Flex 6400 : 3.5.9 upgrade, SmartLink Worked Fine and then Broke

Similar experience on my 6300: updated shortly after noon CDT and it was working, then tried to log in a couple of hours later and SmartLink doesn't see any radios. I can remote into a computer that is on the same subnet as the Flex and pull up SmartSDR, so it's definitely a SmartLink problem. Why does this seem to happen every 90 days or so?!

I'm a network geek and maintain all the services and software in my medical practice. While we have the ability to connect to our FlexRadio's through port forwarding via SmartLink (which resolves your local internet IP on your router), and we can connect locally through our LAN in our homes or wherever our internet is, we do not have the ability to connect via a fixed public IP address that I can see.

I have the several servers in my office that have fixed public IP address since we purchased a "bank" of them from our ISPs (we have three routers and two providers). Why can we not simply enter a fixed IP address or better yet and specific URL through our DNS servers (e.g., such as flex.mydomain.com)?

Single fixed public IPs are available just as are banks of thirty from every ISP I've ever used.

The advantage is that we would have a remote option NOT dependent on SMARTLink and this outage would not be able to affect those of us who have that kind of internet connection.

Apparently this is all a certificate issue. I manage dozens of servers and fixing this should amount to no more than downloading new certificates and placing them correctly. This never should have taken days to resolve. I think this is my last FLEX product unless they add the ability to directly connect to a specific public IP. There is no excuse for an expired ceritificate! Why weren't they watching for this? I do!

You can’t fix anything by canceling free speech. And the outage continues even as I write this.

There are two other connection technologies which should be added to SDR to deal with this outage situation. (UPNP and fixed IP Address options...read on) I found from the previous discussions that outages have been fairly constant and regular occurrences. The issues have not been discussed at the sales level. At least not before I recently bought my 6400, my first commercial radio purchase.

Smartlink depends on a registration schema. I use a product called Screens as one remote management tool for the thirty computers on my office located two hours drive away. It uses UPNP (Universal Plug and Play) instead of manual router reconfiguration. It is about as unreliable as Smartlink I now see from all the frequent past outage reports, but UPNP does work better than Smartlink on the whole.

The reason for Smartlink is the same as Screens. Most of our internet connections have a public IP address that can change either because our ISP reboots their equipment or we reboot our in-home modems. Smartlink and screens try to get around these by watching for and recording those changed IP addresses so SDR can connect us to our radios.

I have fixed public IPs both at my home and office which never change. You do have to pay for these, but it means the connections to specific devices are always the same. There is no need for anything like Smartlink at all in that case. It requires only the specific IP of the computer or device
(FLEXRadio) to access it. But there is no place in SDR software to manually provide that.

Why don’t we have the option to provide those IPs to the SDR software? Why don't they use UPNP technology? The community needs to know that this dependency in Smartlink for all our radio connections is not the only option. FLEXRadio needs to add that to SDR, and they could do that in less time than they've spent so far unsuccessfully fixing an unnecessary certificate/certifying authority oversight. While it is unfair to apply any motives one way or another to their mistake, it does make one pause and wonder just what is going on under the corporate hood here? Are they in financial trouble and just didn't have the money to renew their certificates? Are we all going to be left high and dry in they go under? We don't know, but I for one am concerned. And not being allowed to say so by deleting comments certainly will be worse that seeing just complaints.

100% Until the Remote Hams "RCFORB" server goes down.

Anytime you have a HUB Server involved like RCFORB, SmartLink, IRLP, Echolink, TeamViewer, AnyDesk and others your going to have uncontrollable outages so NOTHING is 100%.

I've used RCFORB Remote base "K7SDC" for a very long time and I can only remember it being down a couple times so there uptime IS VERY good.

Probably the most reliable is my own SmartEther VPN with my own Domain name / Static IP has been the best so far but still not 100% because of internet and equipment failures.

In my approx. 10 years of experience running remote these have been my personal favorites and most reliable.

1: Personal DIRECT VPN (No 3rd party server involved) SoftEtherVPN. (Best by far).

2: RCFORB

3: Remote Desktop of some type

4: SmartLink (came later) and by far the WORST uptime and NO ability to manage 3rd party devices other than enable/disable the PGXL Amp.

I also share my FTDX101D on remotehams flawless since many years ( earlier share TS590 )

Perfect ..but.. 35% of usability level. No easy to manage waterfall/spectrum , for instance . No savable setups

I think you cannot compare both smartsdr and rcforb at all. I have , use and thoroughly know both worlds.

Harry

DL9NDW