AT&T will probably get a ping as soon as you open up webtop on 4g.

now im guessing if you use wifi there will be no tethering required

 

As I do not have a fully functional Android phone yet, can AT&T fins out you are tethering with a sideloaded app if you keep your data usage normal? Maybe like staying at around 5GB a month since I am on unlimited. Does anyone ace experience with this?

 

i guess all carriers only look at the top bandwith-users, because its too much work to look at all.

ans, as Marc says, the Webtop is sending a ping to AT&T... it is not much work to make an own webtop-app for the atrix yourself...

 

The new ROMs leaked from Samsung for the Galaxy S do a check-in with the carrier before you turn on tethering. The same thing is done with the new iOS on the iPhone. I'm assuming the same thing will be done on all new phones. In other words, when launch the firefox browser it will do the check-in and tell you to get a tethering plan if you don't already.

 

I would guess it is probably the same way AT&T could tell if you are using a smartphone and would add a data plan to your service.

 

The only way that AT&T knows you have a smartphone is based on the IMEI number. Since the dock doesn't have it's own cellular connection it doesn't have an unique IMEI.

 

Theres probably a good chance that we can get away w/o paying the tethering fee. Just like how I get away w/o paying the tether fee when i use wifi tether on android and ios haha!

 

No true. You don't need the EMEI.
You can track from 3G and even Wi-Fi. We do this on our work issued phones and laptops.

All you need to do is set up a system-wide proxy. If the pref file is read-only, the user can't circumvent it. Even if they are surfing from home, a public wifi hotspot, it must go through our company proxy. I assume, AT&T would do the same thing if they wanted to lock it down.

It is just a configuaration text file.
Since in dock mode, it loads up a new OS -webtop. Once in webtop, you have no idea if the OS is locked down and set-up for proxy traffic. No way around it.


I know for a fact VZW is now NATting the 3G network, I wouldn't be surprised if they did a proxy as well.

 

You are correct, what I should have said is that in the past, AT&T has used the EMEI to tell what type of device you have and how to bill it.

 

Then they will probably use both. The proxy to find out it is being used and the IMEI to sock you with a bill.

 

Of course with root, everything changes.

 

If the webtop environment gets hacked, then I think we can get around the tethering requirement.
I really hope webtop gets hacked so I can run a stripped down Ubuntu distro on it, how hot would that be?

 

It could be as simple as a browser string. Probably not but maybe.