Is it possible to do this using Raspberry Pi's......

Boxfreshchris

Boxfreshchris

Boxfreshchris

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18 Dec 2017
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Headline, this is what I'm trying to do:

Connect several Pi's to the internet via USB dongles with a data sim inside, connect to each Pi from my desktop PC, either wirelessly or via ethernet.

Picture the scene:
I have my desktop PC, connected to my home router wirelessly. I have 5 Pi's running Linux, I have 5 Huawei USB dongles, each with a Three data sim inside. I want to connect a dongle to each Pi, I want each Pi to access the internet via its dongle, and I want to access each Pi (simultaneously) from my desktop PC. Each Pi needs internet access, but not from my home router, they each need their own connection and public IP address.

Can this be done? And how?

Thank you in advance!
 
I'm sure someone with much more knowledge than me will be along shortly but I don't believe standard SIMs have a public IP address, you can get SIMs that do but these cost more and are intended for business use. If you could set up a VPN and get the PIs to contact you then you could talk to them as and when but I've no idea how much data is used keeping a VPN alive so this might not work.
 
Well the PI turned up, Raspbian installed, and the dongle worked straight away. Plugged it on and fired up, so that's working.

Next task over the weekend is to enabled VNC server/viewer and see if I can access the PIs desktop from my PC via Ethernet
 
Don't assign a default gateway to the LAN interface, if your desktop is on same subnet you'll be able to access them and all other traffic would use the dongle.
 
Well I installed VNC server on the Pi and viewer on PC, typed in the IP address and it connected. Then when I connected the dongle it defaulted to the dongle for internet access. So now I have the Pi and desktop connected by my home wifi, and the Pi connected to the net using the dongle, spot on! However, everything ran very slowly. So, I want to try it via ethernet, incase firing the Pi desktop image back to my desktop PC over wifi is just proving too much for the Pi. Issue is, I can't get it to connect now. I've turned off wifi on the Pi, and I have a ethernet cable direct from the PC to the Pi, but when I try to connect via the Pi's IP address, computer says no.

Any ideas?
 
They need to be on the same range with DHCP disabled. If the PC is, say, 192.168.1.5 then the Pi ethernet needs to be (again for example) 192.168.1.6. Pay attention to the subnet too.

It can't be the same as any other device on the network or all sorts of not working will happen. You can check using your router status page (most have "connected devices" page or similar) or an application like AngryIP Scanner
 
Do you need a GUI to do what you want on the Pi, if not I would disable the GUI and run console mode and SSH to them with putty.

As for network, set the IPs to same subnet as your desktop without the gateway.
 
Well I've finally got it working.

I'm now connected to the Pi via Ethernet direct from my desktop, and when I connect the dongle all internet traffic passes through that.

I had to set my Eth0 static IP in the DHCPCD.conf file.

Thank you everyone for your help
 
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