Trying to use a new 5G modem with pfSense
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Hi,
I have a new (Jan 2022) modem which is portable and has an Ethernet port. There is a USB-C connector that I use with its included PSU to keep its battery charged and it also has WiFi.
The device is an MU500 from Telstra Australia.
It may be that the USB-C could be used to comms, I wouldn't know about that.
I have turned off the WiFi at this point in time and am trying to use the modem through Ethernet only. The built-in DHCP server works well when there is one computer connected. The address on the computer is 192.168.0.198. The modem gateway address is 192.168.0.1.
I am trying to get this modem to work on my pfSense box. I tried to reconfigure the WAN port from PPPoE to DHCP and static IPv4. There are no communications with the outside world.
Can anyone help ?
Cheers,
Steve -
@swmcl_pf said in Trying to use a new 5G modem with pfSense:
I have a new (Jan 2022) modem …
has an Ethernet port…
a USB-C connector …
also has WiFi…
DHCP server…
The device is an MU500 from Telstra Australia.That is not a modem. It is a
- router
- wifi access point
- DHCP server
- which happens to also have a 5G modem
With pfsense to keep things clean and simple the optimal set up imo is to put it in bridge mode so it is just a 5G modem. See this post
Alternatively if you choose to run a double NAT and avoid using the Telstra routers other features you will need to not block local networks on your pfsense Wan (as that has a local sub net address.
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@patch Hi Patch, Thanks for the reply.
The Telstra device is as you say. I have used the word 'router' rather loosely.
It does not have a bridge mode as far as I can see.
I have solved the problem but it is a bit of a b*tch.
It has been a long time since I have setup pfsense and something I forgot about was the System / Routing / Gateways page.
I needed to have a gateway setup here. As far as I can see, there can't be multiple gateways as the plural name implies. I tried setting up the PPPoE gateway but disbaling it and also setting up a 4G gateway but it didn't work. I needed to have only the one gateway listed.
It aint easy or I seem to expect a bit more popup help or context with each option on screen. I'm running 2.4.4 so I hope this has improved along the way.
Cheers.
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- If you have the Telstra router in bridge mode then PPPoE is done by pfsense
- If you run double NAT the Telstra router does PPP and pfsense sits behind the Telstra router just like any other Telstra router LAN device. But from pfsense perspective it's WAN interface uses the Telstra router as a gateway and WAN DHCP. The Testra router LAN interface / pfsense WAN interface in on subnet within the private range (hence this needs to be enabled in pfsense)
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@patch said in Trying to use a new 5G modem with pfSense:
you will need to not block local networks on your pfsense Wan
The setting that pfSense has for this,
Block private networks and loopback addresses, only blocks incoming connections sourced from private IPs. All incoming connections on WAN are blocked by default anyway. Having that enabled does not prevent outgoing connections in a double NAT setup like this.The only time you would need to disable that is if you were trying to connect from a client in the WAN side subnet. So for example if you had a WIFI client connected to the Telstra router and were trying to access the pfSense webgui using it's WAN IP.
Steve
