Växtverk hos TRE?

Howdy allihopa!

Jag tar det på engleska för att jag orkar inte skriva på svenska kl 02:14.

Anyway, we have discovered some issues with the TRE mobile broadband network. These issues are most likely temporary as I believe they are related to the fact that TRE is very likely redimensioning their core network for additional capacity as it is aiming to provide HSPA+ throughout the mobile network. This calls for higher speed throughputs within the core and edge routers, and not just the base stations and their backhaul links. In any case, all the edge traffic is funneled through what many of you know as the APN (Access Point Name), which in fact is a combination of nodes in their network called the SGSN and the GGSN. These nodes are probably becoming overloaded at this point due to the spike in traffic due to the summer, as well as the overall long term churn from fixed-copper broadband to affordable mobile broadband.

Now, many of you here on the forum who have been discussing the optimal settings for using TRE have probably set your modems and routers to use the APN called "bredband.tre.se" as it provides a public IP address with open inbound TCP/UDP traffic.

Well, the situation as such is that this APN at the moment is experiencing random DNS timeouts. We have tried it a lot of times the past couple of weeks and many regular major sites at times just cannot be refreshed, sometimes at all, or sometimes after you try refreshing the page a number of times. If you manage to get through, you can see that pinging that DNS name all of a sudden works again.

Flip that coin, and you'll discover that TRE has also administered some alterations to the original APN which most of their susbscribers use, namely "data.tre.se". The thing we have learnt there in all of our tests is that roughly 2/3 established connections provide you with a public IP address, with open TCP/UDP traffic. The other 1/3, you get a private Class A IP address (10.x.x.x). Normally, up until recently, the "data.tre.se" APN was only handing out private IP addresses.

As an interim solution for those of you who prefer to stick to "bredband.tre.se":

What we have managed to do, at least in our DOVADO UMR, is to manually insert the DNS addresses which are handed out by "data.tre.se" into the UMR on the SYSTEM->DNS page (followed by Custom DNS Settings), and utilize them with the "bredband.tre.se" APN. That went very well indeed as the UMR ignored the DNS servers handed out by "bredband.tre.se" and used the manually inserted DNS servers.

I hope that shedded plenty of light on the situation for now.

In any case, if any of you are experiencing troubles with TRE, then you'll know why. I have called their corporate technical support, but they only said they'll call me back once they have looked into it. So far, no response, but I shall try again at the soonest. I'm very sure that this situation has managed to stay low under their radar as it is not something that is very evident without testing and retesting. I am also very optimistic that they'll be able to get to the bottom of it in good time.

All the best och ha en trevlig helg!