Doesnt sprint charge you money for doing this and that is why people had to use pdanet? Or does this really not cost anything and come built in with WM6.

killerkhatiby009 said :

Doesnt sprint charge you money for doing this and that is why people had to use pdanet? Or does this really not cost anything and come built in with WM6.

But their ability to detect you or their willingness to try is up in the air, there haven't been any reports of people getting charged using the built in program yet.

There is also a reg edit ( Disable Multi-NAI ) that you can do that most likely makes Sprint think that you are just surfing on your phone, so no charge.

This all assuming you have unlimited data Vision/Powervision.

Primenall said :

killerkhatiby009 said :

Doesnt sprint charge you money for doing this and that is why people had to use pdanet? Or does this really not cost anything and come built in with WM6.

Well they are technically supposed to charge you unless you have an add on to your plan (PAM phone as modem)b

But their ability to detect you or their willingness to try is up in the air, there haven't been any reports of people getting charged using the built in program yet.

There is also a reg edit ( Disable Multi-NAI ) that you can do that most likely makes Sprint think that you are just surfing on your phone, so no charge.

This all assuming you have unlimited data Vision/Powervision.

So, sprint can charge u if u dont hav the plan to make ur phone a modem? What happens if u had the plan for just the internet on ur phone and u just do this method? Cuz im trying it out right now and it works perfectly with my xp, just wondering wat are the chances of being caught?

I have a rough guess as to how this works.  This is ONLY a guess, an assumption made from the behavior I've seen thus far and from what I've heard from the rep at the Sprint store where I got my phone (who told me incorrect information, but I think I can glean a bit of truth from what he said anyway).

Somehow the phone seems to be able to signal to Sprint if you're using it as a modem, or accessing the internet using software on the phone itself.  If that happens and you don't have the phone as modem plan then the connection is cut off.  I've had this happen several times.

When that happens I don't think they charge you anything, since you're not actually able to use the service.  They seem to be detecting that you don't have the service and thus are cutting you off.  A bit rude, but effective.

So logically the methods that let you use the phone as a modem seem to be bypassing that detection, so Sprint probably aren't able to directly detect what you're doing.

BUT, and this is where my discussion with the Sprint rep comes on, he told me that Sprint has detected that people were using their phones as wireless modems through network usage and terminated their accounts.  I think the basic idea is that if you, say, plug your phone into a laptop and load up a p2p filesharing program and transfer gigabytes of data overnight (the example the rep gave me was people doing the transfering using their unlimited night-time minutes, presumably using a data plant that used up minutes), they'll detect that as an atypical phone usage pattern.

When you see people discussing doing free tethering they typically mention that they're careful only to use light data applications, email or IM and such.

It MAY become possible for them to detect the exploits that are currently in use, I have no idea how effective the registry hacks and such are.  If that happens I think what you risk is having your account terminated, not being charged an extra fee.

I think the way to succeed if you intend on doing free tethering is, as I"ve said, to be subtle about it.  By no means should you attempt to use your phone as an ISP on a regular basis, but if, say, you're on the road and don't wish to pay the absurd prices for wireless internet access that the hotel you're staying at is charging, then you could probably connect your laptop to your phone to check email or do a little light web browsing, maybe some IMing.

sportsfreak2159 said :

Primenall said :

 

killerkhatiby009 said :

Doesnt sprint charge you money for doing this and that is why people had to use pdanet? Or does this really not cost anything and come built in with WM6.

Well they are technically supposed to charge you unless you have an add on to your plan (PAM phone as modem)b

 

But their ability to detect you or their willingness to try is up in the air, there haven't been any reports of people getting charged using the built in program yet.

There is also a reg edit ( Disable Multi-NAI ) that you can do that most likely makes Sprint think that you are just surfing on your phone, so no charge.

This all assuming you have unlimited data Vision/Powervision.

where can i find that regedit? thanks!

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\OEM\WModem\Multi-NAI

Change it to 0 (off) from 1 (default).

Also as far as them detecting you, the Store reps usually always know less than the casual people on these forums (as sad as that is). And they tend to give out wrong info or just plain lie if they don't know an answer,  rather than admit they don't know. From my visits to my local Sprint stores I would say info from the reps is roughly 80% B.S. 10% right answers 10% lucky guesses.

Take the "people use it at night when minutes are unlimited" makes absolutely no sense considering no plan uses minutes for internet connections.

I have DL'd GB's of data many times on my 6700 without any problems ,ever (6700's were undetectable).

So far I have DL'd about a gig on my 6800 with the "internet sharing".

I did it  just for the heck of it to see what happens to my bill and I haven't seen anything on my latest bill.

Which is in line with what is being reported by everyone with unlimited vision., on all the forums.

As far as them telling from just your use, many streaming programs like ORB or Slingbox use tons of data, just like you are DL'ing  from newsgroups.

I wouldn't think they would know if you use the internet sharing method where your data connection is already active on your phone from opening PIE before you hook up your computer.

So the bottom line from what I see is, do the reg edit and use internet sharing, or if you're really worried just get PDAnet.

I'm not responsible for any $500 phone bills, use at your own risk.  LOL

Has anyone been able to get this to work on Mac?

I tried to do this Parallels Desktop on my Macbook with XP Pro but it doesn't work either.

My vote is for PDAnet.   It works great and even does bluetooth tethering -- no physical connection required!  I've been using it for years on my Treo 700w.

PDAnet also works with a mac using bluetooth dial-up-networking (DUN) profile.

Primenall said :

 

Also as far as them detecting you, the Store reps usually always know less than the casual people on these forums (as sad as that is). And they tend to give out wrong info or just plain lie if they don't know an answer,  rather than admit they don't know. From my visits to my local Sprint stores I would say info from the reps is roughly 80% B.S. 10% right answers 10% lucky guesses.

Take the "people use it at night when minutes are unlimited" makes absolutely no sense considering no plan uses minutes for internet connections.

I have DL'd GB's of data many times on my 6700 without any problems ,ever (6700's were undetectable).

So far I have DL'd about a gig on my 6800 with the "internet sharing".

I did it  just for the heck of it to see what happens to my bill and I haven't seen anything on my latest bill.

Which is in line with what is being reported by everyone with unlimited vision., on all the forums.

As far as them telling from just your use, many streaming programs like ORB or Slingbox use tons of data, just like you are DL'ing  from newsgroups.

You need to understand that there's a difference from using a continuous bitrate meda stream and completely saturating the data link with p2p transfer data, or a usenet download.  No streaming program could saturate the link because the cell link seems to be variable bit-rate, I know of no (consumer available) streaming video or audio system that automatically scales the data stream, much less one that can do it in real time for a variable connection.  But you could download from a usenet group, the download would speed up or slow down as the data connection varied.
As such that gives them an easy way to check.  They could probably have an automated program that monitors data usage and flags accounts that regularly saturate the data connection for longer than a certain period of time.

Besides which, I suspect that it may be possible to download data at higher rates if you tether to a PC, my testing suggests that PocketPCs are fundamentally limited at how fast they can download, a PC might be able to beat that, that'd be another warning signal for Sprint.

As to data using minutes, my old plan did just that.  It was kind of a weird antique plan but the point is they can still exist, plus I don't know how long ago the mentioned account terminations occurred.

I once looked up the full Sprint user agreement (a document they hide on their website somewhere, which you might never see as a typical customer, I consider this highly unethical but I'll bet it's legal) and saw a very clear passage that specified that using a normal phone account as an ISP for regular computer Internet use was strictly forbidden, and that termination was the consequence.

I'm not saying they WILL catch you, just that the possibility is there.  Consider that Sprint recently cut a bunch of customers who they determined called customer service to complain too much.  Really, what seems more outlandish, terminating a customer who complains or one who modifies their device to use it in a manner expressly forbidden without paying them an extra fee?

I've only scratched the surface of ways Sprint could detect illicit tethering.  I guarentee you that if you do it (blatently, using lots of  high bandwidth programs, especially p2p) and get away with it it's because they're allowing you to, not because they're blind to it.  The problem is that they could change their mind at any time.