Need public IP Address for SIM card (not necessarily fixed)

[mfst]

Hi,

We are deploying a number of GPRS enabled devices in the UK that have to be accessed remotely, and our customer bought a data SIM card from Vodafone to install in them. Unfortunately, it seems that these kind of cards don't get a public IP but a private one, as it seems Vodafone provides this kind of NAT solution to increase the number of customers per IP address.

It is further detailed in this post:

http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Mobile-Broadband/Public-IP-Address/td-p/1647264

Unfortunately this prevents us accessing our devices from the outside. My questions are:

1. Is it possible to change the service in some way to get a unique public IP (it is not necessary for it to be fixed, since the devices are compatible with the dyndns service).

2. If 1 is not possible, I would appreciate if you could direct me to the appropiate Vodafone product in order to request my customer to buy that instead.

Many thanks in advance.

Manuel

[Retired-James]

Hi mfst,

Due to the amount of IP ‘s and mobile devices I don’t think that this is going to be possible, however I flagged this with our Mobile Broadband specialist to see if we can help.

James

[Retired-James]

Hi mfst,

I’ve spoken with our mobile broadband specialist who has confirmed that this isn’t possible on a consumer connection.

If you speak with our business team, they will be able to look at a more bespoke setup for your requirements.

James

[daphe]

Hi,

Not sure if this was resolved for you but I am in the same situation. We have a business plan with Olive Comms and I have not having luck to get public IP assigned to one of our data SIM that we need to use for Opengear 3G console server.

Would you please help me on this occasion?

kind regards,

[mfst]

Hi,

We contacted Vodafone M2M and indeed it is possible to have bidirectional communication with private ip sim cards by installing a dedicated VPN software to access it. Unfortunately we couldn't buy directly from Vodafone because we don't have the volume of SIM cards required (we are a small company). What we did was contact an authorized reseller and bought it from them. The drawback is that you have to install a VPN software (they charge you the license) in a machine (your server probably) and connect with the cards always though that machine. Also, as it has to go through the VPN, the communication is quite slow but the good thing is that it is secure in the sense that only your machine can contact the SIM card.

There seems to be a high number of these resellers but we ended up buying from one called nextm2m.

Hope it helps.

[daphe]

Thank you very much for taking out time and helping me out with this. 

[Retired-Ian_]

Hi guys,

If you do need any help regarding this, we have a dedicated team available.

You can reach them here.

Thanks,

Ian