Galaxy Nexus on AT&T users - AT&T limiting protocols?

[tbessie]

Tried the Nexus One - same result. So it's not tied to phone id. I'm currently charging my old Nokia N86, and will report back what happens there. If the same result, then it's tied to account (possibly modified by their "sweeps", which seem to happen once every 3 months, 6 months or year).

ADDENDUM: Ok, tried it on the N86. Same result. So it's not even tied to current generation "smart phones". I will next (and finally) try it on my AT&T branded Nokia 6085 (6085h actually). If it doesn't work on THAT, then I know it's definitely tied to my account, and doesn't even think an AT&T-branded dumbphone is "worthy". At least then I can call AT&T once more and say "AH-HA!" or something. :-/

ADDENDUM 2: The Nokia 6085 won't charge; might be battery, phone, or charger. I'll see if I can borrow someone else's AT&T-issued Android phone and try my SIM in it to see.

- Tim

[Adama D. Brown]

My guess is that AT&T probably hoses these things routinely on the assumption that if you're using those kinds of protocols you must be tethering.

[tbessie]

My guess is that AT&T probably hoses these things routinely on the assumption that if you're using those kinds of protocols you must be tethering.

I would be happy if they would even have some avenue of tech support where the tech support person could say "We suspect you of tethering, so we have turned off these protocols on your phone". But such avenue doesn't seem to exist, and I wonder why not.

- Tim

[tbessie]

UPDATE: Someone on the AT&T forums who's streaming application was, as of this week, also suffering disconnects, said that today that stopped happening for them. I checked, and SSH at least is not disconnecting in 10 seconds as it was for several days. The person on the AT&T forum suggests that perhaps AT&T noticed a misconfiguration, or has been reading the forums and saw the complaints and backed out some change.

Will we ever know, I wonder?

Well, I'll report back when I see that this has stopped happening for a week or so (or if it returns).

Thanks for being a forum where I can voice my concerns! :-)

PS: I also had posted on John Navas' alt.cellular.cingular newsgroup, which is mostly dead, but still maintained. Mr. Navas seems to have had some connection with AT&T (maybe even worked for them, not sure), so perhaps he read my discussion and pinged the right people behind the scenes? That'd be nice. :-)

- Tim

[lelisa13p]

I would be happy if they would even have some avenue of tech support where the tech support person could say "We suspect you of tethering, so we have turned off these protocols on your phone". But such avenue doesn't seem to exist, and I wonder why not.

- Tim

Plausible deniability?

[tbessie]

Plausible deniability?

Hmm... That sounds plausible.

- Tim

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[Hook]

I would be happy if they would even have some avenue of tech support where the tech support person could say "We suspect you of tethering, so we have turned off these protocols on your phone". But such avenue doesn't seem to exist, and I wonder why not.

- Tim

You are making the assumption that people at AT&T actually know what they are doing. %-)

[tbessie]

You are making the assumption that people at AT&T actually know what they are doing. %-)

Well, yes. I've been at plenty of tech organizations where well-meaning configuration changes caused unforeseen results. And at the scale AT&T works at, any tiny thing could cause lots of unforeseen changes, I'm sure.

But, also given their scale, you'd think most of their security policies would be well-vetted before implemented, wouldn't you? ;-)

- Tim

[Hook]

Well, yes. I've been at plenty of tech organizations where well-meaning configuration changes caused unforeseen results. And at the scale AT&T works at, any tiny thing could cause lots of unforeseen changes, I'm sure.

But, also given their scale, you'd think most of their security policies would be well-vetted before implemented, wouldn't you? ;-)

- Tim

In my experience, no, I'm not sure I would. ;-) (I work for a very large scale organization)

I find large organizations seem to give you a lot of stuff that falls into the "you can't make this stuff up" category.

[Varjak]

I know what FTP is; but what is SSH?