Transfer UDP over SSH

When you want to transfer some UDP protocol from a remote server not directly accessible from your local host you can use a combination of SSH and socat to make this communication possible.

The application case is, as an exemple, a SNMP communication with a server in a DMZ to get metrics in a local area dashboard. Like in this exemple.

You have an intermediate host where SSH is accessible you can use as a gateway.

1- on the local host (on the left side), create a SSH tunnel with a TCP port forwarding (here 10000).

ssh -L 10000:localhost:10000 **gateway_host_ip**

2- on the gateway host, route the traffic received from the port we have previously associated to the UDP target host:port

socat tcp4-listen:10000,reuseaddr,fork UDP:**target_host_ip**:**udp_port**

3 – on the local host, route the traffic received from the given UDP port to the previously associated TCP port for tunnelling

socat -T15 udp4-recvfrom:**udp_port**,reuseaddr,fork tcp:localhost:10000

That’s it.

Monitor a gateway connected to The Things Network

I’ve published a post in January 2019 on a solution to alarm you TTN gateway. It was based on noc API but these API have been deprecated. It means this solution is not working anymore.

So I’m investigating some new solution: the more relevant is the use of TTN cli solution.

Let’s seen what can we do with this.

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Low-cost outdoor solar powered LoRaWan Gateway

I really love Reece Innovation Solar powered pod product developed by my friend Jose Marcelino. They’ve made a agricultural / industrial autonomous solar powered LoRaWan gateway for a really competitive price. With much more money to extend TheThingsNetwork in my city I would have used a such solution. But as this is just a hobby for me, I’m looking for really low cost solution, something under 500€ per gateway.

My main issue to extend the network is not really to find roof but to find some where I can pass an Ethernet cable and provide the power from it. I have some place where I could deploy new gateway in conduction to be cable-less. The network is not the main issue as most of the time a WiFi network is accessible. Powering is a larger problem to solve. Advantages of outdoor gateway: you have sun available. So, as Reece Innovation did, I decided to make my solar gateway, the main differences are: my will have no LTE communication capability (only WiFi) and it have to cost as less as possible.

Let see what I’ve done

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SigfoxConnect disclosed – Sigfox micro gateway

This was the more expected announcement for Sigfox Connect  event: the availability of the micro-gateway: a Sigfox gateway you can buy, own and deploy on your own location.

This was expected to be introduce has it has already been disclosed once FCC certification made it public as it has been noticed by Nestor Ayuso on twitter some days ago.

This model is standard for LoRaWan ecosystem running on private network as on public network. For Sigfox it has always been possible to expend the network but it was a little bit complex because you had to rent the basestation from Sigfox and the basestation itself was an operator equipment: something made for being installed on a roof, not in your office.

Sigfox is now proposing the micro-gateway !

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Kerlink LoRaWan Wirnet iFemtoCell review

LPWA networks needs antennas and gateway to receive the device communication and transfer them to a network kernel. You can take a look to my post on the LPWA network architecture for more details.

In the LoRaWan ecosystem we call the first part of this network architecture a gateway. There are different kind of gateway : The network operator gateway with a big and efficient antenna, capable to support external weather like the Kerlink IoT Station and some low costs solution you can deploy at home or within a building (indoor) to cover a local device fleet.

The Kerlink Wirenet iFemtoCell device is a such type of gateway. this post will review how to get start with it and what we can expect in term of coverage.

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How to improve PirateBox ?

PirateBox is an interesting concept, but it had a lot of limitations based on the fact that the distance covered by a wifi connection is really limited. The mobile devices, able to cover a larger distance also have limitation due to the time needed to transfer any content.

In fact, you can’t imagine to grab content from someone you cross on the street because you might be out of signal before finished to transfer your file. More over due to the actual memory size of the portable devices you can’t imagine to share a lot of stuff on it.

So the idea is great, and the future could change all what I just said. But, today, the reality is that this system is not really usable as a real anonymous and unlimited sharing system.

To improve the system, I would imagine a network of PirateBox, this idea requires to have a larger number of devices but it would allow to share a large amount of data even on restricted memory cards. The idea is that each PirateBox would have a second wifi adapter to connect to another PirateBox. To get the list of its files and share it across this point to point connection. As each of the Piratebox is connecting to a second one we could imagine to build, dynamically a large piratebox network.

The file requests and data transfers would goes from a point to another point without keeping trace of these transfer out of the point to point exchange.

I assume there are some interesting research around this idea as the system has to build a dynamic network, avoiding cycles and optimizing the communications to make the network larger as possible, using a non centralized system to manage all of this.

Anyone to start developing a such stuff ?