automatic APN selection

Aleksander Morgado aleksander at aleksander.es
Mon Feb 11 14:58:45 UTC 2019


> I'm working on embedded system which will have internet connection over GSM. I can setup connection manually. My point is to have everything automatically set (so no user intervention).
> So question is if MondeManager support kind of automatic getting provider details from some database (like ofono is using mobile-broadband database) to have connection working out of the box. Thanks.
>

Nothing automatic, but if you're using NetworkManager, you can always
setup something that creates the network settings to use from the
mobile-broadband database.

We don't do that ourselves because selecting the APN blindly for your
users is not ideal, there are multiple things to consider. Most of the
times, when you buy a SIM card, you get what settings to use and you
should use those. Some operators have looser rules w.r.t. APN, e.g. in
Spain I can literally use whatever APN I want with Movistar operator
and it'll work, but some others are much stricter, even with strict
user/pass settings to use. And of course, you may have APNs for
different purposes or even charged differently. It's not an easy think
to automate, unless your specific use case covers a fixed subset of
options.

For most new setups using LTE, you can usually just request connection
without an explicit APN (blank APN) and that may work, if your
operator allows you to do Internet connection over the initial default
LTE bearer for example, although even that is not always the case...

-- 
Aleksander
https://aleksander.es


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