Cellular data issues with carrier capturing network requests
asked 2014-05-28 21:41:57 +0200
DISCLAIMER: My title might not be well formulated, I'm taking suggestion to phrase it better.
My carrier is MTel (in Bulgaria). My data plan consists of 100MB data on a "fast" speed and then unlimited traffic at a lower speed. However once I go over the 100MB soft limit every time I turn on cellular data connection the carrier intercepts my first connection attempt and instead of what I asked for redirects me to a page of their own, where they explain I've exhausted my "fast traffic" and show me offers for other data plans.
Last couple of months(I don't think it was right after an update) every time I turn on my data connection after I've exhausted my "fast traffic" it doesn't work. No matter what I do(twillian, ping from console, etc.) it shows the "Connect to Internet" dialogue and when I choose data connection it opens a browser trying to show me the page that the carrier redirects to. Loading that page fails and the data connection turns itself off.
I tried digging around the tools in /usr/lib/connman/test. At first I just stared at the output from monitor-connman and saw nothing interesting there. The connection turns on, DHCP seems to work, it gets nameservers assigned and then removes all of those. No apparent error messages are shown.
Last month I thought my SIM was malfunctioning and thus not allowing me to connect, and using another SIM I had no issues connecting. But at some point trying to use my SIM in another phone also had no issues using cellular data. And since then from time to time it would "just fix itself"™ and then "break all by itself"™ again.
Today I tried a weird idea: starting the data network I wait for a second or so and start a ping command to something(say google) I get one or two(at most) responses and then the network goes down. So it seems the network really connects for a small period of time and then goes down.
I found a strange workaround: using /usr/lib/connman/test/set-nameservers I hardcoded 8.8.8.8 for my cellular service. After that starting the cellular data connection starts normal and stays connected and functioning.
This seems like a very unstable solution(and I completely don't understand why it works, which bugs me quite a lot), not sure how often I'll have to do it, since I suppose the service's namservers might get removed after disconnecting or rebooting sailfish. Is there any idea what I can do to try and debug this further?
Very strange, and may be very hard to pin down. So you say that you don't remember the behaviour happening before (at some point in the past). Is it possible that you weren't using all of your 'fast' quota then? or are you convinced that something changed in the phone's behaviour?
Also just to make sure I (we) understand correctly. Once you've used your 100 megs, if you, say launch the email client or something that doesn't or can't launch the browser, what do they do then? the browser still launches?
steph ( 2014-05-29 03:23:49 +0200 )editAfter connecting the phone will attempt to contact both http://ipv4.jolla.com/online/status.html and http://ipv6.jolla.com/online/status.html to test general Internet connectivity. There are a few ways that your provider can redirect your network traffic to its site. From your description it sounds like it does so via its DNS service. You could test that by checking what ipv4.jolla.com and ipv6.jolla.com resolve to in the different situations.
Aaron McCarthy ( 2014-05-29 06:24:50 +0200 )editI'm sure I've used my full quota before, I usually do that each month (100 MB definitely isn't "enough for anybody").
I'm guessing what Aaron explains for ipv4 and ipv6 status checks is what I'm seeing manifest as the browser opening itself to show me the providers page whenever I try doing anything network related(including email, tweetian, or a ping from my laptop connected to the phone's wifi tethering network).
Unfortunately I can't seem to reproduce this now. Removing the name server for the cellular service with
kunev ( 2014-05-29 12:03:04 +0200 )editset-nameserversdoesn't make the problem reappear. I'll try again tomorrow, maybe deleting and adding the cellular service from the settings app might help reproduce it.I haven't been able to reproduce this and it seems to work just fine since my last post. Guess I wont find out what it was. Is there a good way to close this question as invalid or unreproducible or something like that?
kunev ( 2014-06-10 21:17:11 +0200 )edit@kunev, Click the close link at the bottom of your question, select the reason for closing and click ok. There doesn't appear to be an unreproducible option, redundant or outdated seems to be the closest match.
Aaron McCarthy ( 2014-06-11 03:42:48 +0200 )edit