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.
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.
I have recently installed T-Mobile home internet at my camp and was able to use channels away from home without issue.
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.
Any word on a firmware update?
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.
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.
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.
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.
T-Mobile Home Internet is ipv6 based. So, bridge mode won't bring you port forwarding. I'm using TorGuard VPN on an ASUS AC5300 running Merlin. TorGuard allows port forwarding. Windscribe may as well. The only traffic I send through the VPN is outbound traffic from the DVR server to 172.67.142.202 and 104.21.71.35. The VPN also listens on port 8089 and forwards that traffic and the reply traffic to and from the DVR server. All other traffic from the DVR server uses the regular, default route. It works pretty well.
But if T-Mobile allows for bridge mode wouldn’t it function more like a traditional modem and our personal routers would do the port forwarding as they previously had done?
Port forwarding requires ipv4. Bridge mode will not give you ipv4 on T-Mobiles network as it is an ipv6 based network. You do get an ipv4 address from T-Mobile. But its a CGN natted IP (Carrier Grade Nat), i.e., its shared by multiple customers. That's why the geo location information for your ipv6 address doesn't match the geo location of the ipv4 address. For some customers, the ipv4 location is hundreds of miles away from the ipv6 location. For the Channels DVR to work without a VPN on T-Mobiles network, Channels would need to support ipv6 and the T Mobile gateway would need to allow traffic inbound to the Channels DVR GUA.
Ahhh ok. Well everything else works great with T-Mobile Home Internet so I’ll be keeping it for $50/mo. Even my work VPN and Plex outside the home. I get 250+ down and 20+ up so beats the $80/mo (after $20/mo discount) I was paying Spectrum for 400 X 20 service.
Thats my situation as well. Even though I have to use a VPN for Channels DVR to work remotely, the remote DVR works much better with T-Mobile than it did with Comcast. With Comcast my upload speed was only 5Mbps. With T-Mobile I'm getting about 100Mbps. This improves using the DVR remotely a lot. And I get the added benefit of $60 less a month, a 500-600 Mbps download speed, and no data caps.
Is there a free VPN service that can accomplish this?
OpenVPN has a free tier. I cannot speak for if it is great for this application.
I haven't tested this myself, but Windscribe claims to offer port fowarding and claims to be free. Portmap.io, which is just for port fowarding, also has a free tier. Its not so fast though. I'm paying $6.49 a month for TorGuard. I didn't mind paying that since T-Mobile is saving me $60 a month over Comcast.
Thanks, this looks like just what I need but in the FAQ it says it doesn't support ipv6 so does this mean it won't work with T-Mobile?
Portmap.io and the other VPN's will require you to setup a VPN connection on your personal router connected to the T-Mobile gateway. Depending where you DVR server is installed, you could instead install and connect the VPN from the DVR server. I would recommend that you use your personal router as it will also have a firewall. Whatever service you use, it doesn't have to support ipv6 because the whole point is to acquire an ipv4 IP which is what most of the internet uses.
OK, I have OpenVPN on my Asus AC1300 router and set it up with the TCP configuration generated by Portmap.io and then set up Port forwarding to my local PC in the Asus settings. I am a little confused about the ports. Do I set the mapping in Portmap.io to the port I specify in the OpenVPN server setup and then in the router port forwarding map that port to the local port on the PC? That doesn't seem to be working.