Feature Description

Tethering refers to the use of a mobile smartphone as a USB dongle or modem to provide Internet connectivity to PC devices (laptops, PDAs, tablets, and so on) running on the smartphone's data plan. Typically, for smartphone users, most operators have in place an unlimited data plan, the usage of which is intended to be from the smartphone as a mobile device. However, some subscribers use the low cost or unlimited usage data plan to provide Internet connectivity to their laptops in places where normal Internet connection through broadband or Wi-Fi may be costly, unavailable, or insecure.

The Tethering Detection feature enables detection of subscriber data traffic originating from PC devices tethered to mobile smartphones, and also provides effective reporting to enable service providers take business decisions on how to manage such usage and to bill subscribers accordingly. Tethering Detection is supported for IPv4 (TCP) and IPv6 traffic flows.

In this release, IP-TTL based tethering is supported. This feature is configurable at the rulebase level and is applicable on all flows for all subscribers having IP-TTL configuration within the rulebase.