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Visible (Verizon MVNO) PSA
Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2020 2:42 pm
by thejohnfist
Seems a lot of people are suddenly getting their hotspot data capped at 5mbps, where many weren't before. Just a heads up for people using this as internet. Might want to think about other sources.
Re: Visible (Verizon MVNO) PSA
Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2020 8:53 am
by Didneywhorl
It started at 5Mbps, I guess they put the cap back on. TTL changes arent getting around it?
Re: Visible (Verizon MVNO) PSA
Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2020 9:07 am
by tetranz
It's happening for me now tethering from an iPhone. Last night it was good but no more. I suspect EasyTether would get around it but I don't have an Android compatible phone.
Re: Visible (Verizon MVNO) PSA
Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2020 12:32 pm
by tetranz
It seems to be back up to speed again. Now I'm getting about 35 Mbps using USB tether to my old iPhone. I'm using WireGuard although that didn't seem to make any difference to the speed yesterday. It was always pretty much exactly 5.0 which suggests it wasn't a random slowdown.
I'm getting a cheap Android phone for Visible so I can use EasyTether but maybe I don't need it.
Re: Visible (Verizon MVNO) PSA
Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2020 7:57 pm
by tetranz
An update on this. I now have a nice new Moto G Power phone running on Visible.
EasyTether does not hide the fact that I'm tethering as I naively thought it would.
Even though the higher tethering speeds have somewhat returned, I can tell that I'm still "hotspotting" because when I try speedtest.net, the "optimal server" it finds is always in OK or KS. That's what you get when tethering on Visible. If I use Chrome on the phone itself I get servers close to me in Houston.
I wonder if EasyTether would work with a standard Verizon plan. It certainly works on my GSM phone with T-Mobile because my account only shows device data.
EDIT: Well ... maybe this is working better than I thought. It can vary enough over a few minutes that it's hard to get consistent results but if I connect directly to the phone wifi hotspot, I seem to be consistently throttled at 5 Mbps but If I go through my Raspberry Pi which runs WireGuard and EasyTether with USB to the phone, it's much faster, often over 20 Mbps. I'm not sure if it's WireGuard or EasyTether doing the trick but results seem to be reasonably consistent.
Those servers that speedtest.net selects is still suspicious but maybe that doesn't happen when I use WireGuard. I have no way to tell because I'm using Windscribe VPN and I have no way to know anything about the traffic coming into Winscribe. That's a bit like trying to tell if the light in a refrigerator goes out when you close the door. All good fun
