SMARTSDR Remote station using mobile broadband

G3XFA-Rob

I have a flex6600 using smart sdr, I would like to use mobile broadband as the internet source for my radio.
I have done the test using my fixed home broadband which I have no problems of using the smartsdr when I am out my network.
but recently I bought a mobile broadband internet, where I get better up and down speeds in my area , but my problem is I have probs connecting to smartsdr server , so when you do the network test with smart sdr i dont get the green light.
Also I tried the manual forward porting and unlocking firewall but not working.
may the provider is the problem , has any body found anther way of getting over this problem.
I know when I am out using my apple phone using smartsdr I can connect to my home station using ios smartsdr. when doing this my radio is using fixed cable internet.

Larry Loen WO7R

I don't know about "mobile broadband internet" but I have used over the air internet at my rural location to run my rig remotely.

The way I solve all the problems is deploying a VPN.  It's fairly involved, but the benefit is that I have what amounts to two, separate home networks that find each other and establish the VPN automatically with a utility called "tinc".

Once that is up and running I have what amounts to two local 192.168.x.y style networks that know about each other and the rest of the internet effectively disappears.  I also don't have to worry about port forwarding or other things.  The VPN manages it all.  And, it appears to be an "always on" solution almost all the time as well.

As a bonus, since it is VPN based that both stations are pretty invisible on the internet.

However, I also have routers flashed with an open source router at both locations.  There are other topologies, I suppose, perhaps using a Raspberry Pi at each location, so that a more ordinary commercial router could be used, but I haven't had to worry about that for years.  If I was starting over, I would probably deploy something along those lines.  Then, instead of port forwarding, it would be ordinary routing to find and use the VPN address ranges.  The Pis would establish the VPNs and I would be routing to/through them.

G3XFA-Rob

Hi Larry thank  you for your reply I will have a look at that Tinc  utility program

Steve Bunting

Rob,

UK mobile providers do not  give you a public ip addresses so this can make inbound connections difficult.  A VPN can solve that but in my pre-flex remote stations i paid extra for a fixed ip address. It was expensive and i imagine prohibitively so when transporting SSDR volumes of data.

cheers
steve m0bpq

Larry Loen WO7R

Part of what tinc does is enable a reasonable solution to the IP problem.  But, it does require some sort of IP address in one's router than can be known on the other end.  I had neglected the fact that some mobile environments don't really assign an IP address.

In such an environment, it's not clear to me how my solution works.

If you can discern an address and if the cell network supports it from external sources, then my solution would still work.  One merely buys a domain name and the tinc solution takes care of the rest.

But, if both sides do not have an IP address that can be known (even just for the purpose of establishing a VPN), then my idea will not work.

Lasse Moell

I have been using mobile broadband, and suffered from CG-NAT i.e. having an IP address that is at a local net for the telco provider. Using VPN works if it is a client connecting to a server having a public IP. Now I found out that my mobile broadband provider TELENOR do have several APN, and by switching to another APN I had a public IP (not fixed), at no extra cost. This allows for having a VPN server at the mobile end. One may have to use some service (i.e. dynDNS) to publish the IP if this changes.

G3XFA-Rob

I thank you all for your replys