Currently the LTE interface defaults the APN (Access Point Name) to “internet” and gives no help in working out the correct ones. Mobile Phones do a good job of at least auto-detecting the available APN’s to just present you with a small list of APN’s. I have a cheap third party TP-Link LTE router which does this as well. If they can, surely Mikrotik can? It took me a lot of work before I could work out why the LTE was not connecting and I resorted to putting the SIM into my mobile phone to detect the available APN’s.
Phones are not “auto-detecting” APNs … there’s no way of doing it, APNs are not broadcast or anything. Phones are loaded with some default settings for every mobile network in the universe (and close proximity) and when they see which network they are connecting to, they offer user some (almost working) setup. Almost as they are usually loaded with some old settings and MNOs tend to make slight changes every now and then. APN names usually hold on though.
That said … Mikrotik could load appropriate ROS package with such a table … it would take some space I guess.
[https://www.tp-link.com/uk/products/details/cat-4691_TL-MR6400.html]This TP-Link](https://www.tp-link.com/uk/products/details/cat-4691_TL-MR6400.html]This%20TP-Link) router set itself up correctly with an EE SIM and worked without any user intervention. With a Vodafone SIM it gave me a choice of three. Setting up the Mikrotik was a bitch in comparison because I was used to not having to do anything (the Vodafone SIM came afterwards). If TP-Link can do something so helpful, surely a device which is pitched as a much classier like the Mikrotik should be doing so as well. Whether it is auto-detection or pre-loading the info, Mikrotik need to do better.
Big name vendors do wicked things as well. I have 2.4GHz AP set to channel 13 (don’t ask). I’ve got a brand new LG G6 and it wouldn’t pick up the WiFi … wouldn’t detect SSID (showed a few others from my neighbours). After I put in SIM card, it picked SSID just fine. Obviously it had to locate itself (did it by geo-referencing mobile network) to figure that channel 13 is legal in this part of globe. I wonder if GPS fix would do it as well …
Has this been implemented in any way?
We only deal with 2x APNs at this time, but it would be very helpful for the radio to just check the appropriate flag in the SIM to know which one to use. Even if MikroTik doesn’t do a large autodetect, there should be a decent way to input our own list or database.