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    Huawei ME909S-821-PCIE compatibility

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    • stephenw10S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by

      Nice. Thanks!

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

      Steve

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • R
        randomvalid @RedSector73
        last edited by 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...

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • 9
          90Ninety
          last edited by

          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 ..

          s-l1600.jpg
          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

          PPP.png

          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

          Dobby_D R M 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • R
            RedSector73
            last edited by

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

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • stephenw10S
              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
              last edited by 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

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Dobby_D
                Dobby_ @90Ninety
                last edited by

                @90ninety

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

                • LTE modem configuration 1
                • LTE modem configuration 2
                • LTE modem troubleshooting

                #~. @Dobby

                Turris Omnia - 4 Ports - 2 GB RAM / TurrisOS 7 Release (Btrfs)
                PC Engines APU4D4 - 4 Ports - 4 GB RAM / pfSense CE 2.7.2 Release (ZFS)
                PC Engines APU6B4 - 4 Ports - 4 GB RAM / pfSense+ (Plus) 24.03_1 Release (ZFS)

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • R
                  RedSector73 @90Ninety
                  last edited by

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

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    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

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • Dobby_D
                      Dobby_
                      last edited by

                      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.

                      #~. @Dobby

                      Turris Omnia - 4 Ports - 2 GB RAM / TurrisOS 7 Release (Btrfs)
                      PC Engines APU4D4 - 4 Ports - 4 GB RAM / pfSense CE 2.7.2 Release (ZFS)
                      PC Engines APU6B4 - 4 Ports - 4 GB RAM / pfSense+ (Plus) 24.03_1 Release (ZFS)

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • M
                        MartinSky @90Ninety
                        last edited by

                        @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.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • stephenw10S
                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                          last edited by

                          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.

                          M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • M
                            MartinSky @stephenw10
                            last edited by

                            @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.

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                            • stephenw10S
                              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                              last edited by 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

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