Tethering: Why does VZW care when what I see on laptop is same as phone?

[boo99]

hi

great forum i found here.

what im trying to say is..........I go on the SAME sites on my droid x as I do when Im tethering to laptop.

Only diff is I see a larger screen, the date TX and RX is the same amount so why would VZW care about tethering at all if you do the SAME thing on the laptop as your cell?

Also its better for my eyes !

 

[Elkay]

It's what more you can do off the phone. They're worried about people torrenting, or constantly using it as a replacement for regular broadband. There was some kid I saw that posted he was up to over 60 gigs one month because he was using it constantly for XBox Live.

 

[JP 5.56]

my 20mb down connection is even flaky with xbox live sometimes. I can't imagine trying to use a 3g connection for it????

 

[Elkay]

Haha yeah I'd never do that. The latency for FPS must be awful. That's a kid I wouldn't want on my team.

 

[boo99]

It's what more you can do off the phone. They're worried about people torrenting, or constantly using it as a replacement for regular broadband. There was some kid I saw that posted he was up to over 60 gigs one month because he was using it constantly for XBox Live.

hey there, thank you for the speedy reply.

that is what I thought really. Kiddies that stay on there with like you said, 60g...........60 GIG! S--T........

now thats the whole reason carriers need to police the tethering---->Abuse.

dam shame.

So if I just do it for what I normally use it for on the PDA Net, will it be cool? I know it violates TOS but I only used barely 1G in 3 weeks.

Also very interesting that PDA Net is on the Market but VZW doesnt technically allow it.

My guess is they have to say its not allowed to avoid the problem you said above; some kiddie using it for x box live....how lame.

 

[FnTwizted]

Its all about bandwidth my friend. Something like that is fine but, you have people that abuse it like using it to play their xbox or playstation, or even stream things like netflix. And what that does to the bandwidth is kill the speeds for the rest of us. What makes me laugh is people that use it for playing xbox or ps3 this wasn't really meant for that kind of streaming, stop being cheap and get a local high speed internet carrier and if you can't afford it why do you have a smartphone.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

 

[Elkay]

General rule of thumb is if you don't abuse it, they won't care. They *could* track certain locations/ports/etc to find people tethering, but it's not worth their time and money. It's easier to just look for people using way too much bandwidth and flag the offenders that way. When I was on AT&T the unspoken cap was about 2GB before they started taking notice.

 

[boo99]

Its all about bandwidth my friend. Something like that is fine but, you have people that abuse it like using it to play their xbox or playstation, or even stream things like netflix. And what that does to the bandwidth is kill the speeds for the rest of us. What makes me laugh is people that use it for playing xbox or ps3 this wasn't really meant for that kind of streaming, stop being cheap and get a local high speed internet carrier and if you can't afford it why do you have a smartphone.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

I guess I should have said in the OP ----

Will I get slammed with charges for the tethering I do to check e mail, pay bills and etc.

I guess VZW is looking for HUGE amounts of GBs and not the small amount I use be in on the cell or laptop.


I know the Mobile Hotspot was separate when I briefly had a Palm Pre Plus.....it would show up separately under the data.

Can they even tell then you tether with PDA Net vs viewing web on the phone?

Odd the offer the 2mb Mobile Hotspot plan for 20.00 on the Droid X but PDA Net is free in the market.

 

[Elkay]

If they did deep packet inspection, sure. They could see the user agent reported by your browser and know you're not running IE/FF/Chrome on your DX.

Are they going to do that, though? No.

 

[boo99]

If they did deep packet inspection, sure. They could see the user agent reported by your browser and know you're not running IE/FF/Chrome on your DX.

Are they going to do that, though? No.

hmmm ok. maybe i should just get the 20.00 mobile hotspot thing before im charged for an inspection ----lol

 

[Darkseider]

It's a scam. Plain and simple. The kiddies on XBL or PSN, etc... are a non-factor and just a freakin' excuse. Someone mentioned streaming Netflix. Last I checked that is coming to Android. For that matter VCast video uses a ton of bandwith. What about the Blockbuster app on the DX? Those movies can't be tiny and if they expect you to download them only via wifi what the hell is the point of offering the damned app/service if they are going to be capping? All in all it is just another way for VZW to screw its' customers out of more money. To say or think otherwise is foolish.

 

[Uprangewilly]

It's a scam. Plain and simple. The kiddies on XBL or PSN, etc... are a non-factor and just a freakin' excuse. Someone mentioned streaming Netflix. Last I checked that is coming to Android. For that matter VCast video uses a ton of bandwith. What about the Blockbuster app on the DX? Those movies can't be tiny and if they expect you to download them only via wifi what the hell is the point of offering the damned app/service if they are going to be capping? All in all it is just another way for VZW to screw its' customers out of more money. To say or think otherwise is foolish.

Darkseider, you just hit the nail on the head! Im sick of all the misinformed people on this forum spouting things like "all those stupid kids on xbox live/ psn are using up all the bandwith and ruining it for the rest of us". Im not a kid, 31, but I like to play on xbox live and let me enlighten you folks that it only uses about 25 Mb per hour with voice. So how is that being a bandwith hog? I can go on youtube and use 25Mb in about 10 minutes.

And before you start with "well why dont you just get a wired line?". Hah, I wish I could. It seems that alot of people just assume that every American can get DSL or Cable internet. Well I cant, its not on my road and probably never will be so tethering my cell is my only option besides dial-up or satelite and neither are comparable to 3G.
Now im not going to act like I know anything about tachnology cause I dont. I got my droid about three weeks ago so im still very new to smart phones, 3G, tethring and all that but all I care about is that I can actually use the internet for its intended purpose and play a little xbox live from time to time. Hell in the three weeks I have owned my phone I have only used a total of 2Gb.

Tethering is something that is going to be more and more common for people. Especially for people that dont have any other options. And wait til LTE rolls out, you think a lot of people tether now? And yes xbox live is very playable on 3g, I rarely experiance lag and im usually positive with my k/d ratio on MW2. Then again I dont think many people use the towers around my house all that much so your results may vary.

 

[Elkay]

I agree that for normal play, XBL is not that huge a hog on bandwidth. Start downloading movies via netflix or game demos, though, and it really starts adding up, especially when you see many game demos for the 360 at over 1GB alone. At the rate games come out, and the fact that the market is slowly moving to digital downloads even for full games, the situation will only worsen.

I do feel for the people in rural areas that have no wired broadband option.

 

[arabstar1982]

I was just curious to see how well the hotspot connection would be with my laptop, so I connected to it and when I tried to open a website on my laptop, it sent me to verizon's site telling me about the 3g hotspot plans. That normal or just because I dont have a hotspot plan, and I don't plan on getting one because as little as I would need, if at all, isnt worth the $20 to me, especially since I either always have my laptop with me that is set up for wi fi connections, I am at home, or somewhere without my laptop and the phone's internet will do. just curious about it though