NAT (Forwarding) in T-Mobile Gateway

I'm fairly confident that this device (Nokia) is able to handle all of these things.  I think what has happened here is T-Mobile threw a very locked down firmware on the device to make setup easy.

The following things need to happen.

Provide settings to place the gateway in bridge mode.  This will allow customers to keep their existing setups and NAT fine.

Provide settings to turn off the wifi in the gateway COMPLETELY.  Turning off broadcast and reducing power to minimal is not sufficient.

Make all of these settings accessible only through the web admin page.  The average consumer doesn't need this stuff, but the power user who is smart enough to know how to login to the admin web page should be able to modify these settings.

Ultimately, I just want “a dumb modem” just like I get with the cable co.  I don’t want or need T-Mobile helping me by dumbing down the device.

T-Mobile Home Internet uses CG-Nat - which means end users share IP addresses. Unless they move away from that (which they will not since it would require completely new infrastructure) you will not be able to do port forwarding. There simply is no way to identify YOUR unique address since you do not have one - it is shared. 

However, there is a solution which does work - I am using it. Paketriot https://packetriot.com/ allows tunnels to be created which will have a unique endpoint which will then allow you to hit a port in YOUR internal network. There are other providers like Packetriot. I like Packetriot because it has the option to create a Windoze Service for all your tunnels. Nice when the machine reboots because you can have the service autostart. Most of the providers offer a free tunnel so you can try it out.

They should not call this Home Internet it is really a home hotspot.

They need to fix their screwy xlat464/cgnat style network first.

As long as they continue to filter that unsolicited inbound traffic at the higher network layers, won't matter what options are available/configured on our local modems/routers.  It is actually getting nixed at the outer edges of the networks, so it never makes it to the modem, much less the router.

I spoke with TMobile Home Internet technical support over the past week. They are working on the port forwarding feature within their 5g modem/router, but it's not available or ready yet. 

2 different techs said they have a workaround, however (& it doesn't require 3rd party services).

I haven't tested it yet, but what you need to do is, & many of us have this setup already, connect via Ethernet (wire) the garbage can LAN port <-> YOUR own router.  Then configure port forwarding on YOUR router. That's it. (Your router needs to support ipv6! Not sure if we need to allow ipv6 passthrough for this.)

Now, I was educated a long time ago on IPv4 & they barely touched on IPv6, so I don't know a lot about it, but this would never work this way with IPv6. Ipv6, however can allow passthrough so public "internet" can pass through a router, which is why I'm "buying" this theory.  Ie, you can go through T-Mobiles garbage can, and then your router, and you device (call it a PC) could have a public IPv6 IP, which is why port forwarding could work this way.

Anyone have time to test & report back? Or comments?

I previously had a dynamic public IP (ipv4) that I made work with my domain name via ZoneEdit that allowed my PC to update ZoneEdit with public Ip changes since it was dynamic. With this NEW setup, I'm not exactly sure how that would work, or if my DNS service will play nicely or even support ipv6 or if ZoneEdit will either. And I have numerous services that I need to "hit" MY router & forward internally, such as a VPN, RDP, FTP, website, etc - not sure if all that will play nicely - or if all the services, like VPN client, can point to a domain->ipv6 ip & work. Like will the VPN client config & SW accept this new format?

Anyways, lot of testing & messing around needed!  Please report back with any updates!

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I was researching a project I was doing and came across this thread. I have T-Mobile @ home internet. The speeds are amazing compared to what I had prior to T-Mobile. On the T-Mobile router, I have three bars out of 5. I have on average 300Mbps ↓ and on average 20-45Mps ↑. I'm very happy with the speeds. However, I can't connect to my Home Assistant, security cameras, and my media center. I have an ASUS router that I have flashed with OpenWRT and I have tried several tricks, including doing DDNS updates every 10 minutes to my DNS server, CloudFlare. Nothing really worked. I spoke to T-Mobile technical support. That was just painful. I went to a supervisor. Finally, I had to state, "I'm a 4th decade computer engineer, I have the highest licenses from the FCC in amateur radio communication. And what you are saying is so horribly incorrect". I spent an hour teaching the supervisor. Finally, I decided to try their business internet. It was the same price as the home internet. Plus, for an extra $3.00 I could have a static IP address. They send me this Inseego router. It wasn't even a quarter of the size of the @home internet router. It was about 1/8th of the size of the @home router. Before turning it on, I knew this was not going to work. Surprise, Surprise, it did not! Most of the time, I had the blue flashing light, meaning I barely had a signal. Sometimes it would switch to 4G. When I had only one bar (very weak signal), I was getting 14 Mbps ↓ and 2 Mpbs  ↑. I found a spot in the house that I was getting three bars (good signal strength) and the speed was even worse. 8-14 Mps ↓ and 0.5 Mps ↑. This was not going to work. I cancelled the business account.
I did find a workaround. Or the best that is possible with the situation we are all in.
CloudFlare has a very generous free tier. I have many domain names. I have one that my entire family uses. CloudFlare has a very generous free tier on their Zero Trust feature. I use a Raspberry Pi Zero that costs $15.00. They're back in stock. If they are out of stock, they come back in stock very quickly. I have already received for this month (July 2023). I installed CloudFlared on the Zero W. Then in CloudFlare's Zero Trust I can set up sub domains to each device that I want. Home Assistant can have ha.familydomain.tld. Media Server, jellyfin.familydomain.tld, etc. Works with no problem. HOWEVER, there are two downsides. One, Zero Trust free tier does not "allow" and I use rapid quotes on allow. If you want to stream video, such as with your Plex or JellyFin Media server, you have to upgrade your Zero Trust plan to their $5.00 streaming service. However, as long as it's not to much, I heard they don't really say anything. But, technically, you could be cut off.
Second, is that I have a NextCloud server for my family too. When, uploading files to NextCloud outside your LAN, you can only upload a max file size of 100mb due to CloudFlare's restrictions on their network unless you upgrade. Even if you upgrade, it's not that much. That's the only thing that's really horrible with this alternative work around to T-Mobiles restrictions on port forwarding. Other than that, it works very well!

I'm going to create a YouTube video next week on how to set this all up. When I finish the video, I'll post an update with the link.
¡Buena suerte!
 

Spanx wrote:

I agree TMobile could have made this much easier by providing an internet facing IP address, as well as IP scope control and other things. But there are easy ways to get your setup working if you have another router.

To start, just have another router and connect either of the yellow ports of the TMobile gateway connected to the internet port (WAN) of your router. Now you have complete control over your internal network with DHCP, Scope, Static IPs if you want, Firewall rules for the internet, etc.

The next thing is to use something like the free version of TeamViewer, which will create the path through the internet to your computer for remote access and you can remote into your computer from outside the network whenever you want.

For security system viewing, just setup the viewing app on your home computer (which you probably already have) and remote into your computer and view your cameras that way. TeamViewer has a version for Windows computers, phones, tablets, Linux, MacOS, Raspberry Pi. So pretty much any device you have.

I know this is a workaround for T-Mobile's lack of services on the gateway, but it works great, it's reliable, it's a free solution, and restores functions many people need. It's also only takes a couple of minutes to setup. I use it all the time and I have no issues. I'm sure you could do this with other remote services that are available, but I prefer TeamViewer over many of the non-trusted remote services available.

Good Luck

The problem with that is we are out of IPV4 IP addresses. We have been out for a while now. The world seems to be incredibly slow at adapting to IPV6. I'm sure between costs for the ISPs and the ancient devices out there that have never or will ever be updated for IPV6 is also an issue. Now an easier solution would be for T-Mobile to just give us a usable IPV6 address as many of our modern devices will be able to use that. 

The port forwarding is a huge issue around here. Others have said it involves IPv6 and so forwarding can't be done. They can explain why.

Some suggestions have been VPN, ZeroTier or Tailscale. I've seen PFSense mentioned here too but can't figure out how a firewall downstream from the can can port forward. 

inteller wrote:

I can't use noip with t-mobile because it doesn't support it, but if it was just bridging I could.

 

I'm not willing to wait around for another device when the speeds I get right now are just fine and the device I have is capable of the functions I need.

Sorry, you're incorrect.  You can setup NOIP on other devices other than just your modem.  I set it up on my local server.  But, this doesn't work as T-Mobile doesn't assign you a unique IP address (it's shared with hundreds/thousands of other people).  So even if you setup NOIP, that doesn't help one bit.  Nor would port forwarding or bridge mode.

You're failing to understand the problem.  The issue is how the T-Mobile network is setup for a security aspect.  It was setup to be a secured network for phones.  It's not capable of working with a DDNS service, bridge mode, or port forwarding.  That's why they disabled these features on the T-Mobile modem, as they would never work.  Keep in mind that Nokia added these features to this modem firmware when they designed it (for other markets).  When T-Mobile wanted to use it, they had to disable features as they don't work on their network, not because they wanted to limit the device.

The new modem won't resolve the problem either.  It may happen along with a T-Mobile network change, but a modem alone can't fix the problem, either a firmware update or new hardware.  The only work-around is a service like ZeroTier until T-Mobile changes their network, which very well may never happen.

Holy sh* man you are saying exactly what I'm stating!  The right thing to do would be instead of trying to work against me, work WITH me to pressure T-Mobile to get this deivce more functional and then we can ALL do whatever we want with it.

All T-mobile has to do is enable the device to bridge.  That's it.  I know this because that's how my cable modem worked and I was able to do everything else I wanted from there.  So if you want to sit there and tell me the networking configuration I used for YEARS was 'incorrect' and didn't work, go right ahead…..but you are not helping. You can be an apologist for why they don't enable these things, but this device is for HOME INTERNET.  I do not sit at home on my phone and nothing else. If that is T-mobile's position then I'll be returning it and wait until they grow up.

inteller wrote:

Holy sh* man you are saying exactly what I'm stating!  The right thing to do would be instead of trying to work against me, work WITH me to pressure T-Mobile to get this deivce more functional and then we can ALL do whatever we want with it.

 

 

 

All T-mobile has to do is enable the device to bridge.  That's it.  I know this because that's how my cable modem worked and I was able to do everything else I wanted from there.  So if you want to sit there and tell me the networking configuration I used for YEARS was 'incorrect' and didn't work, go right ahead…..but you are not helping. You can be an apologist for why they don't enable these things, but this device is for HOME INTERNET.  I do not sit at home on my phone and nothing else. If that is T-mobile's position then I'll be returning it and wait until they grow up.

Actually, we're not at all saying the same thing.  You believe the modem could be updated with a few feature and it would work.  I'm saying that's not the case, as you're basically behind T-Mobile's NAT/VPN so enabling features on the model wouldn't solve the problem one bit.

How exactly do do believe enabling bridge mode would solve your problem?  You're comparing your cable company's network with T-Mobile, which are TOTALLY different.  Your cable company didn't hide your connection behind a NAT/VPN.  You could identify your home connection with a unique IP address which you could access remotely (with or without a DDNS like NoIP).  But T-Mobile's network doesn't work like your cable company.  Every connection is like a VPN or NAT, where there's not a unique IP address, but it's shared with many other people.

So, lets's say bridge mode is available on your T-Mobile modem.  How would you remotely access your home modem?  By IP? Via a DDNS like NoIP?  Nope!  As there's still not a unique IP address assigned to your home connection, it's shared with thousands of other people.  So you would try to access your home network and it could never route to your home.

So I'm sorry, you don't know what you're talking about.  You have limited knowledge and basing your assumptions on how your cable company's network is configured, when in reality T-Mobile's network isn't at all setup the same way, and as a result, your assumption that bridge mode will solve everything is totally wrong.  Sorry, it's not as simple as that.