SureSignal keeps demanding location update

[Landshark2007]

Vodafone - in case you ever read this or respond to the tickets I have raised.

I have NOT moved house. I have NOT changed the position or use of my Sure Signal (it has remained in its place since I moved in over 3 years ago). I HAVE updated the network in my home which means that your device may have updated its IP address - this is a standard thing that happens when a device uses DHCP over which I have no control. I DO NOT need countless wretched texts and emails telling me to update it's location which I have done once. 

Lack of proper network knowledge on your part does not constitute a demand for action on mine.

Stop annoying me!

[Landshark2007]

Regrettably, you are mistaken "grolschuk". If an IP address is changed on the internal LAN port, the SureSignal considers it a network change, and shoots off a request for update. We've nailed this issue down really clearly as we moved the LAN port from one network switch to another and the texts and emails came very quickly afterward. The WAN port IP address is static and nothing else changed, but to be sure we put a Sniffer on the LAN to watch what happened and sure enough the Vodafone servers got some traffic the moment the LAN port was switched.

In a normal home environment, this would not be quite so critical, but in a teleworking environment where we are tasked with security issues, this is a non-trivial concern that needs to be addressed. The Sagem device itself can have the option enabled, but Vodafone branded units have the management switched off to us.

If there was another option, we would take it, but right now, this is all that we have.

My unit (that we use to demo the system to clients) has sat on a dedicated LAN at home for three years. We made a strategic decision to drop a certain brand of broadband router so that we could use dedicated Access Points for WLAN and not have standard home routers causing grief. In doing so, we were able to introduce 'guest' WLANs to increase security, reduce costs to the client and offer services that would allow BYOC for new starters. When my unit was switched from one internal network to another, the SureSignal started its bleating. Following Vodafone's instructions, I removed the post code, saved it and then put it back in again. Since then, I have had five requests to do the same thing which is simply beyond a joke.

So, to get back to your point, the SureSignal really does give a damn about which IP address is on its LAN port as I have been woken several times by my own in the last few weeks.

[grolschuk]

I am really suprised to hear that, unless your router is dishing out public facing IPs, if it is in a private range and being NAT'd nto the public addres, the target destination will only see the public IP, that is the whole point of NAT.

However if you are routing public addresses out through a central address that is totally different, but with a reasonable DHCP server in place (even windows default can do it, and the majority of home routers) allocating a MAC to a static address that it picks up every renew is possible and could fix things.

Without knowing the exact setup and routing it is hard to tell exactly what is going on, but I have recently had the same suresignal connected to the same router, on 4 different IP addresses (all 192.168.1.xxx) and it reconnected fine each time (laptop/desktop(s)/sure signal booting in different orders after a reset)

[Landshark2007]

I think that it is simpler than all our discussion points to date. If the Sagem detects a change in IP address, it simply sends out a change notification as its config has had what it regards as a significant change. Since it is sitting on the internal network (as far as it is concerned), the SMS/email notifications can only come from Vodafone which must map a MAC address to the public IP address. Since the public address has not changed and the MAC address cannot change (in this unit anyway), the only variable left is the internal IP address.

[grolschuk]

This is actually hurting my head working out what is or isn't going on.

As far as MACs are concerned, nothing to do with VF or any orther device, they only talk point to point and that is how the transport layer works.

Between VF's servers and the SS will be 6-12 routers, each having their own MACs and each only caring about the device they immediatly talk to.

The SS MAC is ONLY published to the router. Its IP is only cared about by the router, as the router should then pass the traff on as if it was it's own.

If there is something wrong in the local setup that causes things to be passed on outside the normal NAT protocols then that is something to investigate, but I cannot think as to why a private IP change would upset anything - and I am willing to be proven wrong here as a learning experience.

Are there any VPNs or other private networking going on in the remote areas that could cause the SS to connect to the internet via somewhere else and thus show as a remote IP?