Dronelink

SIM setup

In order to connect to the Swisscom mobile drone network, you will need to set the Access Point Name (APN) on your devices. In many devices this is set via SMS, firmware, AT commands, or other configuration interfaces. Please refer to your device's manual and use the following settings:
  • APN: drones.m2m.ch
  • username: (empty)
  • password: (empty)

Device Tunneling

SSH tunneling enables you to access your mobile device directly and in a secure way. You can forward any TCP port from your local computer to the device. E.g. you can forward port 8080 on your localhost to port 80 on the mobile device and access it from your browser under http://localhost:8080. UDP is currently not supported through SSH tunneling.

Connecting over SSH on Windows

Step 1: setup SSH client

Windows does not provide a native SSH client. You need to download and install PuTTY first.


Step 2: generate key pair

  1. Launch PuTTYgen from you start menu.
  2. Choose RSA as key type and set 4096 as number of bits in generated key.
  3. Click Generate.
  4. Save both your public key and your private key.
  5. Copy the Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file and send it to your Dronelink contact to start the onboarding process. Never reveal your private key to anybody!

Step 3: open the SSH tunnel

  1. Launch PuTTY from you start menu.
  2. Configure a new SSH session by setting dronelink.swisscom.ch as Host Name. Assign the port number given to you during the onboarding process (e.g. 2200)
  3. In the section Connection > Data set Auto-login username to tunnel
  4. In the section Connection > SSH select Don't start a shell or command at all
  5. In the section Connection > SSH > Auth select the previously generated private key file as your private key file for authentication.
  6. In the section Connection > SSH > Tunnels add a new forwarded TCP port:
    • Select a source port of your choosing (e.g 8080)
    • Select destination as <SIM_ID>:<APP_PORT>, where SIM_ID is the ID of your sim card in the mobile device and APP_PORT is the port your device's application is running at, e.g. sim01:22
    • Click Add
  7. You can add multiple pairs of source and destination ports with the same or different SIM_ID. Simply repeat above steps.
  8. Go back to section Session, enter a name beneath the label Saved Sessions, and click Save. This allows you to Load these settings again for a later session.
  9. Click Open. A new window should appear saying Using username "tunnel". Authenticating with public key "rsa-key-...". Keep the window open as long as you need the tunnel.
You can now connect to localhost:8080 to access the device's service through the secure tunnel.

Connecting over SSH on Linux

Step 1: Generate key pair

Type ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 and follow the instructions. This will create a key pair consisting of a private key and a public key, typically named id_rsa and id_rsa.pub, respectively. Send the public key to your Dronelink contact to start the onboarding process. Never reveal your private key to anybody!

Step 2: Open SSH tunnel

During your onboarding process, you were given SIM identifiers and a port number. Using these you can open an SSH tunnel to your device. For example, given the parameter you can use ssh -N -L 8080:sim01:22 -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa -p 2200 tunnel@dronelink.swisscom.ch to create a tunnel to your device. I.e. TCP port 8080 on your local machine is forwarded to TCP port 80 on your mobile device with sim card 01. You can then connect to localhost:8080 to access the device's service.

Example parameters
SIM ID
sim01
Dronelink port
2200
Application port on device
22
Local port
8080
Path to private key
~/.ssh/id_rsa