Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

Today when I tried the Wifi Hotspot with my laptop, I got forwarded to the T-Mobile web site telling me to sign up for the Wifi hotspot service. Same result when I tried USB tethering with the laptop.

I use the hotspot or tethering a few times a week, so I think this is something new T-Mobile US has put in. I thought they asked the user to sign up only if they're using Android ICS, seems now they're moving to other platforms.

Anyone has seen this also? and know any workaround?

The block seems only on web only, using user-agent likely, as I can still use other data applications (also strangely enough some google sites still working, like search and image).

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

Yes, Last week I was in Atlanta and was using my N9 as a Hotspot device to connect my laptop. It worked fine for 3 days and I guess from 20th Sept it stopped working.:(
It started showing the Contact Tmobile page..

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

No, it's the system detecting your regional options to comply with the FCC rules related to electromagnetic radiation, which are stricter in US than in Europe. You can bypass it by manually doing:

As root, before trying to start the hotspot. It has nothing to do with T-Mobile specifically (except that it probably detects the country), and you don't need to pay them anything.

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

Will someone please explain where this "ad-hoc is now illegal" BS is coming from?!? I went straight to the horse's mouth at www.fcc.gov, and not only is there nothing there about it being prohibited, they actually talk about it like it's just another way to do wi-fi (which it is). As a ham radio operator, I have to know about exposure guidelines as well, and there is nothing about this WRT any sort of modulation or transmission modes.

As they say on Wikipedia, [citation needed].

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

Well there was a statement released by Nokia early on that due to the exposure guidelines exceeding those set by the FCC marginally; ad-hoc had to be disabled on the n9...

Its not about ad-hoc being illegal just that a ad-hoc enabled n9 was exceeding the guidelines...

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

It's definitely not that issue. I've been using the Spot On with the Wifi Hotspot on T-Mobile US very since the Spot On is available many months ago. It has working perfect until today.

As I've mentioned I could uses some data applications on the laptop, including SVN, but not going to most web sites using IE or Firefox on the laptop which will have the T-Mobile BS coming up.

The Android tablet (Asus Transformer), seems still works fine with N9 hotspot including the browser, email and Play Store, so the problem is only the web browser on laptop, to be specific Windows 7.

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

If something is working, then obviously WiFi itself is working. You need to figure out why some ports work, and others don't.

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

Specific Absorption Rate (SAR):

http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/spec...lar-telephones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_absorption_rate

In short, EU sets acceptable SAR to <= 2 W / kg taken over 10 grams of tissue.
US sets it to <= 1.6 W / kg taken over 1 gram of tissue.

So N9 with ad-hoc WiFi must have fallen in between these two.

See: http://discussions.nokia.com/t5/Maem...1210195#M29219

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

Interesting: so, in theory, this would seem to indicate that the measurement methodologies give different numbers, or simply that that 400 mW of power was enough to make it legal one place rather than the other. Again, though, I don't understand why ad-hoc mode vs infrastructure would make enough difference with SAR since it should be the same transmitter running the same 802.11x protocol (signalling/Layer-1/2 wise) . This is just so weird, and googling comes up empty for specific numbers or explanations.

P.S. I don't buy into the whole SAR business, anyway, but I readily admit I'm biased. :)

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

I could be wrong, but I doubt it is any thing to do with this.

Does your contract with your network operator allow you to tether?
They most likely do not, and so is the reason you are being redirected to a sign up page to pay extra for tethering support.

It takes time and resources for some network operators, like mine, to detect that you are tethering, once they have flagged you as potentially doing so they do more frequent checks on your internet activity.

Most commonly they check the browsers user agent, but the most effective way is by looking at the Time To Live (TTL) field of the packets; if you are tethering then this field will be +1 more than it should other wise be.

Try spoofing your desktop browsers user agent to that of the N9's stock browser, and by increasing the TTL as described here for Windows users, or for Linux/MAC simply, changing the value within this file: nano /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_default_ttl to one greater, and then retry tethering.

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

I actually didn't have such problems after applying the workaround. On the other hand I rarely use it, so may be that detection never kicked in. If they do such a thing - it's really mean, and nasty of them. Plan already includes payment for traffic, and whether packets come from the handset of from a device attached to it should not be their business.

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

I agree with you to an extent, but mobile broadband is a different ball game compared to your home connection.

The infrastructure is vastly smaller and would literally buckle under strain if everyone were to tether and so able to consume more bandwidth so easily.

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

I had the same issue weeks ago while using my Nexus 7 via bluetooth PAN. I worked around the issue by using Opera Mobile instead of Chrome. They must filter by agent string.

Luckily for me it stopped filtering the Chrome user agent all of a sudden. Maybe the proxies are set up different dependent on the location of the towers.

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

I think that's what they want everyone to believe, but really - there is more than enough bandwidth for everyone, and they just simply need another pretense to squeeze your money. Especially in US where the whole situation is pretty sick because of the lack of competition in general (even in the landline Internet):

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily...130914030.html

The mobile providers situation isn't any better.

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

They are filtering by user Agent. I heavily use the wifi hotspot feature and tether my n900 to my laptop and noticed this happening around June. My browser of preference is Google Chrome so this message kept on popping up.

If you access secure https webpages on Chrome, you will bypass the "Buy our wifi hotspot tmobile service" page.

Alternatively, I switched to using Firefox which isn't being "user-agent blocked" so I'm free to do any sort of browsing there.

Firefox, Opera, and IE 9 (don't) seem to not be blocked, so use those instead.

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

A few months ago I changed my T-mobile plan to a pre-paid one. Spot On and Wifi Hotspot worked before the change but didn't after I tried it on the new plan. I noticed they had a tethering add-on for pre-paid so figured they had spotted me.

I just tried it again now for fun and was able to connect my N900 to it and load email/TMO so it definitely still works, despite my previous experience.

Re: Tethering and Wifi Hotspot web access blocked on T-Mobile US
 

I've never bumped into this, but then again, I tunnel through SSH (to add encryption and compression) to my server running squid as a caching/ad-filtering/anonymizing proxy that sets my user-agent to "By allowing me access, you waive all rights and policies regarding my access." :)

Of course, just the tunneling through SSH probably keeps them from figuring out I'm tethering (and I don't do it very often).