iPhone/iPad data usage tracking

Question

Just wanted to ask the community a quick question. Out of curiosity, would anyone have an idea how the iPhone App \"DataMan\" and \"Data Usage\" are pulling data readings of

Answer 1

One way to do this would be to install a configuration profile with the proper APN settings which will route all the network traffic through a proxy server. For WiFi, you can set the proxy in the network settings. This way you can easily get data usage statistics using a proxy server such as Squid. Also, it is possible to get per-app data usage by inspecting the HTTP headers of the request, since all apps using CFNetworking pass the app name in the header. I am almost sure this is how Onavo works.

The other way would be to use a VPN connection. The principle is the same, only the technique is different.