yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] andy o:
I don't tether to a PC, only to my nexus 10. I'm on stock 4.2.2 and have applied the fix since it was found by modifying the settings file directly, the adb fix wasn't suggested yet but it's the same thing.

I've followed this thread since then, but also I've followed the old t-mobile $30 plan thread in the N4 forum and now the one in the N5 forum. I don't remember seeing people on this plan explicitly saying that they did not need to change the user agent to tether, the people who didn't need to seemed to be the ones on other plans. Could you point out these posts?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] wideasleep1:
That's because he's still using his given allotment of package tethering. If he were to watch a few HD vids on YouTube he'd hit the limit and go over it..then the next time he fires up tethering he'll get the upsell page.

Edit: lastly tethering to Android devices rarely causes an upsell page... I tethered for years before I ever saw the page. I think it was around the Nexus S days when I first saw it.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rcauvin:
You'll notice the early posts in this thread focused on the user agent switching and VPN tricks. Then yakman66, who was on the same T-Mobile $30 per month pre-paid plan, came up with the fix:

And then numerous people said it also worked for them:

This one explicitly stated he was able to tether from his laptop:

And this one did explicitly state he wasn't employing a user agent switcher:

It's likely that some of these people weren't on the T-Mobile $30 per month pre-paid plan. Some of them may have employed user agent switchers without stating it. It's also possible some of them later exceeded their 100 MB tethering limits, and the dreaded T-Mobile login page re-appeared for them. And it's likely some of them didn't try connecting from their PCs.

But it only takes one counter-example to falsify what you seem to be portraying as a universal truth. The fact remains that I have the T-Mobile $30 per month pre-paid plan. I've been connecting to my Nexus 5 hotspot on a daily basis - from a variety of devices, including my Windows 7 PC - since applying the fix November 8, and I haven't seen the T-Mobile login page. With my browsing habits, I've clearly exceeded 100 MB in hotspot data.

I'm typing this message in Chrome on my PC, and I've been connected to my Nexus 5 hotspot all day. Interestingly, the "Mobile Hotspot Usage" meter in the T-Mobile MyAccount app on the phone hasn't budged in at least seven hours.

---------- Post added at 03:41 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:37 AM ----------

Please suggest some HD YouTube videos for me to watch. In addition to having connected to my Nexus 5 hotspot on a daily basis since November 8, I've been connected to it all day today and am still going strong.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] RussianBear:
^ don't feel like quoting the whole post haha

What is your traffic meter showing on your laptop?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rcauvin:
Heh. Understandable.

To my knowledge, there is no traffic meter on my laptop. I certainly haven't knowingly installed one.

I checked my Nexus 5's data usage as reflected in Android (Settings>Data usage), and it shows 426 MB used in the past two days alone.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] RussianBear:
Just for tethering or total? I'm sure you're way over your 100mb limit, though lol
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rcauvin:
For "Tethering and portable hotspot" under Settings->Data usage on my Nexus 5, it shows 392 MB.data used on December 27 alone.

So the question is: what is different about the configurations that are working (e.g. mine) without user agent switching or VPN and those that seem to require user agent switching or VPN?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] RussianBear:
Is the t-mo app registering any kind of tether traffic at all on your end? Consider yourself lucky for now,I guess :)
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rcauvin:
"Mobile Hotspot Usage" in the T-Mobile MyAccount app was just below 18 MB just after I installed it today. It's been stuck at 18.1 MB for over eight hours now.

And don't forget I've been connecting to, and using, the hotspot daily since I installed the fix on November 8.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] RussianBear:
So it is registering something tethering activity. Very strange indeed.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] andy o:
I'm not saying that it's a problem for me. I said I don't tether to the PC to point out that it's not. I know tethering to Android devices does not require the UA switch. The 100MB limit, I have read conflicting info on that, I seem to recall mine going up even though I never used tethering (I only started using it after the settings.db fix here was posted).

The posts before yakman's fix are talking about what was already known from the N4 days, that's what we all already knew, but those tricks by themselves didn't work here, since the new kind of blocking started with the N5.

I was one for whom it worked, but that's not relevant to the UA switch question here, since we don't know if they had the non-tether plan and/or they were past their allowance.

I didn't notice this guy, It would be nice to have a follow up from him, just like you're doing. But the fact is that the at least up to recently (you and him), the vast majority of users of this plan (don't know if you subscribe to the N4 and N5 threads specific to this plan) could not tether to a PC if they didn't change the UA.

Yeah, we don't know, so why put them as examples?

The first part is correct only if the second is, which I don't think I've done. My first response to you was to say that it wasn't that unreasonable for the other guy to have assumed the UA fix was needed. Based on past information that has been widely known and discussed, and at least until now seemed to be non-controversial, in the specific threads of this plan, I still think that was right.

OK, so you're one of the lucky ones. I'm gonna be trying this later and see if it works for me too.

---------- Post added at 03:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:41 PM ----------

@rcauvin

Also note that if you're visiting https sites, T-mo can't check the traffic for the UA.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rcauvin:
I never experienced any blockage from T-Mobile until getting the Nexus 5 (before I applied the fix). I frequently used my Galaxy Nexus as a hotspot (mostly from my PC) for over a year and a half, up until I got the Nexus 5.

Yes, and you don't know how many people, like myself, have happily used our phones as hotspots and haven't even thought to install or mention "user agent switchers", because it just wasn't an issue. What we do know is that some people are able to connect and use their Nexus 5 mobile hotspots from their PCs (without UA switching), and some aren't.

Great. Looking forward to it. Because we should be trying to understand why it works (without UA switching) for some and not for others.

Interesting information regarding HTTPS. But I'm not sure what you're contending. It doesn't seem to explain my situation.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jsharper:
I have an older T-Mobile plan (500TTW Even More Plus post-paid). I noticed starting around July or Aug 2012 (when I used to tether with my galaxy nexus with stock android hotspot feature) that they started doing the user agent detection thingy on http connections and redirecting to an upsell page. I had noticed over the months that followed that it seemed to only redirect if the user agent matched a specific user agent string from a common/popular desktop browser. For example, I think at one point it matched on IE and Firefox on Windows 7, but not Chrome, and not Firefox on linux or OSX. So it is possible that they are still only triggering on specific user agent strings from browsers that some of you/us are not using currently. I just tried it with Chrome 32 and IE 11 (both with their stock user agent strings) on Win 7, through my stock 4.4.2 Nexus 5 with tether_dun_required=0, and neither of them triggered the upsell page tonight.

tl;dr: the TMO user agent detection and redirection to upsell seems to be hit and miss and varies based on very specific browsers and versions used, and may not always be active.. there's no point in arguing with each other over whether a user agent switcher is needed for those without tethering support, or with usage-exhausted support, on their plans.... if it works for you, great. if not, change your user agent, or encrypt your traffic (eg. with https or a vpn of some sort) so that TMO can't sniff your traffic. And none of this has anything to do with the topic of this thread (which is about how Android 4.4 changed the method for tethering in such a way that the carrier can very easily track tethering traffic separately) and is therefore off topic really...

tl;dr is tl;dr: um quit arguing about needing to change user agents - it is annoying and off topic
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] belair56:
Just my experience.

An older account. 500 mins, 2 gigs of data.

i used the ADB commands to fix the tethering on my N5

Windows 7 on laptop using Chrome browser. Do NOT have to change user agent.

I made sure I used more than 100 mb to see if anything changed - No

I DO have the T-Mobile app on my phone. It does NOT show any tethering.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Nephilim-Giant:
So I'm getting this:

adb shell content query --uri content://settings/global --where

"name='tether_dun_required' AND value=0"

WARNING: linker: app_process has text relocations. This is wasting memory and is

a security risk. Please fix.

WARNING: linker: app_process has text relocations. This is wasting memory and is

a security risk. Please fix.

Row: 0 _id=1016, name=tether_dun_required, value=0

How to fix this?? :(

Edit: I fixed it by just removing what I previously done through SQlite editor and going through ADB shell! It works brilliantly.

I do have this statement though when I check if it got applied correctly:

adb shell content query --uri content://settings/global --where

"name='tether_dun_required' AND value=0"

WARNING: linker: app_process has text relocations. This is wasting memory and is

a security risk. Please fix.

WARNING: linker: app_process has text relocations. This is wasting memory and is

a security risk. Please fix.

Row: 0 _id=1098, name=tether_dun_required, value=0

I hope this is correct and ok? Tethering works!
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nexus.knightly:
I've had my Nexus 5 for almost a month now and my wifi hotspot works with my Nexus 7 but not with my laptop or One S. I will try the ADB fix and see if it solves the problem.

Oh and I'm currently on a family plan using the free 500mb data and for the month my tethering data usage is 8.48gb
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] BinkXDA:
FWIW, I use http://ma.web2go.com/home.do?src=m.tmo to determine my Mobile Hotspot Usage and related instead of the T-Mobile app.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] andy o:
Yeah sure enough, as soon as I hit 100.0MB, got the upsell page on the latest Firefox. Also latest Chrome and IE11. Switching UA to IE8 (and probably others) fixed it.

Was just wondering, cause most social media sites are HTTPS now, and those are what people use the most. It just took a couple of HD youtube videos for me though, so I don't think that was it anyway.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] akmsr:
when this fix was first proposed, users were reporting _id in the 60's or 70's. when i did it 4 days ago i had 140. but i have only 5/6 apps installed. so i do not have that many settings per say. you have over 1,000. if it is possible take a look at global table to see why you have so many _ids.

before you do the adb fix would you please just use a user agent switcher and see if your laptop can tether. other android devices, tablets, connecting to HTTPS addresses do not count. this will help with a dilemma to make sure whether you are one of the few people like me who does not even need the settings.db hack, adb fix at all. just a user agent switcher.

thanks for your report. it is exactly what i experienced regarding the switcher. using linux also reportedly did not need a UA switch.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ben503:
Try to forget the network and connect again
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rcauvin:
Thanks for this info. We have in you a good test case for someone needing the user agent switcher. Perhaps we can look at the differences in our configurations to get some clues as to what the trigger is. Did you tether with a USB cable or connect to your Nexus 5 as a hotspot?

Here is my configuration:

Nexus 5 OS: Stock Android 4.4.2 (unrooted)

tether_dun_required: Yes, set to 0

APN: fast.t-mobile.com, IPv4

Plan: T-Mobile $30 per month pre-paid, 5 GB full speed, 100 voice minutes (since January 2013)

Mobile Hotspot Add-On: No

PC OS: Windows 7 Professional (64-Bit) with Service Pack 1

Browsers: Chrome 32.0.1700.41, IE 11.0.9600.16476, Firefox 26.0

User Agent Switching: No

VPN: No

BTW, after being stuck at 18.1 MB for a couple of days, the mobile hotspot usage in the T-Mobile MyAccount app has been going up for me. Not sure what changed, but we'll see what happens.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] akmsr:
hi

here is a hd youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWgg5-kUSho

its a 8 minute 23 seconds video of nature documentary that has the option to play in 720p or 1080p resolution. forgive me for mentioning this but when you visit this link in your computer browser and video starts playing, click on the settings wheel at the bottom right of the player and select 1080p or 720p for resolution. that way you are making sure the streaming file is bigger than 100MB. 720p resolution files clocks at 120MB. this way we will know for sure.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] andy o:
I second this. Without the settings.db fix tethering doesn't even work on Android devices, it just doesn't work at all, since the traffic is being routed through another APN altogether. If it only doesn't work on a PC then it's most likely a UA block.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] akmsr:
just wanted to make sure that you know that i am tethering with nexus 5 to my windows laptop since day 1 (dec. 2nd) without settings.db fix

:D
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] andy o:
Yeah, I saw that, but if it doesn't work without the settings.db like the other person, then it just doesn't work anywhere, not just on the PC.

Which plan are you on, btw?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rcauvin:
Thanks. I loaded and viewed a couple of large YouTube videos in my PC's browser (while connected to the Nexus 5 hotspot) a couple of days ago. They didn't budge my hotspot data counter at all.

As I mentioned earlier today, the counter started moving again. I loaded the YouTube video you suggested in 720p resolution, and the counter continued to move until it hit 94.1 MB. In the middle of loading the video, the counter stopped moving again! I let it finish loading and playing the entire video, then I loaded and played this entire video in 720p: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUuAkH1hUYw. The counter is still stuck at 94.1 MB.

I've repeatedly verified that my PC is connected to the phone's hotspot, and the native Settings->Data usage>Tethering & portable hotspot shows I've used 418 MB today alone.

So what I've observed since installing the T-Mobile MyAccount app and desperately trying to blow through hotspot data is that the counter in the app behaves erratically. It increases at times and then simply gets stuck.

Any hypotheses to explain this behavior?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] akmsr:
metropcs. 60$ unlimited everything. being a t-mobile MVNO my plan does not have any provision for tethering at all. i can not even buy for extra even if i wanted it. CDMA part of metropcs still uses their own towers but the GSM part uses t-mobile towers exclusively.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] DOHCtor:
How does your data speeds look like on Metro PCS?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] andy o:
I've always been under the impression that the settings.db fix was for t-mobile only since it prevents the rerouting of the tethering traffic to the secondary t-mobile APN. I understand that Metro is a t-mobile entity now but it still has its own APN settings as far as I know.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] akmsr:
thanks for the try. i am out of speculation. you are just lucky :D

till last month i was on boostmobile (MVNO of sprint) and was tethering without UA switcher. but my phone was rooted though. it was running gingerbread.

---------- Post added at 09:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:16 PM ----------

i only get 3G mixed with H. my location does not have LTE. 1.6mbps down .8mbps up. the people who has LTE (t-mobile coverage) clocks 20mbps+ speed.

settings.db fix was for kitkat. re-routing of traffic was a feature of kitkat. it was affecting all networks, and successfully applied by users of all networks. you can find those threads here on xda. it was just noticed by users of t-mobile first because they were jumping on the unlocked nexus 5 bandwagon with cheapest LTE prepaid plan in this country :laugh:

as for me, metro's APN is little different but it does use t-mobile towers. on speedtest my ISP gets identified as T-mobile. the APN has MVNO settings at the bottom. and i have this link displayed when i use my browser without UA switcher

http://offers.t-mobile.com/tethering/upsell.do?source=pcweb
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] andy o:
So are there other Metro PCS users who did have to apply the settings.db fix, or are all of them exempt of this limitation?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] akmsr:
that is what i intend to find out. i am going to post a new thread here asking people that.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Leecrow:
wifi app in play store for root Nexus 5

I been having the problem with t-mobile and be looking in a lot of forums. I found a app that works but you need to root your phone. The app is call Wifi tether router. Follow the instruction and will work.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] akmsr:
that app has been mentioned in this thread already somewhere in the last 30 pages :o but thanks for mentioning it.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nexus.knightly:
The other problem I forgot to mention is that I can't even connect to the hotspot.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] akmsr:
your post was couple of pages back so i had to check and make sure what it was. you said that you are using the hotspot for a month but you can only use it with your nexus tablet but not your computer. is that correct? also what do you mean by saying "you can't even connect to the hotspot." with what?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nexus.knightly:
Yes that is correct, I've been able to use the hotspot with my tablet. On my laptop, I type in the password for the hotspot and click connect but it eventually says that it was unable to connect.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] akmsr:
probably the password. it happened to me couple of times. i changed the password and forgot to update it in the laptop.

or the signal is low so its timed out.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nexus.knightly:
I've changed the password and updated it as well as tried it without a password and its still a no go. Can't connect at all and when I try to connect to my One S it's states the association was rejected.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] cpufreak3:
So I'm seeing mixed replies, if someone can help me out.

I've got a stock Nexus 5 on T-mobile $30/mo plan. Android 4.4.2.

Tethering does not work even if I change the user agent on my computer.

What is the solution? Root and modify settings.db? Thanks
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jkatt:
Recieved Nexus 5 yesterday, Rooted, Stock, used ADB and pasted in the modified code, tethering works
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] akmsr:
with user agent switcher in browser or without?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jkatt:
Only tested on the Ipad so far. I will confirm on laptop tomorrow.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rcauvin:
Whether or not you change the user agent on your computer, you'll need to apply the settings.db fix. Instructions for doing so are here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wso8Cb3rU0DApFe2lg5RcMrelAEoYY-fZ4MAghnIuqs/edit?usp=sharing

The steps describe how to do it if you are rooted. However, later in the document, it describes how to apply the fix, without root, by issuing ADB shell commands from your computer.

After applying the fix, tethering to, or using your phone as, a hotspot should work fine from all devices. From a browser on your computer, however, sometimes it will cause your T-Mobile hotspot usage counter to increase. After the counter reaches 100 MB, you will no longer be able to tether or use the hotspot from a browser on your computer unless you change the user agent.

It's not clear the circumstances under which the hotspot usage counter increases when browsing from a computer, but the user agent is one factor. At times, without setting my user agent, I've loaded and viewed huge YouTube videos without the counter moving at all. At other times, the counter has gone up as I've browsed
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] cpufreak3:
Wow thanks! I don't mind switching the user-agent since I always had to with the N4. I'll try the ADB method. Only other question - does everything apply the same with Dalvik vs. ART?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jkatt:
I am typing this using my Nexus 5 wireless tether on my laptop using Chrome. When I first tried this on my laptop I forgot to change the WPA2-PSK password on my computer since it was still set up to a different password. Once enabled, I almost forgot to change the APN to IPv4. All is working great. On a dell, Windows 7 laptop with chrome. I did not use any user agent.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nspusmc:
This is what i did. The moment of truth came and i am now blocked. :crying:
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] akmsr:
thats great news.

if you visited any web pages with

you may not need any user agent switcher like facebook, youtube etc. try other pages with just http:// address.

also could you post your carrier, data plan, tethering limit etc. we are trying to figure out the necessity of a switcher.

---------- Post added at 04:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:47 PM ----------

are you using the settings.db fix?

are you using any UA switcher or VPN?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nspusmc:
The settings.db fix is confirmed. I just installed the user agent ext for chrome but im not 100% how to use it. Im still reading through this thread but im only on page 18. I have not read anything about VPN. Do i need user agent AND somethng to do with VPN?

edit: ok i selected firefox as an agent and it didn't work and then i selected Nexus 7 and it works but loads mobile websites. I am on the N4 btw 4.4 kitkat with LTE hack. rooted stock running ART. $30 unlimited plan 4.5 tethering on 2 phones.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jkatt:
I am able to go to both http:// and https:// with out a user agent. Carrier = T Mobile, Data plan = $30 monthly prepay unlimited 4G up to 5g 100 anytime talk, no tethering limit shown on phone or on website plan.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] akmsr:
excellent lucky you :good: you and racuvin are two confirmed users with out the need of switcher. as was mentioned before, your plan includes 100 MB of free tethering. so you can be sure after you pass this milestone :cool:

---------- Post added at 07:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:16 PM ----------

first of all you only need the agent switcher or the VPN.

before you do anything did you change your APN protocol from ipv6 to ipv4?

i do not use chrome but firefox. try any agent thats internet explorer 9 or older, firefox 24 or older. if you have the option to use a custom agent, use the following. its the best one i have used so far.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0