RADIUSdesk

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3G / Mobile support for APdesk and MESHdesk

Introduction

  • Today, all of the commercial cloud based controllers we know about require that the hardware be connected to an Ethernet network running a DHCP server.
  • MESHdesk and APdesk was also like that until recently.
  • While one of the developers were waiting for a DSL Internet connection, the only other Internet connection available was through the mobile network using a 3G dongle.
  • Since neither MESHdesk nor APdesk are driven by hardware sales but rather to provide creative solutions, this then offered just such an opportunity.
  • We can now with pride say we also support mobile Internet connections as an alternative to Ethernet based Internet connections.

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A Catch-22

  • Having a controller somewhere on the Internet where a device will fetch its settings from will require the device to have an Internet connection to start with.
  • If you use a mobile connection there will be the requirement to preset the device with some very basic configuration in order for the device to get Internet connectivity.
  • This is where we use the MESHdesk Node Config Utility.
    • The utility now include a 3G Option tab to pre-configure the device for Internet connectivity.
    • This is usually a once off setup and will be left unchanged until you maybe one day decide to disable it or to use another mobile provider which will then need their unique settings.
    • The first item to select on the 3G Option tab is an Action
      • Do Not Change will leave the device unchanged and without adding or removing any existing mobile specific settings. This is the default and set during start-up.
      • Enable will enable all the fields which you can then populate.
      • Disable will disable an existing mobile configuration (provided there is one)
  • Now that the device is pre-configured it can use the mobile connection to get Internet access and fetch the rest of its settings from the RADIUSdesk server.