Is there a way to point to Flex Radio through vpn instead of open port forwarding?

ik2dhs

Hi,
I'am able to login to my flex radio using maestro in whatever network I am connected to.
I am wondering if there is a way to setup maestro to point directly to my radio ip address instead of using smart link protocol, even using my site2site vpn?
There is some documentation to this?
Thank you

Mike-VA3MW

@ik2dhs yes

Before SmartLink was made public, we used a VPN to connect the client to the radio.

If you search in the community you will find postings about how to setup SoftEther on both ends so that it provides the right type of VPN connection (same subnet with layer 2 communication). Most other VPNs do not do the required network communications.

https://www.softether.org/

If site2site will do type of connection then it will function as required and SmartSDR will see the radio advertising itself on the network.

73

Don

How about changing SmartSDR so it can accomodate direct IP comms? Why are the ones of us left out for advanced config so that the novices of networking have ease? Why cant there be both? Its our radios we should have the ability to do advanced config if we want. **** business decisions.

Mike-VA3MW

This is a common question, and it was one that was considered a lot during the design phase of SmartLink, but it was felt that it would increase post sales support cases with customers who do not understand networking. What happens (a lot) is customers demand that we configure their radio to support such a request as they do not understand it even though we support it. As an example, you would be surprised the number of support cases we get a week asking for us to configure WSJTx.

There were also other security concerns considered at that time.

If you wish to do a direct radio to client connection without invoking SmartLink then the use of a VPN that supports bridging will be required. At this time, SmartLink will remain the tool for remote operation. For those that understand networking, this is a trivial exercise and is well documented in the FlexRadio community.

73