Hello Harald,
On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 04:56:32PM +0200, Tomcsányi, Domonkos wrote: I might be wrong here, but I don’t think there is a way allowed in the standards to ignore the UE’s APN.
In legacy 2G/3G networks, this is possible by use of CAMEL. The gsmSCF next to the HLR can add ralated CSI (Camel Subscription Information) when doing the InsertSubscriberData to the gprsSSF inside the SGSN.
So I would actually be surprised if they removed that kind of capability from the EPC architecture. I don't know *how* it would be implemented on LTE/EPC, though.
You are fully right, I keep forgetting about CAMEL :). I am pretty sure too that it is somehow inplemented in LTE/EPC as well, but I also have not looked into the standards for that yet.
Naturally I’d assume there is a way to hack into nextEPC to ignore the UEs APN but I’d consider this a hack, not a real solution. I think it is better to make sure UEs are provisioned correctly.
This is said easier than it's done in practise. Particularly if you run a small network/operator with a small number of subscribers, you will not have the market strength to have phone manufacturers or OS vendors include your APN configuration in their software/updates. I have heard that e.g. in the case of Apple, an operator (evne MVNO) must have at least 100k [apple-using?] subscribers in order to get there.
I have chosen my wording poorly when I said “provisioned”. I was trying to say that in such scenarios imho setting up the APN manually in the Settings app of the UE (=asking the user to do so and maybe provide some instructions?) or by sending a configuration SMS is a feasible way of dealing with this. I am pretty certain at least one of these methods should work, even in case of Apple devices.
Cheers, Domi