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How TetherFuseNet Works

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pyamsoft edited this page Dec 10, 2025 · 1 revision

How TetherFuseNet Works

Basic Networking

TetherFuseNet works by creating something called an "HTTP proxy". Let's take a small example. Normal Internet traffic looks loosely like this:

laptop: I want to view google.com -> (sent to Internet)
Internet: I am seeing a request from a laptop for "google.com", here is that website, laptop -> (sent to laptop)
laptop: I see "google.com"

When you connect your laptop, TetherFuseNet talks to the Internet "for your laptop", so all Internet traffic looks a little something like this:

laptop: I want to view google.com -> (sent to TetherFuseNet)
TetherFuseNet: Ok, I am a phone. I will ask the Internet for "google.com" -> (sent to Internet)
Internet: I am seeing a request from a phone for "google.com", here is that website, phone -> (sent to TetherFuseNet)
TetherFuseNet: I saw a response to "google.com", here you go laptop -> (sent to laptop)
laptop: I see "google.com"

As you can see, the above traffic has the following interesting bits:

  • All requests are sent by the phone, so all Internet traffic "looks like" the phone. This may end up being marked as your carrier as "phone data" instead of "hotspot data". This is NOT A GOAL of TetherFuseNet, but is (generally speaking) what happens.

  • Since TetherFuseNet sits in the middle, it always adds a bit of "extra waiting time" since it has to delegate and field all of these Internet requests. As a curious piece of historical Internet baggage, it is generally limited to 6-to-8 requests at a single time (but this is much lower-level than what is appropriate for a simple Wiki).

  • For those technically knowledgeable, TetherFuseNet DOES NOT do SSL termination, so it CAN NOT see your HTTPS requests (aside from the initial CONNECT statement which is required for the protocol to function). It will never be a goal of TetherFuseNet to terminate SSL, ever.

  • TetherFuseNet ONLY speaks HTTP. This is because the Android Operating System that it runs on only provides the programming APIs to easily speak HTTP at a system level. While other protocols exist, like "raw" TCP or UDP, the system itself does not "guarantee" that all of these raw requests will be sent to TetherFuseNet, so support for new protocols is slow but a constant exploration.

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