Is Viaero Wireless CGNAT?

KD0RC · June 2023

I am helping a club to set up a remote Flex station out on the eastern plains of Colorado. The ranch has Viaero Wireless with a dish four miles from the radio site. The owner says that he does not have a static external IP address. By this, I think it might be CGNAT.

Does anyone have any insights here?

If it is CGNAT, then I will plan on using the SoftEther VPN for connectivity. Anything else that I need to consider in this circumstance?

Mark - W0QL · September 2023

Len,

Can you give an update on your progress, please? Did you get it working using Softether? I’m late to the thread. Sorry. My insights would be relative to using ZeroTier because that’s the VPN product I’m using. I suspect the results would be similar. I am presently using a WISP which has CGNAT but luckily offers static I.P.’s for $10 a month. That connection works great but is expensive ($80/month). Meanwhile I tried to get a cellular mobile hotspot with CGNAT working because it was cheaper. Pertaining to the mobile hotspot, what works for me is using Windows Remote Desktop to a pc at the remote site, over ZeroTier. Then run SmartSDR on the site pc when you’re RDP’ed in. (This is the Mike Walker preferred method ). I have not been able to get Smartlink to work over ZeroTier. I suspect the broadcast or multi cast packets advertising the Flex are getting dropped. In my case it would be getting dropped by the cellular carrier. Not being cellular, Viaero might not drop broadcast packets. I don’t know. Another thing is, ZeroTier is routing packets, not bridging. That is, the VPN is layer 3, not layer 2, if that makes sense. If it was layer 2 it would not be looking at the type of packets and therefore wouldn’t know or care if a packet was a broadcast packet or not. Smartlink should work if the VPN was bridged rather than routed. Supposedly there is a way to make ZeroTier to bridge rather than route but I could never get it to work. Can you bridge with SoftEther? I’m anxious to hear what your progress has been.

The only other insight I would have is about bandwidth usage. Typical usage at my remote is 133 Gb of data per month and that’s with Smartlink. I think Remote Desktop would be much higher. Does Viaero offer unlimited bandwidth? I’m lucky enough to have a WISP that doesn’t complain about my usage.

Mark - W0QL

KD0RC · September 2023

Hi Mark, No progress (for a variety of non-radio related issues).

In my personal remote setup (camping, etc), I use SmartLink to run the radio. I use SoftEther to connect my TeensyMaestro. I use TeamViewer to run my amp, tuner and antenna rotator (and anything else I might hook up in the future). SoftEther is run in bridged mode; it is just like having the TeensyMaestro plugged in locally. I use my cell phone as a WiFi hotspot most of the time.

I have not been to the remote site to try the Viaero network yet, so I was hoping someone knew for sure if it uses CGNAT. My guess is that it does, so I am preparing for the worst by having a computer available that will run SoftEther. I am not a networking expert, but I have been successful in my experimentation with it.

Check out my QRZ page for a diagram of how I operate remotely. It also shows the TeensyMaestro and gives a description of it.

In the meantime, I plan on concentrating on the Colorado QSO Party today...

Is Viaero Wireless CGNAT?

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