I’ve noticed at least twice that with both mobile data and wifi enabled, the phone is apparently defaulting to mobile data instead of wifi. I’ve seen it when I download a package, and I suddenly get an SMS from my paygo provider that I’ve burned through 80% of my monthly data allotment. This latest happened 2 days into the billing cycle.
I am using a cheap US$3/month prepaid plan that includes 100MB/100minutes/100texts, which I keep just for testing mobile functions in the L5; unfortunately extra data is kind of expensive ($30 per GB). I avoid overcharges by simply deactivated mobile for the rest of the month.
Can anybody else confirm this behavior? I’m currently on crimson.
I have a feeling that this has been discussed previously in this forum. e.g. Cellular connection anomalies - #8 by Whe3zy but I feel as if there are others that I can’t find right now.
I don’t think there are good answers in respect of downloading packages but you can at least partly control this by any one of:
adding a route
a web proxy for apt to use (but that is a heavyweight solution)
probably with your own interface up/down hook scripts (and that might work around the problem more widely)
where control here means to make it impossible for it to download a package except via WiFi.
(The good non-existent answer would be to configure apt to Acquire::Bind to a specific interface.)
And as noted in that very old topic linked above, you need to understand your IPv6 scenario. However I believe that you can outright just tell apt to use IPv4 only if IPv6 is also available.
I often had this problem when I was on Byzantium. I found it rather frustrating and was one of the big reason I stopped using the Awesim service. It would run through my 5 GB of data rather fast.
$ sudo route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 600 0 0 wlan0
0.0.0.0 10.83.62.217 0.0.0.0 UG 1050 0 0 wwan0
10.83.62.208 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.240 U 1050 0 0 wwan0
192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 600 0 0 wlan0
The route over cellular already has a higher metric over WiFi. You may end up routing things over cellular’s IPv6 when on a IPv4-only WiFi network though.
I have 5GB Mint Mobile pre-paid plan and have seen this behavior for years – both Byzantium and Crimson. I haven’t devised or executed a coherent test plan to figure out the trigger. I feel like it has something to do with losing wifi and it switching to mobile… and losing it’s mind.
I tend kill mobile via HKS when I’m browsing or updating at home to save data and kill wifi when I’m out to save battery.
Thanks, all, for the responses. I’m not sure I understand exactly what’s going on, but…
I have 600 for wlan0 and 1050 for wwan0.
I do have ipv6 disabled on my wifi network and devices.
I checked in Advanced Network Configuration and saw that ipv6 was set to “automatic” for my mobile carrier, so I changed that to “disabled.”
As I said, the mobile account in question is only used minimally, so I can just keep it disabled when I don’t need it on. Of course, I want to understand how to make sure it’s not used when wifi is on, though.
It would be good to have an explicit icon about web connection and what is used (could also be via USB-ethernet or BT), instead of just having an icon that indicates they are available for use.
Note that although Ultra Mobile’s paygo plan can do international roaming, the rates are significantly higher than their roaming rates for the regular plans.
Fortunately, the combination of JMP Chat + a JMP Data SIM meets all my international roaming requirements.
The easiest workaround is to add a route so that Purism’s repo server is always accessed via WiFi. However that is only a point solution. It controls apt (and only apt to Purism) without controlling anything else and it is potentially fragile if Purism change’s the IP address used by the repo server (but that is infrequent or unlikely) and you would get errors if apt happens to fire up while you are out and about 1. And, as a workaround, it is neither investigating the underlying cause nor fixing it.
You could alternatively keep mobile data turned off all the time except when you are both out and about and need to do something online.
1 You can somewhat control the time of day or schedule that apt uses to check for and download updates, if your movements would be predictable enough to make that useful.
If you are super-desperate, you could try firing up your own local DNS server and nobble all IPv6 (AAAA) address lookup results. (That could of course break something else so …)
