Comment by ezfe
18 hours ago
Your phone voluntarily tags the hotspot data with specific TTL values which carriers use to segment the data. Not all carriers work the same though.
18 hours ago
Your phone voluntarily tags the hotspot data with specific TTL values which carriers use to segment the data. Not all carriers work the same though.
Specifically it decrements the TTL of routed packets, so hotspot traffic will tend to have a TTL of 63 instead of 64. You could theoretically disable this at the risk of creating infinite routing loops, although android probably makes it inaccessible if the kernel has a setting for it at all, so you might have to rewrite packets in user space.
It has been a long time since I've done this, but:
If your Android is rooted, it's pretty easy to get tethering working. There's magisk modules that can fix the TTL problem and/or disable the hidden carrier-installed software that Android will ask for permission before enabling tethering.
Different applications on a single device can't apply different TTL's? I thought TTL was a pretty basic knob exposed to applications. e.g. A sensor that transmits fresh data every 20 seconds doesn't need stale packets bounding around clogging up the pipes, while a file transfer over an intermittently delayed link might benefit from a higher TTL.
Voluntarily tags specific TTL values much like your home router does. Some providers assign a different IP to hotspot users.
> voluntarily tags
Aah, you mean ‘snitches’. :P
Super easy to spoof too.