Good morning everyone
I’m doing some tests with a mikrotik ltap mini with RouterOS v7.8
I need to use this device to make devices, located in “difficult” areas and covered exclusively by the LTE network, reachable. The problem I’m having is with the APNs of the various operators. I created an “empty” APN with the name set to “” and this works with several mobile operators without the need to give other information. If instead I use eg. a SIM from an Italian operator “TIM Business” which also provides authentication, I find myself in the position of having to manually change the APN to use. Is there a way to be able to do as with practically all mobile phones that automatically configure themselves when the SIM is inserted without having to do anything?
The “Use Network APN” being checked is what should do the “automatic” APN from a SIM card. It doesn’t work with all carriers/SIM/etc, but worth a short. If checked, it ignores the APN set.
Yeah the “Use Network APN” is limited to what’s available on the SIM. And it doesn’t work all the time since the SIM cards doesn’t always have the APN (or it’s wrong for specific plan).
You could write a script that runs at startup to look for specific SIM card prefix (e.g. the first part of the “ICCID” (SIM card printed numbers) is the carrier) to then set the APN Profile APN (and auth if needed) – but that only work if you always wanted a one-to-one map between carrier and APN, since the plan isn’t included in the ICCID, only the carrier.
Be nice… but I’m not sure there is some magic bullet to automatically pick the APN correctly 100% of the time.