RUT956 European APN List only

Networking Solutions Question
1

Hello,

spoke to William from the support team: My RUT956 travels around the world but has a European data flatrate only. I tried Geofencing (profile switch) but my measurement system behind the router doesn´t like that. Now I thought: “Just” delete the non-european APNs out of the list, but as there are roughly 1800 of them, that might take a while.

Is there a way to download the APN list (e.g. as .csv), alter it on my computer and upload it back on the router?

Thank you in advance! :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Rob

2

An APN is typically associated with the SIM card and mobile service provider, rather than the country in which the device is operating. For example, a Telekom SIM configured to use a specific APN in Germany would generally continue to use the same APN while roaming in another country, provided that APN is supported by the provider.

If your objective is to control which networks or countries the device is allowed to roam on, I would recommend using the Operators List feature:

https://wiki.teltonika-networks.com/view/RUT956_Mobile#Operators_list

This allows you to create a list of approved operators that the device is permitted to connect to.

Once the list has been created:

  1. Set Operator Selection Mode to Manual

  2. Set Operator List Mode to Allowlist and the operator list you previously created

Guide: https://wiki.teltonika-networks.com/view/RUT956_Mobile#Manual_operator_selection

With this configuration, the device will only connect to operators included in the approved list, helping to prevent connections to unwanted roaming networks.

Regards,

Nick

3

Hi Nick,

thank you for the explaination! If I scan for operators, I always run into a time-out problem. But as one can choose to allow entire countries (only MCC), I just chose all countries within my SIM contract. That should have the same result, right?

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Oh and “Deny data roaming” OFF then, correct?

Best regards

Robert

7

Hello, @RobertF ,

Apologies for a delayed response,

If you need to modify the APN database on the RUT956, you can download the existing database, edit the required entries on a PC using an SQLite database editor, and then upload the modified database back to the router.

Please follow the procedure below.

1. Download the APN database from the RUT956

Connect to the RUT956 via SSH and create a working copy of the APN database:

cp /usr/local/share/mobifd/apn.db.gz /tmp/apn.db.gz
gunzip /tmp/apn.db.gz

The decompressed database should be available as:

/tmp/apn.db

Verify that it is an SQLite database:

file /tmp/apn.db

Then copy /tmp/apn.db from the router to your PC using SCP.

2. Edit the database on the PC

Open apn.db using an SQLite database editor, such as DB Browser for SQLite.

Before making any changes, please keep an untouched backup of the original database.

Modify only the required APN entries and save the database.

3. Upload the modified database to the RUT956

Before replacing the existing database, create a backup of the currently installed file:

cp /usr/local/share/mobifd/apn.db.gz /tmp/apn.db.gz.backup

Compress the modified database on your PC:

gzip apn.db

This should result in:

apn.db.gz

Upload the modified apn.db.gz to the RUT956, for example to /tmp/:

scp apn.db.gz root@<RUT956_IP>:/tmp/

Then, on the RUT956, replace the existing database with the modified one:

cp /tmp/apn.db.gz /usr/local/share/mobifd/apn.db.gz

4. Verify the file

After uploading the database, verify that the file exists and has the expected size:

ls -lh /usr/local/share/mobifd/apn.db.gz

We recommend rebooting the router after replacing the database and then verifying that the required APN entries are correctly available through the RUTOS interface.

Important: Modifying the APN database is outside the standard RUTOS configuration workflow. Please retain the original database backup so that the changes can be reverted if necessary. We also recommend testing the modified database on a test device before deploying it to production equipment.

Best regards,
V.

8

Hi Vilius, hi Nick,

thank you for the detailed explanations. So during the last trip I tried the combination that Nick suggested (Operator Mode: Manual and Allowlist with only European operators), but it turned out to not work. It seemed I only had my “home operator”. As soon as the router left Germany, the connection was lost. Is there a another way, like Operator Mode: Auto but still only from the Allowlist? Or like a fallback/“watchdog” cycle for the operators, that I need to activate?

Best regards

Robert