Trouble connecting to Elk from work (split from other threads)

[rbarnes]

I know its been a while, but a bit of an update on this to those still out there.
 
From last time, i also found that my mobile app was having issues connecting, so I followed this up with the app developer.
 
My setup is this, my home alarm is connected to the Adam network, my mobile is Vodafone and my work via TPG.
Using this and after a few months (and a lot of help from Vodafone), we found that Vodafone had an issue with the 4G network. To their credit they quickly resolved the issue and implemented the changes to enable it to work.
 
This led me to knowing that all my equipment etc was correct. I am now trying to convince TPG that they have what appears to be the same issue with their network as Vodafone had, (not an easy task  )
 
So if anyone else is having issues, it may pay to check their ISP.
 
I am confident in using Adam, Vodafone, Telstra and Optus, that they all work. It appears when TPG is brought into the mix, while the initial connection occurs, it immediately drops out.

 

[drvnbysound]

I've never even heard of some of those providers... I use Comcast and Verizon

 

[tmbrown97]

That's because they're on the other side of the world  ^_^
 
In the US all the ISPs I've come across are pretty straight forward... they give you a real IP address that you see as your WAN IP so you have complete control.  
 
In other countries I've seen where they give out an unroutable IP like a 10.x that lives on the WAN side of your router then if you pay enough they'll take a regular IP and port forward for you.  This creates double NAT and often requires extra help from the ISP when you need to make changes.  One sign of this is obviously if you have a different WAN IP on your router than what shows up when you go to www.myipaddress.com.
 
Some ISPs also filter out things that you wouldn't expect - so you have to either use or avoid certain common ports, depending on the mentality of the ISP.  This is normally only smaller ISP's or WISPS...  Larger ones tend to block the obvious stuff like port 80 and 25 then leave the rest alone.
 
Unfortunately, all this stuff takes a decent amount of network knowledge and head banging to figure out.