How Android knows it's on an expensive connection
lorier.net
lorier.net
At least for me, phone traffic is free, and if some device needs to sync some photos the software shouldn't disturb it because somewhere (USA?) has nonfunctioning competition in mobile connectivity.
For example, for my Android tablet the usual network connection is my phone hotspot - how would I even know if some feature is waiting for "nonexpensive connection" that is not going to come any time soon?
You can go to "Settings > Data usage > ⋮ > Mobile Hotspots" and maybe that's related? I've not checked/experimented. But it's possible you can go there and disable the feature for that AP.
Also, once it's on a request-only basis, it shouldn't be a stretch to make it possible to disable via a configuration setting.
The above two points I believe were the point of the OP.
This is obviously an incomplete feature: The TODO shows that they intended to actually plumb through the "metered" bit from the upstream interface, but never implemented it.
And this is a default, I suspect you can override this, either in the individual applications, or by disabling the "hotspot" option in the buried menu.
Yeah, it's a bit annoying if it's your default way of getting to the internet, but it's at least not going to cost you a massive pile of money as it sync's everything before you have a chance to turn off all the syncing. This way you can at least turn the syncing on again later if you're ok with it.
[Edit: speling]
If cell networks communicated cost-per-gigabyte, then a dual-SIM phone could automatically switch to the cheaper data. This would cause a crash in bandwidth prices, which is why the phone companies would have to be forced into it, probably by the FCC.
After thinking about it for more than three seconds, there's actually two figures of merit: cost-per-gigabyte and width of the desired network connection in bits/s. A gigabyte transfered at a kilobit per second is a lot cheaper than one sent at a megabit/s. Sending a text message from a phone is cheaper than a voice call, which is cheaper than watching a 720p video. So you'd have to have some kind of sliding scale, adjusted by how many other clients there are in the cell, and how much bandwidth they're using...
This seems all very obvious. Has this scheme been described in an RFC from the 80s that I've just never heard of?
But for the simple version, I think RSVP is supposed to kinda support this, but it would probably be difficult to shoehorn in, even ignoring all the stuff I mentioned above.
The only point about your android phone PUSHING the flag, is that it's not a non-standard implementation of the protocol. If you want to disable this on your phone, you have to tell it to ignore that flag, rather than tell it to not request it.
What magical land do you live in that has truly unlimited cell data? And how much does it cost?
> how would I even know if some feature is waiting for "nonexpensive connection" that is not going to come any time soon?
The feature is typical used for things like when you enable "only do this on WiFi" type options, it knows that although it is connected to a wifi hotspot, that hotspot itself is using cell data so don't do that expensive thing that you said to only do on wifi.
Typically the worst thing that'll happen is you will get a few "are you sure?" style dialogs when you go to install a large game or similar.
Three in the UK. GBP 15 per month for an unlimited data plan.
It's only 3G, but they've committed to provide 4G for no price bump once they've finished their rollout later this year.
What else? Hmm... I used 7GB last month. Spotify mostly, some Ted talks too. No-one's complaining, it really is unlimited cell data.
Alternatively, I'd just like unmetered bandwidth everywhere...