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xoseperez / basicstation-docker

Basics™ Station Packet Forward protocol using Docker
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Idea/discussion: st2pkfwd #18

Open jpmeijers opened 2 months ago

jpmeijers commented 2 months ago

I wonder what is the feasibility of adding UDP packet forwarder support using the Semtech bridge: https://github.com/lorabasics/basicstation/tree/master/examples/station2pkfwd

Maybe one can run this on its own in a Docker container, next to this Basic Station one.

What would the use case be?

The ideal scenario for me would be MP Packet Forwarder with Basic Station support. This will allow forwarding to TTN, Helium, ChirpStack, ThingsIX, etc. In other words forwarding to one network via WSS, and to another via UDP. Adding st2pkfwd however does not solve this.

Maybe one could modify this st2pkfwd proxy to pass through the Basic Station connection to a real network, and on a side channel forward to another network on UDP. On the other hand one could run the old UDP packet forwarder and have a translation layer to WSS.

xoseperez commented 2 months ago

HI @jpmeijers , good to see you around :)

I understand your goal (forwarding to several LNS using both Basic Station and UDP at the same time depending on what the LNS supports), but what is the real life need? Why not just UDP to all of them using MPPF or gwmp-mux or chirpstack-multiplexer in the middle?

If I was to design this solution I would probably do it the other way round: a UDP to BasicStation proxy to be deployed on the gateway. Like in the graph below:

Sense títol

jpmeijers commented 2 months ago

Hi @xoseperez! Thanks for your insights on this.

I agree that the architecture in your diagram makes the most sense. Using the old UDP packet forwarder is more simplistic and understandable. So keeping the complicated part simple, and moving the complexities of Basic Station into a dedicated service.

Why not just UDP to all of them...?

Secure communication over the internet, without the overhead of a VPN.

The only reason I am considering Basic Station for managing the concentrator is that there were talks recently about counter overflows in the UDP forwarder, causing downlink packets to be dropped. This is apparently solved in Basic Station. It is maybe worth asking @kersing for his opinion, as he knows the UDP forwarder's source code better than me/us.

softlion commented 4 weeks ago

following this, interested too.

1rabbit commented 3 weeks ago

I'm curious to see where this is going as well