[Samsung Galaxy S9  Questions & Answers] maredsous:
I am trying to figure out how to best tether my phone without my carrier throttling me down or detecting this and getting some exorbitant bill.

Both of these things are important to me but I am trying to find a balance between shielding my tethered traffic while also:

1. Not killing my battery so quickly

2. I am concerned about a notification that I am overloading the CPU on my device.

Equipment\Software:

Samsung Galaxy S9 4 GB RAM w/o Root

SecureTether (Google Play Store)

NordVPN (Paid Subscription)

Major US Carrier w/ Unlimited Data

Dell Inspiron 5559 (Only device tethering to phone)

Here is some of the background:

I get a notification on my phone, no matter how I set things up with Secure Tether and NordVPN either running on my laptop or on my phone.

"Some appications or processes are overloading the System (CPU) and need to close.

How serious is that message?

Critical to protect device or more just a power consumption or load bearing metric?

I keep my phone plugged in when I'm tethering 99% of the time so the power consumption doesn't bother me, but I want to make sure I am not doing something that is detrimental to the phone. Everything looks like it's working correctly and the internet works fine and isn't lagging on my laptop or phone.

Secondly,

I want to use my VPN provider (NordVPN) to setup a VPN to shield my my carrier, to be on the safe side that they can not see my traffic and/or that I am not using their metered hotspot connection. This comes with a performance and power penalty so, I know a VPN is a good idea but is it necessary in order for my carrier not to find out I am using something else to tether my device. This is just for some more general knowledge.

Third,

I can use NordVPN on my device or my laptop and both work fine on either device, in both cases though I get the message: "Some appications or processes are overloading the System (CPU) and need to close."

I can tether my laptop to my phone and then connect NordVPN on my laptop and it takes a minute to connect but it does and when it does. everything works fine.

I was skeptical it would work fine because in order to setup Secure Tether you need to setup not only a basic WiFi connection on my laptop but also use a VPN (SSTP-->192.168.49.1:8822) from my laptop to phone, even before throwing NordVPN into the mix, but

Configuration One:

Laptop ---> Secure Tether WiFi ----> Secure Tether VPN (SSTP 192.168.49.1:8822)----> Connect Nord VPN on Laptop ----> Internet. (((Laptop has NordVPN Internet))) (((Galaxy has clear Internet)))

Configuration Two:

Laptop ---> Secure Tether WiFi ---> Secure Tether VPN -----[[Connection Established to phone]] ----> Connect Nord VPN on Phone ---> Internet (Laptop and Phone)

I am looking for some feedback to see if that first configuration is:

First, Masking my Tethered Traffic correctly. I am only shielding my tethered Internet and otherwise my phone is using normal Internet. I only care about my carrier not seeing that I am tethering my laptop essentially.

Second, taking some of the load off of my phone by not running both services (SecureTether and NordVPN) on it.

But then I thought, if my carrier is seeing a lot of VPN traffic and some clear traffic that might look worse, because generally when you run a VPN on your phone everything runs through it, so with half and half traffic, they may suspect that I am tethering something but they wouldn't be able to necessarily prove it.

But just raising red flags might be enough to warrant a closer look at my account, so it might just be better to run NordVPN on my phone and send all traffic through it.

I only really have this one device connecting to my hotspot, one laptop so it isn't like I have 5 devices each running their own VPN and probably creating more work for my phone with constantly open VPN connections. With one device there has to be an open VPN connection somewhere device/computer and it doesn't matter where it is because it's the same amount of traffic/bandwidth used up anymore, it's just a matter of where it is.

With multiple devices it would be more advantageous to run a single VPN connection on my phone and this generates less traffic/uses less bandwidth?

Am I correct in assuming that with 1 device this first configuration takes some of the load off of my phone because it is just passing data through rather than running the VPN service itself.

Either configuration works for me, I would think that Configuration 2, that is, connecting\running Nord VPN on my device would be a better option from a security standpoint and it simplifies things because:

A. Any device connecting to the hotspot is using the VPN automatically.

B. All of my phone data, hotspot or not is being sent through the VPN.

However, the // [major [/I ] // downside is that power runs through your phone like a sieve and the load on the CPU is increased.

I just got this S9 a few days ago and I am switching from iPhone to Android so my depth of knowledge isn't developed enough to where a reliable instinctual of how this device handles, so I'm sorry is this seems redundant.

Sorry for the length of this post, I got more nuanced than I thought I would but I wanted everything to be clear and maybe this will help someone else along the way.

Any input you have would be greatly appreciated.