From there you should have the settings you seek.

  172. Mildew  

    As for the android comment;
    No just no. Thing is that even if you get a quality phone you really have to research it and the builds carefully. The reason I say this is because each android device is regulated by the same standards as with an apple. What I mean by this is each os is built for each device and some measures and many programs may not work in said device. With iOS if you can get it jailbroken you are set. If not you can still do it but it isn’t as cut and dry; with VPN and all.

  173. Mildew  

    As for the question about why an encrypted tunnel or VPN works is not because it hides the amount of data but what the data is. Peoples biggest misunderstanding of this page is that it’s 2+ parts not just one. You are ALSO routing all of the data through the regular cellular data channel this is the purpose of changing the apn. Cell companies expect this at this point so they inspect the data flowing through this channel to make sure you aren’t cheating them. This is the purpose of changing/hiding the header information including, but not limited to, the ttl (time to live) value. hope that helps as it was just a light breeze over but should give you the gist of it.

  174. Flex  

    @Mildew

    Which carrier bundle are you using? For me it says MetroPCS 28.3 under Settings–>General–>About–>Carrier

    I pushed via iTunes a new carrier bundle with a higher number from 28.3 (MetroPCS) to 28.4 (TMobile_US_iPhone.ipcc) and there are still no APN settings visible. I only got the indication from iTunes that it updated the carrier file. The only indication from the phone itself was it now asking to update new carrier settings, however it still said MetroPCS 28.3. From what you’re saying, it seems I just need the unknown.bundle to get the APN settings editable.

    What .ipcc file do you recommend and/or are you using, where can I get it? Still don’t get how you’re tethering on the 50 plan with no iPhone JB. Again, I’ve been able to change ttl, switch user-agent, add vpn in ios…just not change the apn settings like you have. The phone is locked but I’m not sure that matters.

  175. Mildew  

    It’s because the 28.3 is still on the phone so when it ignores 28.4 it finds 28.3. Unknown comes in last. Make a bundle with the exact name and everything as the one you have now and it SHOULD over retire it. It’s been a LONG time since I have done it because I’m jailbroken on everything I own.

  176. Mildew  

    And wait. You wrote that you pushed a tmobile carrier bundle. That won’t work. When it reads the sim it is going to look for the metro one. Have you tried just renaming the tmobile one to the metro one?? If that doesn’t work, which it should, change the number to that of the current one it with the way they work at w top level it should only be an issue if the name. Think of it as any saved document; if you save another of the same exact name it should over write it and for these purposes void the sig causing it to revert to the unknown bundle. Putting anything other than a bundle with the metro name is going to just use memory but never even be paid attention to by the system unless later on you get a tmobile sim.

  177. Mildew  

    I make my own bundles.

  178. Mildew  

    If you ever do go jailbroken or if you are on a 6 or newer you can use the VoLTE and your internet won’t drop for calls. Just a side note.

  179. Flex  

    @Mildew

    I used setPrefInt carrier-testing 1 for itunes (run command and via elevated command prompt, to which it opens itunes automatically with the command prompt way), connected device, selected the ipcc file and itunes says its updating the file. Yet on the device after reboot it still says the same metro 28.3. So I don’t think it’s actually pushing through.

    I also tried the tmobile higher 28.4 ipcc, renamed it to the metro file name format and still nothing. I’ve been able to change ttl, user-agent, vpn.. still missing that important step of being able to edit asn.

    Perhaps you could upload via google drive one of your recommended bundles and post the google drive file link here (and any other suggestions on getting it to push). That might help with resolving this important last step on a non JB. Any other suggestions welcome, too.

  180. Mildew  

    All of my carrier files have broken signitures. are the bundles in edited and for your model?? Can’t remember model names but they go something like n52, n56 etc etc it’ll be listed in the carrier files. I originally was trying to get you to void the signatures and over right the current one but, assuming these are completely un-touched files, I’m a lil list at the moment as you shouldn’t have any problems pushing a valid bundle. Where are you getting the bundles from?? There is a web database through apple that is actually the site that iTunes gets it’s bundles from. I can’t think of it at the moment and am half asleep. You should be able to get valid bundles from there. It really sounds like your carrier files are being ignored due to incompatibility or currupt signatures. First you need to find a valid bundle for your phone and get it to take. After that we can worry about breaking the Sig. See when you break the Sig it ignores the file unless jailbroken/tweaked. This is what is happening to you. This WOULD be what we want so it will revert to the unknown bundle but the old carrier files are still on the phone. As I can’t think of a way to delete them off of a caged phone, the only thing I can think of is to overwrite it THEN currupt the Sig because your current bundle will then be gone, due to being over written. Does any of this make sense?? The objective is to get rid of the old bundle first.you should be able to find the same or a newer bundle in that data base, it’s just really confusing at first to read it all. If I get time I will see if I can find the data base. Right now I don’t have any of the info around me and a lot on my plate. Hope this helps and will try to check in when available.

  181. Flex  

    @Mildew

    It’s the se model. Currently on metro 28.3. I’m looking at the apple source for bundles and they’re only sorted by bundle version number. And from there, the link URLs have the ios version and carrier name. I’m not really sure which bundle to push. If that’s known, it might help and voila.

  182. Mildew  

    Good to see some foot work. Do you have a way to view the carrier bundle files?? If so you just need to find the 3 digit model code for the SE and make sure it’s included in the bundle. When you view it there will be the carrier.plist that is the generic carrier settings but at the bottom it has settings for each individual model. The exact same carrier bundle that you have now should work though, although a newer one, for the model, should work. the SE is funny and is like a 6 with a 5 body. That being said I’m not sure how new you can go. On my 5 it wouldn’t except past 24.x??, not sure it’s been a while, without tweaking. Sadly you can’t tweak the files at all. On my 6s it used 28.x??. I’m really guessing on the numbers because it’s been a minute and all of my phones say 100.x.x now so I don’t risk a higher version over writing it. first step is to figure out why it won’t except your bundle. Quick question of curiosity though. Can you tell me if the SE has native VoLTE/Vo4g unlocked?? Like when you are on a call does it still say lte in the corner ever?? Or just gprs or something other than lte/4g. I ask because the 6 and above can and bellow con’t but the SE is a bastardized model. I’m 99% sure it does but I’ve always wondered as I avoid it like the plague. Lol

  183. Mildew  

    If we can figure out how to get the phone to except a carrier bundle then we should be able to currupt it and use the unknown but until we can get the phone to except it we are in a intersection of confusion. I really don’t have a lot of time to find a caged SE and experiment but there shouldn’t be much to this. There is something simple going on here. Are you positive that it’s even actually pushing to the phone?? Well of course you aren’t positive but do you think it is??

  184. Mildew  

    I wrote except instead of accept. Dear me o my at the typos.

  185. Flex  

    @Mildew

    it appears looking at the apple bundle source… there are not multiple versions (for specific model phones) of each bundle version. and to answer question it says lte in corner. if you can, just tell me which bundle to push and I’ll push it. then hopefully voila.

  186. Mildew  

    My honest guess is you have the newest one for your device. so you need to find that one. Once you find it we can destroy it. They are for multiple devices,kinda, they have different decreperanies in a full bundle within the overrides section. As I think about it though you’re caged so when you hooked it up to iTunes IF there was a newer version that you could use it would have prompted you to update. Unless that is piping up then I’m sure that you are using the newest one that you can use unedited. Can you find that one??

  187. Mildew  

    It’s a two part process.
    First we get the ability to push/overwrite the current bundle. Once that is done we can currupt that file and push it on the phone. That should cause the signatures to void and then once pushed to the phone, overwritting the current bundle, it should automatically revert to the unknown bundle because it can’t find a valid uncorrupt carrier bundle relative to your SIM card. It takes more though on caged i’s because there are so little options.

  188. Flex  

    @Mildew

    Hey there. looking at the apple source for bundles, 28.3 is latest for metro. not sure what you mean. if you’d like to take a look at the apple bundle source and just simply recommend the bundle to use that might help.

  189. Mildew  

    That’s what I was saying is u think you are in the newest one. Do you have a way of editing your bundle before pushing it?? This is so we can break it.

  190. Flex  

    I’m not sure if there are any tools available anymore to do it. I’ve tried ipcu and ibackupbot. And I think the phone continues to auto update to the next bundle as they come out. Since you said you make your own bundles, perhaps you could just upload one to google drive and post it here. That might work.

  191. Mildew  

    Like I said before my bundles aren’t signatures aren’t valid but it may come to something like that to break yours but before we get crazy. Let me see what I can find to edit it on your machine. Assuming you have a ‘puter what are you running?? It may take me a minute but I’ll figure you out. I woke up with a major issue myself I’m working on. As far as the update it will Be asking you to update from now on, sometimes twice in a row, and if you ever do let it update by mistake, or whatever, you will have to redo your work. It mostly does it when you go to general settings or connect. Just don’t click it. You won’t have much choice because you aren’t jailbroken. We are working within the cage and it’s never quite fun. Lol once you can break the signature on the bundle you have, as long as it’s the same one, it should overwrite your current one and cause it to ignore it. I understand you headache but at least you aren’t at it alone as I. I’ll try to get back soon. I do most of my editing on my phone and rarely on a ‘puter but I’m jailbroken and that’s an option for me but I doubt for you. Not a roadblock just a detour for our means of completion. Same rules apply just a different method to reach the goal. See if we can’t get you rolling soon. It will help when my mind isn’t split between your work and mine lol. Alright I’m done rambling now, my mind is all over the place at the moment and haven’t slept, I apologize. Have a good day.

  192. Flex  

    I’m using windows10

  193. 84Optimus  

    Was using the ADB fastboot TTL 65 etc and dun 0 trick with the Galaxy S7 Nougat through T-mobile.. However I just got the Unlocked Galaxy Note 8.. When i go to run ADB shell/ global tether_dun_required 0 I get not recognized as an internal or external command etc.. it mentions something about daemon tools in the command prompt dialogue.. If I enter ADB SHELL all caps it drops down a bunch of code in the run command prompt.. If I enter adb shell lower case it says error: device not found null… no idea why it’s not working. I have the phone plugged into the PC with USB debugging enabled. If anyone has any detailed suggestions it would be much appreciated Thanks!

    • whodat  

      i have the s8+ and the dun trick does not work for me. i use ttl, apn, and vpn. i imagine that the note8 is not much different than the s8, so you should try those to see if it works.

  194. 84Optimus  

    I guess i just don’t understand why the dun method was working for the s7 but not the note 8.. i have the TTL set. I can use pdanet, it works fine at masking.. but I would much rather just be able to flip a switch on my phone and go about tethering wirelessly

  195. 84Optimus  

    Actually I just gave it another try and so far from what I can tell i got it working!

    • bob  

      hi can i use dun metod on sony xz to hide hotspot usage?

  196. Mildew  

    @FLEX

    I still have a major issue of my own to figure out so I haven’t gotten around to anything for you yet but I came across this https://modmyi.com/forums/t-mobile/822055-revert-14-0-carrier-bundle-restore-personal-hotspot.html and remembered about you and had a few thoughts. The page is just explaining the same thing I did about breaking the sig.
    DO NOT USE THE BUNDLE/.plist FROM THAT PAGE as it is old and outdated but maybe he explained it better. I also know that last I checked I was able to use iBoot Bot?? Not sure on the name. To modify the bundle causing the digs to become invalid this was on iOS but I’m sure it would still work but if you’re going that route you can, most likely, just delete the carrier bundle. Which will most likely cause it to revert to the unknown bundle which allows apn editing and native hotspot function.

    My apologies on the delayed help I’m just really caught up on an issue of my own.

  197. Mildew  

    *iBackup Bot

    I believe that was the name.

  198. Mildew  

    There is a comment before my last one awaiting moderation. You should see it soon.

  199. Flex  

    i’ve tried apple ipcu and ibackupbot. These tools don’t work anymore for editing apn because of apple subsequent patches to prevent.

  200. Mildew  

    @flex

    That’s the point…. If the file is still there just delete it OR edit the apn and it will make it invalid and it can’t use it. Apple patched it so if you edit the carrier bundle that it will break the signature and ignore it. If it ignores it it will revert back to the unknown bundle like I’ve been trying to explain as well as what the guy is talking about in the link I posted. Alternatively I believe you could just delete the carrier bundle out of your back up all together and when you restore it it should be gone. Editing it causing it to void the signature has the same effect. Make sure you never ok a carrier update or it will download and fix the carrier bundle. Make sure you’re in the right carrier bundle folder as there is the one the phone uses and there is a copy of the list on the phone as well. Unless if something has changed, and I see no reason to change it as we aren’t really doing a security work around. Either way, I will be doing this sometime soon myself after ios11 roles out in like an hour. I’m gonna do some device testing and will have to do this myself also. Let me know how it all goes for you until I can put in some leg work myself.

  201. Mildew  

    @Flex

    If for some odd reason iBackup doesn’t give you access (I don’t think you need the paid version anymore to get to the carrier bundle), because apple hid it in 10.x.x (highly doubt due to it already being patched) then not all is lost. We just have to find something to edit the bundle with before you push it, like the guy in the post did. I can’t remember what I used to do it though. otherwise AS A LAST RESORT you can sideload a few tether apps that will tether through the data apn and set up an ad-hoc network or a proxy to complete this usually they the ones you will find are wifi as-hoc network links but a few actually tether with a cord. Honestly I would avoid this unless all other means fail or you really need stuff like VoLTE (VoLTE might actually be included in the newer unknown bundles but I doubt it as I can’t fathom a way to add the settings without editing the bundle) or any features that may require the actual current bundle. This is an option though. I can’t remember if you were using a ‘outer or router but as long as you could set it up on the router/’puter that is an option of resort. Honestly I’d go the unknown bundle route and if I didn’t like it I’d worry about side loading your apps. As far as iBackup there are still some cool things you can do with it, as of 9.x.x (sure it still works on present updates), you can edit your touch pop ups use the silent switch for things like rotation lock and a few other decent “tweaks” I believe you can edit font packages as well as many other things, some of which are still being discovered so keep an open mind on the possibilities.

  202. Flex  

    Before apple patched it from working, the ibackupbot method called for editing the preferences.plist file to change the apn settings.

    http://www.redmondpie.com/enable-personal-hotspot-wi-fi-tethering-on-iphone-for-free-no-jailbreak-required/

    Step 7 at above link is no longer possible with the patch apple did a long time ago.

    I’m not sure if deleting the “preferences.plist file” would revert to the unknown bundle. I can’t locate “carrier.plist” in the program.

    We’re all hoping you have better luck. Please let us know. Thank you.

  203. Mildew  

    @FLEX

    So I can confirm that pushing Athens same bundle, but currupted, still makes it revert to the unknown bundle. I downloaded the new carrier bundle for ios11 (metro 29.0) used another device that was jail broken to edit/corrupt the factory bundle then I pushed it on the ios11 device. This caused it to revert like we wanted. I’m gonna try to find a way for you to edit you’re bundle without the need to find someone with a jailbroken device. If you don’t mind using a WiFi tether for now you can sideload one of the hundreds of apps that make it to where you can tether through an ad-Hoc connection. This would make it run through the correct apn and keep all of your fancy features like volte, vowifi, etc, etc that the unknown bundle doesnt support. There are also a small amount of wired versions but are extremely hard to find when needed. This could at least get you going for now. Downside is that you would have to run it to your windows machine so you can”adjust” (mangle) the ttl but then you can also use ice to share it from there. Not the smoothest method but it would work ATLEAST for now. Apologies for my many delays and not being able to help a lot at the moment but I’m doing some experiments of my own and want to keep my mind focoused on that as much as possible for the time being. I will help you though.

    • Flex  

      A couple questions came to mind..

      ~How did your jailbroken device corrupt a carrier bundle (to then copy to other device)?
      ~What app would you recommend to sideload for usb or wifi?
      ~Since you’ve already edited/corrupted the metro bundle for iso11, why not upload and post it? Since the bundle versions are by ios#, not device.

      It would be nice to edit a bundle myself, yet until that’s realized these 3 answers might help us in the meantime.

  204. Mildew  

    @Flex

    I downloaded the file on the jb. Edited the apn then sent it to my ‘puter and pushed it.

    As far as side loading the app for you I would google it. There are a lot of WiFi ones with write ups floating and I’ve Had a usb one before that’s floating out there that’s similar to what easytether does on android. I haven’t had a need to side load one but like twice before I could get a jailbreak. As far as uploading it I’ll see what I can do I updated one device and now my tried and true 5s is acting like it’s dead and won’t go past the logo, only when plugged in, without dying and relooking. Not sure if it’s the battery or just done for. Either way I’ll see if I can find a way to pull mine off, doubtful, or make another one, first chance.

  205. Flex  

    Yes, the file you pushed to the other phone should solve this as soon as you may post it. Thank you.

  206. Flex  

    @Mildew

    You might already know this, just wanted to make it easy. If you upload the file to google drive, you can right-click on it and copy the private URL when you get a chance. Thank you.

  207. onix  

    Flex & Mildew,

    Similar situation as Flex’s. My specs:

    o T-Mobile One (limits WiFi hotspot to 512Kbps DL/UL)
    o iOS 9.3.5
    o iPhone 5 (non-JB)
    o PIA VPN
    o regedit add for DefaultTTL REG_DWORD to 65 (41 in hex) on Win 10 Pro
    o Schlarb’s User Agent Switcher add-on in FF 56.0.2
    o Used unlockit.co.nz website to upload APN for US TMo LTE

    This didn’t work… eager for suggestions. Also not sure how to sideload.

  208. MILDEW  

    Forgot all about this.
    @Onix your issue is the same as flex.
    You’re gonna have to get a broken bundle in your phone. I don’t know if I’ll have the time. There was a Mac program that could modify them still. It is actually bundled on OS X I can’t remember. There are a lot of new jailbreaks out right now but most are either R.C.’s or below. Officials will be out soon. That’s mostly directed @flex.

  209. MILDEW  

    @onix
    Actually you can always just use the Phoenix jailbreak. You said iPhone 5 which is a 32bit. I’m pretty sure of this. If it’s a 5s then you can’t because it’s a 64bit. I’m sure you can find info on canijailbreak.c0m

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