Here's something that I thought would be trivial to do, because it seems ultimately useful to me, but nothing seems to work this way.

The Background:

I have a mobile phone that included "unlimited data", as long as it's only the mobile phone using it, tethering is strictly forbidden. Now, they've just modified the tariffs so that the one I'm on only includes 1GB of data, it's £2 extra for the unlimited.

Now, I generally use about 250MB per month, so I'm well within this 1GB limit. Now, on the newly modified tariff, tethering is permitted. Great.

However, I am still irked by this nonsense that tethering is bad - especially when you consider that it's all covered under a fair use policy. I could quite happily consume 5GB of data on the phone, but if I wanted to tether my Nexus 7 to it and consume the same about of data as I would on the phone then I'm told that this is unfair and bad.

So, this particular telecoms provider is upping the ante by bringing in new tech to catch tetherers. (I should point out that I've never tethered on them).

Which got me thinking....

Why is it not possible to set up in a WiFi connection in android or on the mac a VPN? That is to say, that on an AP by AP basis I can say whether I want to route data to through a VPN?

So, if I were to create an AP on my phone and configure the Nexus 7 what would be useful is that on the N7 side it would initiate a VPN connection once I've connected to the AP, no data would be allowed over the link until the VPN is up and connected. Same goes for the mac.

Surely I can't be the only person in the world who thinks that this kind of operation is useful?

Adrian

I do what sounds like exactly that here:
-- GN with wifi hotspot.
-- N7 with VPN connection over wifi (GN).
-- generic internet access from N7 all funnelled through the VPN.

What's the problem?

I want it to happen automatically and on a per access point basis, so on home WiFi it's not required, only when I'm connected to the tethering hotpot.

I don't want to have to start stuff manually, I absolutely cannot have any traffic leak direct over the WiFi before the VPN is established.

There are no VPN settings under the WiFi AP settings as far as I can see, they're generic and you have to manually start the VPN.

Adrian

Edit: And if anybody knows how to do this, it'll be you Mark!

Oh, and my iPhone 4S has been sold, just waiting for tuesday now to get my hands on the Nexus 4!

Or just swap to three.co.uk where the data usage seems to be genuinely unlimited and tethering is allowed for nothing. Coverage is just as good as any other provider I've tried for 3G and certainly faster for data use.

Cheers

Cris

That's the other alternative, but it's slightly over double the cost. I also use so few minutes and texts (like 0-20 mins/month and 0 texts) because my wife and I are on the same tariff and that gives us free calls & texts) that it seems a lot extra to pay for something I never use!

Right. There's no stock way to do that, but I imagine a background script on the N7 could figure it out. Something that just monitors the current AP SSID, and when it sees it has connected to the N4, it fires up the VPN.

That shouldn't be difficult to do from a bash script. Over in the Android Apps thread someone recommended a fancy scripting app of some kind that can respond to events (eg. WiFi connected) and customize stuff like that with ease. Perhaps worth looking into?

Cheers

It would appear that Tasker and a plugin can be used to do this, humn, only slight worry there would be whether it's possible to get data to leak while the VPN is not up...and whether or not it leaks if the VPN goes down and it has to bring it back up again.

Not even sure how you'd go about testing that!

Adrian

Edit:

Humn....maybe not, seems that the VPN plugin is not compatible with Android 4.x....

VPN (pptp) is built-into Android 4.x.

Or perhaps you're trying to use an all-in-one "VPN Service" app?
I don't trust those. Dunno why, but I don't.

I just use a non-app VPN service, and enter the login credentials into the Android VPN manager.

Cheers

Yeah, I'm using the built in VPN.

Tasker however doesn't support VPN connected/disconnected events or starting/stopping the VPN.

There was a plugin for tasker which added support (apprently) and I saw scripts that seemed to do exactly what I wanted, but this plugin is not compatible with 4.X and doesn't appear to have updated for the best part of a year.

Argh!

This behaviour that I want seems *so* logical to me!

Close....

Argh!