Huawei ME909S-821-PCIE compatibility

RedSector73

@stephenw10 Not sure if needed the cellular package but "yes" it is installed. Only custom command needed was 'Z' without '' in the Init string, which added to the PPP page in Interfaces. It was doing my head in at time, this was first try with pfsense and was still on steep pfsense learning curve and I needed this as my fallback, once got it working never changed the settings or checked if needed the cellular package, just moved to my next knowledge failure vs want gap and started learning how to get it working.

I'm running 2.6.0-DEVELOPMENT latest stable version but did work on last released version.

Mine is a ME909s-821 mini PCIe

The other Advanced Configuration settings in the PPP page are all default.

Hope you find this helpful.

stephenw10

Nice. Thanks!

Yeah, I found I needed a custom init string with an ME906s-158.
Good to know that works with Cellular too.

Steve

randomvalid

@redsector73 Thank you for the detailed information, I ended up to order another type of modem, but if that fails I will totally use this Huawei...

90Ninety

Sorry if the thread is a bit old .. I wanted to try this , I have various computers with Mini PCIE slots; and these modems are cheap .

I have a Gigabyte spare Gigabyte BRIX ( similar to a NUC) , I got a MINI PCIE with SIM card reader adapter ..

I installed the modem with a known working SIM

I installed a fresh build of PFsense

The card is detected as a USB device in PF sense 2.6.0
Screenshot 2023-03-14 174324.png

I then followed the Negate guide on Cellular Wireless

https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/cellular/modems.html

I tried all the PPP options I am given but , cannot get it to work

Though I cannot get any data through it. When I enable the interface and then click 'Connect WAN' , it flaps open then a few seconds later it closes .
This is about as far as I got with it

What commands or investigative steps could I take with this ?

Thanks

RedSector73

Only thing I noticed and not sure if it matters, but the Init String is lower case z and mine is upper case Z.

stephenw10

First thing I would do is disable the ppp instance in the gui and try to connect to the ports at the CLI until you find which one is listening for AT commands.

[23.01-RELEASE][admin@3100.stevew.lan]/root: cu -l cuaU0.2
Connected
at
OK
ati
Manufacturer: Sierra Wireless, Incorporated
Model: EM7455
Revision: SWI9X30C_02.08.02.00 r5428 CARMD-EV-FRMWR2 2016/01/06 20:38:53
MEID: xxxxxxxxxxxx
IMEI: xxxxxxxxxxxx
IMEI SV:  4
FSN: xxxxxxxxxx
+GCAP: +CGSM


OK

Use ~~. to escape that cu session.

Then once you know which is the correct port check the ppp logs to see what's happening when it tries to connect.

Steve

Dobby_

@90ninety

Here are three links you could try out a step by step
setup also with an Huawei LTE modem and pfSense.

RedSector73

@90ninety Also on mine, cua0.0 is without the cellular package cuaZ99.0 with it.

stephenw10

It's important to note that the upper case U in the port name indicates it's a USB connected device. So in my output above the port is cuaU0.2.
Almost all devices have two onboard com ports even if they're not connected to anything named cuau0 and cuau1.
The Cellular package adds the cuaZ* aliases in order to workaround the ports being re-ordered.

Steve

Dobby_

Pending on the vendor, but in the most cases "the modem"
is installing 4 ports and one is often in usage, so you cant connect to. Now you have to normally to find out what port is open and able to use. So you do probing all modem ports
out so that you will get the right one what is responding on AT commands.

Putty (115200,8,N,1)
Console (8)
Type in "usbconfig"
Find out your modem vendor the ugen
usbconfig -d 2.3 dump_device_desc
As an example we use here ugen2.3

ugen2.3: <HUAWEI Technology HUAWEI Mobile> at usbus2, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON (500mA)

Type in the console "ls /dev/cuaU*"
Now all the cua Ports will be presented to you
Now try out all the cua ports with typing in
cu -l /dev/cuaU0.0, cu -l /dev/cuaU0.1 and so on
If you found the right port you will see something like
connected
Then you will be able to probe the AT commands after setting the modem into verbose mode.

And now, you will be able to create an interface in the
pfSense interface setup and use it as WAN or what ever
port. Because you will be able to choose in that interface menue the right cuaU* port.

MartinSky

@90ninety
I have the same modem which connects and works reasonably well using the init string:
&F0E1Q0 +CMEE=2

My issue is that I cannot get decent bandwidth even with an external high gain antenna attached. I get 10 times the bandwidth from an iPhone on the same provider.

stephenw10

What bandwidth do you actually see?

pfSense is highly restricted by the connection type it has to use since FreeBSD doesn't, yet, support MBIM or QMI.

I've never seen faster than ~60Mbps. We have seen reports of ~100Mbps.

MartinSky

@stephenw10 Best I have seen is 12Mbps on the 4G modem. I'm now in the process of changing over my edge firewall to use OpenWRT as it supports QMI.
While testing OpenWRT I also discovered the MultiWAN (mwan3) package which is about an order of magnitude better than dpinger on pfSense.

stephenw10

Oh? In what respect? I've not tried that, the description looks almost identical to how pfSense works with the exception of multiple routing tables.
Also dpinger only monitors the gateways, or other IPs, it doesn't do any of the policy routing or traffic failover/balancing.

Steve