4. And how did your work lead you to Soracom?
We connected specifically while my team was working with Sutro. The Sutro device uses LTE as a backup when Wi-Fi is unavailable, but we were having issues with the device getting disconnected from the network. Everything worked as expected when we were connected to Wi-Fi, and everything seemed okay on the server side, so we suspected a firmware issue.
Initially, we worked with our cloud and module partners to diagnose the issue, but didn’t have much success. The Soracom Solutions Architecture team suggested we do a packet dump to help identify the issue, which is easy enough with Wi-Fi but not usually possible with cellular.
Soracom helped us to set up a Virtual Private Gateway for packet capture, which let us determine that the server was not closing our socket directly, allowing TCP requests to time out. With that knowledge, we were able to work with our cloud partner to resolve the issue.
It was a really great lesson in the difference between basic cellular connectivity and cellular connectivity that’s actually designed for IoT use cases. We’ve gotten to know the team really well since then and really appreciate their commitment to getting projects live.