I sure wish the Channels DVR Away From Home feature would work with T-Mobile Home Internet

#10

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.

1 Like
#11

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.

1 Like
#12

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.

#13

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.

#14

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.

#15

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.

#16

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.

#17

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.

#18

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.

#19

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.

#20

It happens every 3-4 hours. You can force it by toggling the remote access setting to Off and back on.

#21

Could you provide some information on what method you chose on and others you considered?

I'm testing out the Tmobile Home Internet service and it's very good for my location but need the VPN port forwarding to work, for Channels as well as other applications.

If you have a good stable solution I'll be dumping Comcast.

#22

I have an ASUS AC-5300 router running Merlin. The router is connected to the T-Mobile Nokia Gateway through it's ethernet port. All of my devices are connected to the ASUS router. On the ASUS router, I have a VPN connection to TorGuard VPN. I have the ASUS router configured to send outbound traffic from my Channels DVR server that is destined to 104.21.71.35 or 172.67.142.202 through the VPN. On the TorGuard website, I have my account setup to forward TCP port 8089 through the VPN to the ASUS router. The ASUS router is configured to accept inbound TCP port 8089 and forward the traffic to the Channels DVR server. In addition, the ASUS router is configured to send the response traffic associated with the inbound 8089 port back through the VPN. All other traffic, including all other traffic from the Channels DVR server, passes through the normal default gateway, the T-Mobile Nokia gateway.

I cannot get any more specific than this because your VPN and router may be different.

#23

I have recently installed T-Mobile home internet at my camp and was able to use channels away from home without issue.

#24

Yes, that should work fine with no configuration. It's the other way around that requires some work since Tmobile Home Internet at this point does not allow port forwarding.

2 Likes
#25

Any word on a firmware update?

#26

There was an update that just came out to address some bugs with the current firmware. There is another one due at the end of the month. The release notes for the last update mentions uPnP. But, it doesn't say anything specific. I don't see what the update could be doing with uPNP since T-Mobile is an IPv6 network which wouldn't support uPnP anyway. When T-Mobile said a future update will allow more control, I believe they are talking about adding items like parental controls or DHCP configurations. I doubt they are talking about ipv4 port forwarding features because thats incompatible with ipv6. At any rate, I would be against T-Mobile blindly enabling uPnP as that would introduce security issues. In the long term, what T-Mobile could do is allow the full functions of ipv6 which would make your internal hosts globally accessible. But, they should do this only if its off by default and selectable by individual hosts. Channels DVR would also need to support ipv6.

#27

I just switched to this service and there are indeed very few settings. For starters, I could really use dhcp address reservation and renaming of connected devices. And why can you only see the connected devices in the mobile app and not the web ui? Hopefully they resolve some of this with the upcoming update. How do you keep track of the firmware updates? Thanks.

#28

They stagger their firmware update rollouts. They are currently in the middle of updating right now. For now, I would just get your own router and plug it into one of the gateways ethernet ports. Then turn off the wifi on the gateway and use your own router. There is a tmobileisp reddit for more discussions.

#29

I too am using T-Mobile Home Internet. I have a ASUS AC3100 router connected to my “trash can”. Maybe I’ll try to figure out how to make Channels work outside my home. I have Windscribe VPN currently but open to change. It would be nice if the trash can could just be a bridge.

1 Like