3 Mobile Broadband and SSH

zeris

I should have asked this here a while ago but is any one else experiencing issues with using SSH and the 3 data modem? Especially after the 26th of August (or there about) when 3 made a change to their IP network.

Issues are defined as:

a) SSH sessions freeze after a short period of time but opening a new SSH stream works? Activity or inactivity has no affect.

b) SSH sessions freeze for outgoing packets but incoming works fine until the SSH session times out? Activity or inactivity has no affect.

Alternatively can I get a poll of people who use SSH fine with 3?

Onikage

I wouldn't even attempt to use SSH with 3, or any mobile provider for that matter. Too many lost packets and timeouts.

Same goes for VoIP.

rsynnott

I use SSH quite happily in the evening, most of the time. It can be a bit weird during the day on weekdays, but I'm rarely home then.

The settings at the end of this: http://myblog.rsynnott.com/2007/09/ssh-remote-forwarding-a-quick.html help a bit; if you're using Windows you may need to adapt them a bit to putty.

I was actually quite impressed by SSH on Three; when all is well it manages about 100ms to Irish sites, which is comparable to early DSL deployments.

Baron_Kunkel

What's SSH?

SubjectSean

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Shell

moynihan

Have you tried using keepalives on the connection? I've noticed a lot of networks will drop ssh sessions after a period of inactivity without them. Always worth a go and it's pretty trivial to set up on whatever client you are using. What OS you on?

zeris

I have tried using ServerAliveInterval but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

moynihan

Well I don't use 3 myself so I'm not sure if I can help you any further. Best I can remmomd is use screen so you can reconnect to the session when it times out. Are you getting significant packet loss or latency on the connection? What's the OS of the client and server?

zeris

The problem doesn't seem to be packet loss or latency but something wrong with their NAT'ing gateway; especially regarding symptom b above.

Wierd that it works fine for rsynnott and not for me. Three support was unable to shed any light on it despite talking to their "network engineers" in the UK.

dos7749

I know this might be a crazy thing to ask.. But can SSH help me to port-forward to external computers, bypassing 3's transparent proxy?

zeris

You could, but you would need a second host outside of the 3 network to accept the incoming SSH connection and forward it to a web proxy.

If you could do that you would find it easier just to configure a web proxy over SSL.

towel401

i use SSH over meteor GPRS sometimes. only if i really have to, it lags like a toothpick and it costs a bomb