Reference Manual

HOW TO configure NAT32 to use 3G/UMTS mobile network adapters.

Introduction

With the advent of third-generation mobile telephone networks, it is now feasible for Service Providers to offer high-speed Internet access to mobile phone subscribers. UMTS services offer 384/64 Kbps speeds, while HSDPA services can achieve download speeds of 1.8 Mbps.

Mobile Network adapters can be classified as follows:

UMTS Dial-Up Networking Adapters

These adapters require no special support within NAT32. Once you have installed the vendor's device driver and control software, NAT32 will recognize UMTS connections automatically.

One example of such an adapter is the Vodafone Mobile Connect adapter, which is actually a Novatel Wireless Merlin HSDPA Adapter. The Vodafone setup program generates a Dial-Up Networking Connection for you that can be connected and disconnected either in the usual manner, or via the Mobile Connect application. That application has a few added capabilities such as SMS and WLAN support, although it does not understand WLAN Host Access Point Mode and should be disabled in that case. The application can also connect to a mobile phone attached to your system via a data cable (Serial or USB) or Bluetooth or an IRDA port. One final point to note is that the Vodafone connection is assigned a private IP address (10.x.x.x.) and so direct Internet access is not supported. In addition, a transparent proxy is used for Web access, and Web traffic is compressed in order to reduce data volume charges.

UMTS LAN Adapters

These adapters are somewhat different in that they appear as normal LAN adapters under Windows, even though they do not use the ARP protocol to resolve IP addresses. Examples are the RadioLAN adapter and the Sierra Wireless 3G adapter. The adapters require special support within NAT32 so that ARP is turned off and a common MAC address is used for all destinations.

The following command should be added to your user.txt file: 

setrl ifn 00:A0:D4:00:00:01

This turns ARP mode off for the interface specified with argument ifn and sets the needed MAC destination address for the adapter. The following command can be used to turn this behaviour off: 

setrl ifn off

See Also

Google for PDAs
Vodafone
Novatel
Sierra Wireless