The subject says it all.
Yeah. That and IPv6. But, if the customer could enter the IP and possibly the port number on the settings page, it might make it possible for customers to create work arounds. I imagine this will start impacting more and more people.
If you use a VPN, you can connect to your remote server as if your were locally connected. Other workarounds are discussed in the forum, too. One just needs to do a bit of research.
The problem with direct IP addressing relates to the certificates, and OAuth, which makes it a not-really-viable option.
I wouldn't mind a VPN. I'm already doing that on my iPhone. The problem, it won't work on an Apple TV. Also, yes, there are a lot of discussions regarding the issue on this forum. The problem is, they are complicated. And they are even more complicated because of the IP.
I impinge this will impact more and more people as people jump from Comcast after they implement their data cap on the east coast.
In researching T-Mobile Internet it became clear that this is not a replacement for internet via a cable company. While it cost less than cable internet, it's overall value is nominal if you use a lot of data or enjoy streaming as your primary entertainment method. While some folks may abandon Comcast, I suspect many will go back to Comcast.
I'm still going to try it just to "see", but not canceling cable internet.
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You may be correct. However, for me, once the data cap kicks in, T-Mobile will be $50 a month cheaper than Comcast. Even now, before the data cap price, it's still cheaper. In addition, I am getting a minimum of 3-4 times the download speed I get with Comcast and about 40 times the upload speed. All of the TV viewing in my house is through streaming. I personally stream TV 16 hours a day. So far, my only issue is the CGNAT issue. Unless T-Mobile has a massive drop off, I will be done with Comcast at the end of this billing cycle.
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If you have an IPV6 address, that might stay static enough that you can use that as your entry into your DVR. I too have to deal with CGNAT with my carrier but I was able to get things working with my IPV6 address as that is displayed publicly. I just told the Channels devs what my IPV6 address is, opened up the firewall and I was good to go.
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You gave them the ipv6 address of your outside gateway's interface or you gave them the ipv6 address of your Channels DVR server?
Also, who is your carrier?
Thanks
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I gave them the IPV6 address of my Channels DVR server. IPV6 is a different animal than IPV4 that I've learned a lot about unwillingly because my local ISP ripped my static IPV4 address away from me and provided me only with public IPV6.
I had to configure my DHCPV6 to do Prefix Delegation which then takes the routers prefix and assign it to the IP associated with my DVR server. Also need to ensure that IPV6 is enabled on your DVR host as well. Then I was able to setup a firewall rule to only allow 8089 traffic to come into that specific IP.
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Thanks for the explanation. This is exactly how I would like to set this up. Unfortunately, T-mobile doesn't have settings to manage their firewall on their gateway. In fact, about the only thing you can change is turning wifi on or off and the SSID's.
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If that's true that is a huge bummer. Are you sure there isn't an administrator login that gives you more settings to play with? It would boggle me why a residential router would have 0 control over your home network.
The prior router, which only supports LTE, had limited control also. But at least it had some. The 5G router has no control. The only thing you can change are wifi settings. It doesn't even have parental controls and such. T Mobile says they rushed to get this gateway out. A future firmware update will provide more control. For now, I"m stuck with implementing some sort of outbound VPN solution.
I thought I read somewhere that you could use it as just a "modem". That is, disable the router functions and hook it up to a different router via ethernet like a cable modem.
Even if this works, that won't fix the underlying issue. Your IP address will still be behind CGNAT, which is the source of the issue.
You can hook it up to another router. Thats exactly my situation. However, with T Mobile, there is no disabling of it's router or even a DMZ function as they are using CGNAT and IPv6. In addition, their router/gateway blocks inbound IPv6 traffic even with a proper IPv6 address. There are plenty of methods to work around this. There are services where I can VPN to an outside server and expose a port back inside my network. There are services where I run a simple executable or SSH on my DVR server which will expose a port by routing through an outside server. I have tested all of these and they work perfectly with a web browser that is already authenticated by Channels. The problem is with the clients. The clients go to community.getchannels.com to get the external IP address of your Channels DVR server. But that address is not the address you want if you are using one of these services. If Channels had a way for the customer to enter the IP address and port number overriding what the Channels DVR server has discovered for your network, this would work for customers who are in my situation.
We have a way to do this if you email support. You would need to confirm the IP and port you choose are accessible from the internet, then send it to us with your username and we will install the override.
Thanks. I will do this. I need a few days. I am testing several methods. I need to decide which method or service is the best.
Thanks a lot.
After testing 7-8 services, I have found several services that will forward port 8089 directly without using a different source port. In addition, if you route the DVR's traffic through the service, the Channels DVR server eventually picks up the public facing IP for the service and stores that in your account. In short, everything is up and running. So I will not need anyone from Channels support to enter a specific IP and port for my account.
One final question, does anyone know how often the Channels updates the public IP and stores it in your account? And finally, is there a way to force it to do so?
Thanks for everyones help.
It happens every 3-4 hours. You can force it by toggling the remote access setting to Off and back on.