ATT Internet AIr

[tman222]

@ahole4sure said in ATT Internet AIr:

@tman222

I think you have offered some very good advice and insight. I finally spoke to a manager late Friday afternoon and it was unclear whether my device will allow IP pass through or not BUT suggested that we put in for a static IP address (to possibly see if pass through could happen)
He also suggested that we could a different modem with the SIM card as well.

Do you have any knowledge of current best options for a 5g modem? Don’t really need WiFi but need a good antenna for optimum reception

Hi @ahole4sure - I'm admittedly not an expert on this subject, but here is a good video that compares a few different options for third party 5G cellular gateways (to help give you some idea):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDhxeUm3EqI

I've actually looked at the Chester Tech units myself, but couldn't really justify the expense given that the AT&T provided CGW450-400 gateway works fine and has a fairly strong signal to the tower already.

Hope this helps.

[ahole4sure]

@tman222 @stephenw10
Hey guys , it's me again! I finally got the primary solution to my problem -- I talked the ATT folks into taking the "business" (oxymoron imo) Intenet Air device back. We are going to use a Netgear Nighthawk M7 device - some sort of promo, new (for fastest 5G) AND allows IP Passthrough.

The minute I connected and enable IP Pasthrough on the device - pFsense reported the static public IP address that ATT had given me and all of the incoming services worked great!
THANKS for the help so far!
Moral is ATT "Internet Air for Business" (latest release) does not allow for IP Passthrough and not a good option for failover if using pFsense.

Now my question is this - on the front of the M7 gateway it states that you should be able to reach the settings page at the local address I initially set it up with - 192.168.2.1 (remembering that my pfsense is recognizing the M7 as a public IP) -- however, I can't seem to access the device from a LAN (192.168.1.x) device. I enabled an "alias" (of 192.168.2.1) for the WAN but still no joy.

Suggestions??

[tman222]

@ahole4sure said in ATT Internet AIr:

@tman222 @stephenw10
Hey guys , it's me again! I finally got the primary solution to my problem -- I talked the ATT folks into taking the "business" (oxymoron imo) Intenet Air device back. We are going to use a Netgear Nighthawk M7 device - some sort of promo, new (for fastest 5G) AND allows IP Passthrough.

The minute I connected and enable IP Pasthrough on the device - pFsense reported the static public IP address that ATT had given me and all of the incoming services worked great!
THANKS for the help so far!
Moral is ATT "Internet Air for Business" (latest release) does not allow for IP Passthrough and not a good option for failover if using pFsense.

Now my question is this - on the front of the M7 gateway it states that you should be able to reach the settings page at the local address I initially set it up with - 192.168.2.1 (remembering that my pfsense is recognizing the M7 as a public IP) -- however, I can't seem to access the device from a LAN (192.168.1.x) device. I enabled an "alias" (of 192.168.2.1) for the WAN but still no joy.

Suggestions??

Hi @ahole4sure - great to hear you got IP Passthrough to work by using a third party cellular gateway. How does the performance compare of the Netgear vs. AT&T gateway, do you see any improvement?

Assuming you have a public IP now on the second WAN interface for AT&T Internet Air, these instructions from @stephenw10 in the first post will work to access the gateway's configuration webpage. It's a combination of creating a VIP (virtual IP) and adding an outbound NAT rule:

https://forum.netgate.com/topic/137747/access-to-the-modem-web-page

Hope this helps.

[stephenw10]

Nice! Yup you probably need a VIP in the subnet and NAT rule so the nighthawk has a route to reply.

[ahole4sure]

@tman222 @stephenw10
Thanks guys
For an Orthopedic surgeon this is a humbling process!! -- sure am thankful for your expertise

Here is what I have
I am able to ping 192.168.2.1 but not reach the gateway interface

[stephenw10]

The translation address in the outbound NAT rule needs to be the VIP not the WAN address. And that needs to be on the WAN. It's applied to traffic as it leaves the WAN interface.

That rule you have above it seems odd, that shouldn't ever be required. Those are manually added outbound NAT rules?

[ahole4sure]

@stephenw10
Yes that is manually created based on the suggestions that I needed to create a outbound rule

Is my VIP created correctly? My gateway says on the front that I can access the settings page by going to http://192.168.2.1 (so it would insinuate that it is infact accesible)

Can you tell me how to create the outbound rule correctly - clearly I am not thinking about things correctly

[stephenw10]

The VIP is good as long as the Nighthawk is using a different IP in the 192.168.2.0/24 subnet.

[ahole4sure]

@stephenw10
So the Nighthawk is using 192.168.2.1
So my VIP needs to be somehting differnet in that subnet , like 192.168.2.10 ?

Then I gotta figure out the outbound rule thing

[ahole4sure]

@stephenw10
Should the VIP be setup on the WAN or the LAN interface??
Sorry probably sounds dumb

[ahole4sure]

@stephenw10 ok this finally worked --- look ok??

[stephenw10]

Yup exactly like that.

[stephenw10]

Though the source port should be empty because that's the port the client uses to connect from which is usually some high numbered random port.

Also you should se https (or both) if the router supports it.

[ahole4sure]

@stephenw10
So freaking weird
I made the change of the source port and then I could no longer access http://192.168.2.1
I can still ping the address

So weird - I tried changing it back and it still wouldn't work
hitting my head lol

[stephenw10]

Hmm, odd. Try removing the ports entirely. There's no real reason to specify a port there, all traffic between LAN and the modem would need to be NAT'd.

[ahole4sure]

@stephenw10 Well I tried to remove all the port entries and still no success

Whats really odd is that if I activate my Wireguard VPN into my network -- viola , I have access to http://192.168.2.1. (notice in my settings for the tunnel I have allowed IP ranges including 192.168.2.0/24

[stephenw10]

Hmm, almost sounds like that NAT rule is actually breaking the connection. Since with the source port set to 80 it would not have been matching the traffic.

Try disabling the rule.

[ahole4sure]

@stephenw10 OMG!! That worked - after all that

Thanks again

[ahole4sure]

@stephenw10 Oddly I changed back to "Auto Mode" for Outbound NAT and it still worked

[stephenw10]

Hmm, interesting! That still using 192.168.2.1 to access it? It seems like the Nighthawk has a route to the public IP then. In which case that's no problem.