I know this isn’t directly related to Opto 22’s products but I was wondering what other people are using to connect to an R1-W. This is my scenario:
I have a client with an R1-W Brain on their factory floor. This is a dedicated small network surrounding the process. This is located in Oregon. I want to send them a cellular device that is configured to remotely connect to the R1-W. Since I have a Verizon jetpack device, I wanted to set it up with port forwarding (22001 for PAC Control and 2201 for PAC Manager) so they could just turn on the cellular device and I would be able to connect to the R1-W for upgrades or what not.
As I was trying to test this before I sent the device, I found out that this jetpack does not receive a static IP address. I can get one for it, but they charge $500.00 for that service. Is there something out there that I can achieve this without paying the $500 fee? I have used Red Lion cellular modems that are permanently mounted on sites, but those are expensive units.
I have a VPN server (OpenVPN, but you could use something else as well) at the office. I setup a Ubiquiti ER-X (cheap - like $50) as a VPN client that as soon as it has internet connectivity it connects to our network. The OpenVPN server has client specific overrides so each client gets a specific IP address. From there you can setup routing, port forwarding, masquerade/NAT (this could get evil), whatever you need to get access to the devices on the other end. No static IP needed on the client side.
It takes quite a bit of know-how on the network / VPN / PKI / security side of things and lots of ways you can create an insecure setup (kind of like port forwarding to 22001 on the public interface) - you must read the documentation and not just rely on some out-of-date blog post.
There are also companies out there that sell devices pre-configured for this sort of thing (along with a monthly service fee - you pay for the convenience and hope they did all the right things). Can’t think of the name of any of them right now.
It seems that some of the Jetpacks have a VPN option?
If this is the case, it would be more than worth the time in setting up a VPN server and testing this solution.
It could be a very straight forward way to ovoid the $500 fixed IP tax and allow you to download and debug your PAC Control strategies since it would be like being on the same network as the PAC R.
