RAK gateway public access?

Hi All, thanks for sharing and your time replying. I have played more last week end, now I can register my 2 end devices, played a bit with everything. Indeed the issues were a bad provisioning and most important a couple of bugs that I had to clean up (DEVEUI cannot be updated real time on STM32 LORA Stack v1.3.1 apparently) so that I can finally succeed in registering my 2 devices (which I assume can get connected now through any LORA public gateway). My question was certainly odd for most of you guys and I assume it is a MUST that anyone can beneficiate from the comunities’gateways (otherwise what is the point to develop such a nbIOT network…). I was asking that because I could not be successful at all so far… To recall my story, I started about a year ago to develop a connnected device, and I went into a dual stack LORA and another one (I guess it is not difficult to guess the other one :wink: ). At that stage I could easily get things done for the 2nd network as everything went smoothly after a preliminary registration: all setup with some HTTP post sent directly to a mariaDB running an raspberry pi & all under control without the need of subscribing any other external database services. But when I came into Lora, I ordered a Dragino gateway that I could not turn running OK with my devices (I could not see even a single Join attempt). I decided then to order a 2nd dragino as I assumed the 1st one to be somehow malfunctioning, but same happened. After so many nights and days spent on that, I finally gave up and I left it there. As a HW/FW developper I could not spend more time on that as many other things were in the pipe, & we know a week full time is easily spent on that kind of setup indeed. Although I believe I have the knowledge to get into details and sort out code both on embedded MCUs and PCs, i gave up…
Recently I purchased a RAK gateway, got it setup quickly, installed the missing desktop/VNC/etc on the raspbian OS… and it was all working good within a few hours (well I could see my LORA join command nicely received and I was very very happy!). I understand things can get wrong by so many means, a simple bug/a bad provisioning/the single channel frequency of the dragino setup out of band and then we are in a dead end…From ecosystem point of view, I reported a year ago few bugs to ST, and I can see the new STACK is more mature now. But my point is that these tiny little bugs here and there may render the solution quite difficult to setup especially for a non developper guys. I really like the LORA open architecture which is really a plus! I wish tools to get mature (we are there or nearly there no worries!). My message is more for the newcomers, I just want to say never give up and things are getting easier with tools that are nicely supported online by you guys! So thanks so much everybody, I wish LORA to get the success that it deserves!!! (I may say ‘she deserves’ as LORA sounds girly :slight_smile: ) Cheers! Flo

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Is this also the same in The Things Stack. I mean, if I have a private network but I register my gatewawy on TTN, are the messages forwarded to the “public TTN”? (I mean public as outside my network).
Im interested on doing so.

Thank you so much.

Registering a gateway with The Things Stack is not equivalent to registering it on the TTN community network.

Private instances of The Things Stack do not forward data to the community network (and do not receive data from the community network either)

Thank you for the answer @kersing. Any recommendation to know how I can do the data forwarding?

To forward traffic to the public network (and possibly receive data from it) you need to use the packet broker which requires a valid netid which requires a Lora alliance membership which costs at least $3000 a year unless you are an institution.

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Thank you for the answer @kersing. I havent been able to find this information on the official website. Could you tell me where it is?

What specific information are you referring to?

If there is the possibility in The Things Stack to send the data from a private network to the public TTN. By your answer I have understood that yes. And if so how (this information is what I have not found).

Please read again. You need packetbroker and a public Lorawan netid (only available to Lora alliance members). There is a website for it (google is your friend).
If you do not have a public netid you can not use packetbroker and are unable to forward packets from your installation to the community network.

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Maybe there’s hope, for serious private networks that want to do peering but rather spend that money on the network. I just noticed in the V3 documentation, emphasis mine:

Your network authenticates with its NetID and (optionally) a tenant ID to Packet Broker. NetIDs are issued by the LoRa Alliance. To obtain a NetID for your network, become a member of the LoRa Alliance. Alternatively, a host with a large NetID may authorize you as tenant to use Packet Broker.

On the other hand: I doubt TTI will want to organize all of that (unless one is a TTI customer, for which Packet Broker is indeed an option already).