cellular data network IP address

Question

cellular data network IP address

I am doing research for a college paper on internet security.
On my iPhone, I notice every time I connect to the internet through the cell data network, either EDGE or 3G, my ip address is different each time.
With the sheer volume of internet traffic through the cell data network, is it possible to determine the person who sent it (ie. their cell phone number or other identifying characteristic?) to an individual session?
If you somewhere else I should post this question, please let me know.
I know all the smart people hang in here 😉

macbook pro iphone, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Sep 24, 2009 3:13 PM

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Answer 1

edclange

Level 5

4,638 points

Sep 25, 2009 6:53 AM in response to collscistudent

The wireless carrier probably keeps track of that information. And they're not likely to give up that information without a court order. I would think that it's an arduous task to track down a specific connection, both from a technical and legal standpoint.

One of my apps is able to show me the iPhone's current IP addresses, both for WiFi and Cellular. On the AT&T cellular network, the IP address is always a 10.x.x.x address. Meaning, it's in private (not internet-routable) address space, and AT&T is using Network Address Translation (NAT) to provide internet access to my device. This doesn't surprise me. With IPv4 address space getting tight, a huge number of iPhones on the network, and the vast majority of apps not needing to listen for incoming data, there's no real need to assign a public IP address. There are available protocols like UPnP for the rare times when an app needs to receive data from an unsolicited source. I don't recall if the iPhone SDK supports UPnP.

This is all speculation, but I imagine that the carriers keep track of which private IP address is assigned to a subscriber and at what times. The carrier's NAT service would also need to keep track of which private address connects to which public address and port. Correlating those together, an individual connection could be tracked to an individual subscriber. That's a lot of data to retain, so it's probably not kept around for very long. Again, this whole paragraph is speculation. Whether or not they do any of this is another matter. I'm just pointing out that it's definitely possible.

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