3G UMTS & failover support?

fry42

Hi,

I'm posting this in general questions because I don't know how this thread is going to work out.

What I want to find out is if there is any/enough interest in integrating failover and 3G/UMTS/HSDPA support.

Here in Austria we've just got a new 3G offer from Orange: You only have to pay 1,- Euro per day IF you use it. So you basically could get a 3G failover for free.
And i suspect many users have a 3G USB stick for mobile use. So it would be convenient to be able to simply plug it in to your pfsense box in case of the wired connection failing.

Now:

Are there any plans to implement 3G and/or failover support?
Is anyone else interested?
Would anyone join me in posting a bounty?

Thanks!
Stephan

Such a project will require that support for the hardware in question exists within FreeBSD 7.1 (and later). As I understand it, 3G network gear support in FreeBSD is pretty limited at this point.

fry42

Hi,

After a bit of research - here's what I found:

In 7.1 there is support for some USB based 3G cards in the usba module.

The problem seems to be switching these modems from storage mode (for driver install under Windows/OS-X) to serial mode.

one way around it is to use usb_modeswitch - but you would have to remove the usbmass module.
the other way would be to use u3g

So, there seems to be some chance to get it working…