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Building an LTE Access Point with a Raspberry Pi

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Re: Building an LTE Access Point with a Raspberry Pi

#21

Title is missleading, i was hoping for https://bellard.org/lte/ :(

yeah, likewise, I suddenly noticed it was just an access point, which seems a bit trivial to be hitting the #1 spot on HN.

But I might be bias, I'd really ike a CAT-M1 and NB-IOT base station

Re: Building an LTE Access Point with a Raspberry Pi

#22
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. If you were to create an actual “access point” you will have the FCC and other agencies knocking on your door within minutes.

I don't think their response time would be nearly that quick. All the stories about Stingrays would imply that this actually isn't very well policed (FCC enforcement is reactionary. The carriers could be proactive, but then would discover the Stingrays. And if carriers were complicit with Stingrays, then Stingrays themselves wouldn't be necessary). I would also think the widespread deployment of legit femtocells woul…

Yes, we had the FCC (via FBI) knocking on our door within 30 minutes. This was about 10 years ago when we were doing research with an access point.

Re: Building an LTE Access Point with a Raspberry Pi

#23
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think their response time would be nearly that quick. All the stories about Stingrays would imply that this actually isn't very well policed (FCC enforcement is reactionary. The carriers could be proactive, but then would discover the Stingrays. And if carriers were complicit with Stingrays, then Stingrays themselves wouldn't be necessary). I would also think the widespread deployment of legit femtocells woul…

Yes, we had the FCC (via FBI) knocking on our door within 30 minutes. This was about 10 years ago when we were doing research with an access point.

Sheesh! Do you care to share any more details? How dense of an area? How was it detected? If by "access point" you mean 2.4GHz, what was the actual problem?

Re: Building an LTE Access Point with a Raspberry Pi

#24
post #7
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. If you were to create an actual “access point” you will have the FCC and other agencies knocking on your door within minutes.

Within minutes? Seems optimistic.

I've heard tales of cell towers having more or less automatic interference detection and the owners have a big incentive to let the FCC know. For other things, it's so rarely enforced or "self-policed" (like ham bands) that it's super rare for people to get busted, even with triangulization being what it is. Some kid here in NYC was trolling on the NYPD frequencies (analog FM still) and it took quite a while to track him down.

Re: Building an LTE Access Point with a Raspberry Pi

#26
post #17

I don't with to diminish the author's work but there's nothing all that special about the LTE portion. From the perspective of the Pi it's just another interface/network. This is more akin to building a basic consumer all-in-one router -- which I think actually sounds cooler. So the pieces that this article puts together: * Bridging the Pi's ethernet and wireless interface and setting up DHCP pointing to a forwarding…

This specific Huawei modem also works with the Pineapple (it is plug & play IIRC). Its also worth noting that some routers allow a USB modem as fallback (Fritz!Box IIRC).

For anyone who is interested in setting up their own LTE base station (which can be legal, btw) consider the LimeSDR Mini [1]

[1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/lime-micro/limesdr-mini

Re: Building an LTE Access Point with a Raspberry Pi

#28
post #17

I don't with to diminish the author's work but there's nothing all that special about the LTE portion. From the perspective of the Pi it's just another interface/network. This is more akin to building a basic consumer all-in-one router -- which I think actually sounds cooler. So the pieces that this article puts together: * Bridging the Pi's ethernet and wireless interface and setting up DHCP pointing to a forwarding…

True. Using "Hilink" is easy mode. Using NCM (in this case) is slightly harder but saves you from double NAT.

E3372 can be reflashed to do this.

Re: Building an LTE Access Point with a Raspberry Pi

#29

As for the Huawei stick, most of them support being switched to modem mode using usb-modeswitch. But I'd prefer the "virtual network interface" mode if I had the choice, usb-modeswitch and modem stuff isn't exactly the best documented thing on this planet.

What's the difference? From the sound of it, the VNI would be a USB device identifying itself as an ethernet adapter and usb-modeswitch does... mode switching, like the 'alternative protocol' thingy that USB3 can do?
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