Has anyone had any success using BT Hybrid Connect as a 4G modem? (from now on know as BTHC)
BT are supplying these with their Hubs as “unbreakable internet” which is marketing speak for 4G backup. It does work but takes a few minutes to switch over. RouterOS can do better I think.
The device sits on the Hub network as a DHCP client either wired or wirelessly (clever). I sniffed the traffic between the Hub and the BTHC from power on and theres some secure socket communication from the hub to the BTHC port 55662 (sniff file available - DM me). In the hub web interface it has a status display showing a few expected details like connection state and signal strength.
I discovered that I can use the IP of the BTHC as a gateway directly which is useful but it seems to require the Hub to initialise the BTHC. Ideally I’d like to be able to use it standalone. Will experiment and report back if I get anywhere.
If anyone has any info on this device and willing to share please post. Thanks!
Its been a while and I didnt really get anywhere with this but one bit of info that might help is that you cannot have both the DSL and 4G at the same time. Basically what happens is that if the DSL disconnects the 4G takes over - but - the 4G gets the same IP address as the hub gets on DSL (weird right?). It takes about 3mins to switch over which is hardly “unbreakable”, lol.
I also tried the sim card in my phone but its doesnt get an address even with DSL disconnected despite the card having APN details in it which is just the default “everywhere” BT/EE APN.
Maybe if anyone else has any info on the inner workings they could post here for those curious.
As the 4G gets the same IP address as DSL, the BTHC appears to be acting as a modem, using credentials on the hub, in which case I don't expect you to be able to get an IP address on the internet without the hub or some surrogate for the hub. There also appears to be some non standard protocol bending in that this unit can be plugged into any LAN port which then appears to act as a WAN port.