Manually Connect to 6600M at Specific IP?

k0oks

I'd like to manually be able to connect to my 6600M at a specific IP without using SmartLink. Is there a way to do this?

I have multiple LAN segments on different private subnets. I need to be able to connect to a radio at 192.168.10.100 from another LAN segment at 192.168.20.200 (note the different third octet). These private LANs are connected through a router.

I cannot use SmartLink because it tries to be helpful and sniff out my public IP address, but the LAN segments are private networks that communicate privately through a router. Thus connecting to the public IP from either private LAN does not work.

I'd like to avoid using reflection or other firewall forwarding tricks if at all possible.

Mike-VA3MW

Not simply.

If you want to connect to a radio on a different subnet, you will need to create a VPN tunnel to that other subnet that will also share layer 2 broadcast packets.

The IP design was created to work with 99% of our customer's home networks and that is a single subnet on a basic router connected to the internet,

k0oks

I figured it was broadcast, but that limits you to the local subnet. I can enabled NAT reflection in the router, but that slows everything down a tiny bit because then all LAN1-LAN2 traffic has to go through the WAN interface.

I would make a vote for the ability for a user to manually enter a target IP address for the radio, rather than only pull it out of SmartLink.

This would also allow tech savvy people with static IPs to connect directly to their radio. There are a lot of computer people in Amateur Radio, and giving more flexibility is a good thing.

At the very least perhaps there could be a config file to edit to add this IP. I couldn't find anything like that in %APPDATA%. At least I couldn't find an ip in there.

Thanks.

Mike-VA3MW

Your request is a common one. :)

One of the reasons we don't do it is related to post sales support. We spend a LOT of time fixing networks for people who have some or little IP knowledge and that is expensive to do and it ultimately drives up the cost of the radio (it is in the economics).

Where hear this almost daily. My buddy came over and made some changes to my network. It worked great for a while (month/year) but now nothing works --- you get the idea and their buddy is long gone. :)

So, we have to then spend time undoing things once we figure out what is wrong. Over 95% of the install base has no network experience. They want it to 'just work'.

This doesn't help you at all, unfortunately.