Does Vodafone support incoming mobile terminated connection ?

[Uyenhuynh]

As I have known, most of cellular network operators build their cellular broadband data network GPRS/EDGE and 3G to support the down-link connection from mobile devices for web surfing, checking email, downloading the music, etc . However, there are still some operators such as AT&T in US which provides the up-link connection to mobile devices ( So we can use a laptop as a server for accessing through the cellular network)

I want to know exactly whether or not Vodafone UK or else where support that up-link traffic to mobile devices ?

What APN they use for ? What IP address is provided, Static or Dynamic? User name and password ? Charging rate? idle timer ? Connection timeout?

The problem is that those information I could not get from their customer service support, so I greatly appreciate if you guys could help me to figure it out.

Thanks for your great help,

Uyen

[Retired-Jon_V]

Hi Uyen,

I'm afraid I have a bit of a problem understanding your question. Perhaps you could let us know why you need this information?

In order for an internet connection to work effectively, you must provide both uplink and downlink, otherwise there would be no way for the requests from the phone to reach (for example) a web server and request a website, before the server then sends the website through the downlink to the phone to be displayed on the browser.

For our mobile devices, the APN used for downloading and uploading is the same - it's a duplex connection, so data is passed both ways. The IP addresses are assigned dynamically. The actual APN used varies depending on the device, and the purpose, as does the charging rate.

If you need specific information, please let me know what the purpose is and I might be able to give more appropriate answers

Jon

eForum Team

[Uyenhuynh]

Hi Jon,

Ok, let say like this. I have a laptop equipped with a cellular GPRS modem connected to Vodafone cellular network. I want to deploy a server application on my laptop such as FTP server. And I want to access my server from internet. So is it possible? Do your APNs support routing to my laptop for inbound connection like that?

In reality, we, a company in US, manufacture the data acquisition equipment, data logger and sell it to customers in worldwide market. Our data loggers are deployed in far fields to take a measurement of environmental data. Those data will be transmitted to the central office where they are analyzed and graphically displayed by our self-developed software. That software is also used for programming and updating the data logger.

To program and update software for our data loggers from the central office, our data loggers must be visible in the internet.

Thanks for your support,

Uyen Huynh

[Retired-George]

Hi Uyen,

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure whether what you're asking is possible. I'll ask the question to our data expert though. As soon as we have confirmation, we'll let you know.

George
eForum Team

[Uyenhuynh]

Thanks in advance.

[Uyenhuynh]

Hello George,

Have you had time to ask for me about that ?

Thanks,

Uyen

[helloworld]

Uyen

did you try DynDNS?

Regards

[Retired-Trev]

Hi Uyen

Both George and Jon are out of the business today, but I will forward a email to them and see if they have had any response from our data specialist for you.

Regards

Trev
eForum Team

[mikeambrose]

Hi I want to connect to a PLC and HMI installation via Vodafone USB attached to a Netgear 3G router. I have go the router working fine so in affect I hve a wifi hotspot but now I need to be able to connect to the router from elsewhere via the internet. If the vodafone IP addres is not a public address will a DynDns set up work so I can connect to the router via the DynDns server. This isnt an answer but I think if we can find out if it works it would be a solution

[Retired-Jon_V]

Hi guys,

Thanks for being patient while I was away

Unfortunately, our modems do not use Public IP addresses when they connect, and so it is not possible for a Vodafone Modem to receive incoming connections in the way that a server would. This is because your external facing IP address (the one as seen on the internet), is in fact shared with thousands of other Vodafone users at the same time, via a combination of Network Address Translation and Port Address Translation. This means incoming connections targetting your IP address will not know which individual computer to route to once it hits our internal network.

The way around this is to use a zero-config VPN application, like Hamachi, which needs to be installed on both the client and the server, and gives both machines their own internal IP address. That will then allow the two computers to talk to each other as if connected to the same LAN.

Alternatively, the DynDNS method described by carwashmike above will do the trick too

Jon

eForum Team