Any recommendations for resonsbly-priced LTE modem?
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My cable ISP has random drop-outs nightly so I purchased a Netgear LB2120 LTE modem and added it as a failover gateway for my SG-1100. It works OK, but since I use the SG-1100 for failover and not the LB2120, the LTE modem remains connected continuously.
The LB2120 firmware has no way to disconnect when the connection is not used for a while and then reconnect as needed.
I'm looking into configuring the LB-2120 to handle the failover task, but I'm worried about the security of having a Netgear device in front of my SG-1100.
Can anyone recommend a better LTE modem (for T-Mobile bands) for pfSense failover?
Frank
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I wouldn't be too concerned with leaving that NetGear Modem on all the time. That's why you have it, for failover purposes.
If you're really concerned you "could" schedule some type of cron script. You would have your OPT1 or whatever port you've got the Netgear modem plugged into DISABLED by default. If you loose a ping or several pings to your Primary cable Gateway (modem) from the WAN port then the script would automatically enable the OPT1 port. Then your Failover settings could pick it up.
You could also have another cron job that looks to see when the Cable Gateway comes back up, then you'd do the reverse and disable the OPT1 port.
These Cron jobs would pretty much have to run quite regularly, like every minute or two.
I do something kinda similar with a Carrier Grade NAT ISP in my area. For some reason, pfSense will loose Internet at least once a day. I know this is NOT a pfSense issue but an issue with the ISP. Disabling the pfSense WAN port and re-enabling it brings the connection right back. So, I have a Cron script running every minute that looks for a lost connection. When it happens, the script disables the WAN, then re-enables it. Internet is back up.
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My concern here is not leaving the LB2120 LTE modem powered-on all the time.
My concern is that to have the LB2120 handle fail-over it will sit powered-on between my cable modem/LTE connection and my SG-1100 with just the Netgear firmware to protect against attack.
From what I can determine from the manual, it would need to be in router mode so it's IP address doesn't change when failing-over to LTE with the SG-1100 in the DMZ with only the LB2120 password to protect it. I'm not sure I trust Netgear that much.
For pfSense to handle the fail-over, the LB2120 will be connected to OPT1 or another interface as another gateway. The issue is that the LB2120 provides no control over when to dial-out or disconnect. So it just sits there connected, and slowly using my monthly data allotment.
Is there a LTE modem that will automatically dial-out and then disconnect the line when not used after some period of time?
Frank