On allowing bearer creation from PDP context ID.

[Jessy Exum]

Aleksander,
It is good to know that this type of stuff is on your guy's radar. I will
look over this work as time permits and see if I can expand on it.

I am still pretty new to working with gObject and GDbus, so I will likely
have a plethora of stupid questions, so everyone please bear with me :)

Giacinto,
I have looked at some of the initial esp api stuff. I just figured out how
to disable my modem from auto connecting, so I will actually have some
control over the thing. It does sound like there is more I can learn about
it though.

I will check some resources I have to try and figure out how Verizon would
want an MBIM modem to behave. Hopefully I can provide some definitive
answers so we can add something that doesn't need to be redone in a year.

Thanks for the warm welcome to the community,
Jessy Diamond Exum


On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 1:45 AM Giacinto Cifelli <gciofono at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello Jessy,
>
> On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 10:11 AM Jessy Exum <jessy.diamondman at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello everyone, I hope this finds you well.
>>
>> I have been working on getting a product certified with Verizon, but
>> failed because my first implementation did not handle their OTA-DM (Over
>> the Air Device Management) <http://hosteddocs.ittoolbox.com/CC012507.pdf>
>> behavior. This stage of certification relies heavily on creating bearers
>> out of PDP context IDs (Verizon handles most of the messy bits in setting
>> those contexts for you in the modem).
>>
>> My current solution is to manually read the PDP contexts off of the
>> device with AT+CGDCONT=?, reading out the Verizon mandated PDP context, and
>> then asking ModemManager to create a bearer out of that bearer
>> configuration (which causes ModemManager to scan the list of contexts and
>> find an exact match with the one we just read). This works, but it is
>> cumbersome, and I hear that more networks are planning to move to a similar
>> process in the future (Sprint already has, though I heard that is a little
>> half baked).
>>
>> *Because of this, I feel it would be worthwhile to allow bearers to be
>> created by specifying only a PDP context (and perhaps even an API backed
>> way to inspect them).* This would make passing Verizon certification a
>> lot less hackey than it currently is.
>>
>> I am happy to do as much of the work as necessary, but I want to know the
>> community's opinion of this base proposal, and make sure anything that is
>> built actually solves a problem and will be accepted.
>>
>> *Brief overview of the OTA-DM procedure
>> <http://hosteddocs.ittoolbox.com/CC012507.pdf>:*
>> I am not a cellular expert, so please forgive and correct any
>> inaccuracies I may let slip in.
>>
>> For those unfamiliar (I know I was), Verizon has a procedure called
>> OTA-DM for automatically determining the APN to use for a SIM card.
>>
>> Verizon has all compatible modems preloaded with a series of PDP
>> contexts. These PDP Contexts are only available when the modem is running
>> Verizon firmware (which is triggered when a Verizon SIM card is inserted).
>>
>> Verizon expects the initial attach bearer will be created from PDP
>> context #1. This first bearer is only for notifying Verizon that we have
>> attached, and will never pass user traffic.
>>
>> Once this initial bearer connects, Verizon and the modem talk for a
>> while. In this conversation:
>>
>>    1. The modem reports details about its SIM card to Verizon,
>>    2. Verizon checks its database to see if this is the last SIM card it
>>    saw in this modem,
>>    3. if this is not the SIM Verizon expected, Verizon will update the
>>    modem's PDP contexts to the most up to date settings for this SIM.
>>
>> To clarify, this process will not happen every time you connect. A modem
>> has to connect to Verizon with a different SIM card for Verizon to do this
>> process again (flipping between SIMs for each connection would cause this
>> process to happen for each connection).
>>
>> After this process completes, Verizon expects that the modem will connect
>> using PDP context #3 for the first data bearer. APNs are not touched by the
>> user, only Verizon defined PDP contexts. I found out the hard way that you
>> will fail your device certification if you do not connect using the 3rd
>> context.
>> *END OTA-DM description.*
>>
>> Any input on if we should allow creation of bearers from PDP context
>> numbers to support new cellular network features would be appreciated.
>>
>
> There is an embryo of what you need in the SetInitialEpsBearerSettings().
> For Cinterion modems on VZW networks, the latest MM upstream considers
> that the modem will attach with CID#3. CID#1 is not used, but also should
> not be overwritten.
> I think CID#1 is used internally and transparently.
>
> Ideally it should be possible to specify only the CID for activating a
> PDN, however it is non-portable: modems using MBIM instead of AT commands
> don't support the notion of CID at all.
> I am not sure how VZW specifies the operations for these modems. I know
> that for Cinterion modems AT and MBIM coexist whenever possible, but on the
> MBIM_CONNECT there is no CID parameter, only APN (and
> username/password/...).
>
> Best Regards,
> Giacinto
>
>
>
>
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