Oh hell yeah, this is my topic. I really really really hate Comcast's poor reliability and cost in my area (seriously you can see me bitch on usenet today: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.online-service.c... ) so I rely on a stack of various LTE providers that are comparable in speed.
I'm tethered right now to Sprint which really doesn't appear to give a shit. Their network is encapsulated to all hell since it's ipv6-only so I recommend decreasing MTU's when connecting to it (something like 1320 seems to work or sites like duckduckgo get blackholed). Sprint sucks unless you're line of sight to a band 41 tower and/or have a HPUA device.
T-Mobile detects tethering a matter of ways. I use a Moto E LTE 2015 (surnia) as a dedicated modem phone for them. I modified lineageOS 14.1 for my specific use case (namely just to add TTL as a target in the kernel for iptables). I also use Network Signal Guru to lock it to the meatiest band in my area (band 4 broadcasts at 20mhz)
The magical iptables option to pass is: iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -j TTL --ttl-set 65
They detect certain services like playstation network, so you have to VPN that so it isn't counted. I disable ipv6 on the t-mobile APN too as an added layer of protection. Average use is around 250-300gb/mo, this is rural so it's unlikely it causes any quality of service issues (and I don't end up subject to deprioritization issues after 50GB)
EDIT: Should also mention at least T-Mobile used to do DPI on the User Agent sent by browser years ago. They don't appear to do that anymore (widespread HTTPS made that pretty useless). Back then I used to just get around port blocking by ramming my traffic through SSH dynamic port forwarding on port 143, normally used for IMAP. This was for T-Zones service level in the early 2000's.
Oh and for AT&T in the later 2000's I used to buy import phones that weren't in their system and use them on the non-smartphone unlimited plan until they got wise to that.
EDIT2: If you find ethics of this questionable, can't be hassled to figure this stuff out, and/or still want to use LTE unlimited where money is not a concern there's plans for that: https://unlimitedville.com/
What part of your process gets you around deprioritization? I thought that there was no way to circumvent that. I had to tether for a month or two on tmo and as soon as I hit 22 or 25GB my entire account was throttled and I'd barely get 2MBps. I wound up going with an ATT ipad plan that also had deprio at a point (30gb? I forget). But everything about the ATT plan was so much better.
I tried a lot of ways to get around that (most of what you mentioned, tweaking my hops and what not) and never made any progress so I assumed it was at the network level and I'd have no control.
Deprioritization is handled at the cell site and is per-sector/per-band. It's handled on the radio layer and what usually appears to happen is the network will only allocate you a few physical resource blocks. So speeds will vary based on what modulation your device can get away with and how busy things are. The only 'official' post on the topic I can think of: https://newsroom.sprint.com/protecting-the-97.htm
If you live in a populated city or need to go through an airport with a phone subject to deprio you're going to have a bad time with speeds.
If you're like me and live on a mountain surrounded by trees with a line of sight to the tower down the hill, deprio isn't going to matter.
> Their network is encapsulated to all hell since it's ipv6-only so I recommend decreasing MTU's when connecting to it (something like 1320 seems to work or sites like duckduckgo get blackholed).
I will also point out that a lower WAN MTU will cause forwarded (and only forwarded) outgoing connections to fail if the phone's firewall rules aren't properly configured to adjust TCP MSS! Pings will work, sites will connect, but you'll get no data back. This can seem awfully like some kind of active interference, when it's just a passive network problem.
> Oh and for AT&T in the later 2000's I used to buy import phones that weren't in their system and use them on the non-smartphone unlimited plan until they got wise to that
These 22gb then deprioritized "tablet" plans are available for $35/mo. It requires generating an iPad or similar IMEI to register. I've tethered and used video chat/games/VPN and had no issues.
"unlimited 4G / LTE wifi data and a mobile hotspot from Sprint", is meh for $500.
Consider this: Buy a unlocked Fi moto X4 from best buy for like $200, do the Sprint BYOD deal with a Google Voice number ($3 to unlock number for porting), this will give you $4/mo 'unlimited' service for a year. Slickdeals has a long in-depth thread on the full details of this arrangement.
I'm tethered right now to Sprint which really doesn't appear to give a shit. Their network is encapsulated to all hell since it's ipv6-only so I recommend decreasing MTU's when connecting to it (something like 1320 seems to work or sites like duckduckgo get blackholed). Sprint sucks unless you're line of sight to a band 41 tower and/or have a HPUA device.
T-Mobile detects tethering a matter of ways. I use a Moto E LTE 2015 (surnia) as a dedicated modem phone for them. I modified lineageOS 14.1 for my specific use case (namely just to add TTL as a target in the kernel for iptables). I also use Network Signal Guru to lock it to the meatiest band in my area (band 4 broadcasts at 20mhz)
The magical iptables option to pass is: iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -j TTL --ttl-set 65
They detect certain services like playstation network, so you have to VPN that so it isn't counted. I disable ipv6 on the t-mobile APN too as an added layer of protection. Average use is around 250-300gb/mo, this is rural so it's unlikely it causes any quality of service issues (and I don't end up subject to deprioritization issues after 50GB)
EDIT: Should also mention at least T-Mobile used to do DPI on the User Agent sent by browser years ago. They don't appear to do that anymore (widespread HTTPS made that pretty useless). Back then I used to just get around port blocking by ramming my traffic through SSH dynamic port forwarding on port 143, normally used for IMAP. This was for T-Zones service level in the early 2000's.
Oh and for AT&T in the later 2000's I used to buy import phones that weren't in their system and use them on the non-smartphone unlimited plan until they got wise to that.
EDIT2: If you find ethics of this questionable, can't be hassled to figure this stuff out, and/or still want to use LTE unlimited where money is not a concern there's plans for that: https://unlimitedville.com/