Using mobile hotspot for WAN
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@gblenn said in Using mobile hotspot for WAN:
@wgstarks said in Using mobile hotspot for WAN:
Thought I would take look at this one too but can't find a US version. All the sellers seem to be in the EU so the power adapters are probably wrong.
I know, it seems they don't sell them in the US. I suppose besides the power adapter, it may not have the right frequency bands. The Mikrotik Chateau-6 has 'US' added to the name for a reason.
Not sure why but we seem to have more consumer variants to choose from here in the EU.
Do some testing in your house to find the ideal location, unless you know where the cell tower is. A simple way is to run speedtest in different locations. Otherwise there are apps (perhaps not on iPhone?) which will tell you the signal strength. Some may even provide the direction to or location of the tower, like Network Cell Info on Android (not sure how precise it is though).
After that you set it up and use it for a while and depending on performance you may want to look into external antennas. Cross polarized antennas are suggested... I'm using a Poynting XPOL which you can find on Amazon. They ship with cables but unless you set it up on a long pole, I suggest to change them out for the shortest cables possible.
Thanks. I managed to find the last one on Amazon.
There were also a couple on eBay for about 10 times there normal price. As soon as I get the new router I’ll hook it to an extension cord and try it in different spots. I have a good idea where the closest towers are in my area so that won’t be too complicated. A timber company has purchased all the local timber and should begin harvesting soon so I expect that will improve line of sight reception.Once again, thanks for all your help.
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@gblenn said in Using mobile hotspot for WAN:
Chateau 6-US from Mikrotik looks like a really good fit
I agree and just waiting for the price to fall...makes a great fail over for fiber.
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@wgstarks
Most of the Cellular accounts I have been on have used carrier grade NAT they basically give you a NATed IP address.I briefly had an encounter with frontier and then went to Hughesnet which was even worse surprisingly. All the time running my home built PFSense box as much as I could. I was actually able to sustain VOIP over Hughes net GEN2 with Vonage. The nice thing about routing through PFSense is it would hold the state longer than most of the devices upstream which really helped with connection drop outs.
I started off with AT&T cellular hotspots then went to Sprint then went to T-Mobile. I also have a Verizon MVO SIM with Visible now. Most of what I've seen online encourages the use of a USB modem and supposedly you can connect these hotspots over USB. they usually percent some sort of ethernet connection over USB although I'm trying mine and they're not working with PFSense yet.
The most reliable way I have found is to pick up a TP Link travel router there like 25 bucks at the most you plug that into one of your WAN connections and configure it with a static IP address in the same range as the hotspot and then tell it to act as a client basically a Wi-Fi ethernet bridge. Then you can position your hotspot at a reasonable distance in a good signal location somewhere where you can preferably get an external antenna ( make sure your device supports external antennas some do and are hidden some don't and some are hidden but don't ). This is sort of the best of both worlds, PF sense handles all the routing the hotspot handles the Cellular and the travel router links the two in between. The only downside is your double NAT but you're probably actually gonna be triple NAT unless you work out some sort of deal with a corporate account to get a public IP address and APN.
This also has the benefit of working with any! wireless hotspot.I do find the Netgear ones to be the nicest as they have a app that lets you monitor them on your phone and that can easily be forwarded through PFSense.
They also make a wireless cellular modem, stick a Sim card in and get ethernet out works really nice if it's compatible with your carrier. although they have a new model now with tri-carrier support.One thing to be aware of is battery bloat not all of these devices properly handle the charging so it might be worth sticking them on a timer that goes off for a few hours during the night to kind of cycle the battery a little bit since I've been doing that I haven't had too much of an issue.
But a few years ago I also got Comcast Business which came with it's own cradlepoint back up connection.
You're definitely going to be looking at some sort of NAT penetration remote access. The pricing for public IP address space is ridiculous assuming they have it listed on their website and most of what I saw it seems to indicate you would need a business account.
I've also heard that some android devices will let you tether over a USB ethernet adapter, although well they might have better modem support you are now running a full-fledged phone.
There's also a lot of corporate grade stuff out there but prices go up quick.
Sounds like you might've worked out some thing already hope it's working well.
Thought I would add my two cents in here for anybody else who might run across this post. -
@imark77 said in Using mobile hotspot for WAN:
Most of the Cellular accounts I have been on have used carrier grade NAT they basically give you a NATed IP address.
Yesterday, I watched a video about how bad CGNAT is.
As they point out, the only solution to this nonsense is to move to IPv6.
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@JKnott said in Using mobile hotspot for WAN:
the only solution to this nonsense is to move to IPv6.
I know T-Mobile home Internet box doesn't pass-through IPv6 router advertising...
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They should still know how to reach your prefix. Are you saying the prefix changes? I haven't check on my cell phone, but I've had the same prefix on my home network for 5 years.
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@JKnott said in Using mobile hotspot for WAN:
They should still know how to reach your prefix
T-Mobile treats it as a single IP; so, anything behind pfSense won't get an IP...that was my disappointment and reason to return the box.
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I'm interested in this as well. My Comcast cable goes down fairly frequently late at night for "scheduled maintenance" that they never notify about, despite my requests over many years. I'm tired of calling them to request bill credits each time. And that doesn't solve the problem of interrupted streaming. I need a cheap backup ISP for about 4-10 hours a month worth of Comcast downtime.
I have been testing Verizon 5G Home Internet since Saturday, because they upgraded their towers in my area, and offer the service at my address. The other carriers (AT&T, T-Mobile) will not sell it to me, for good reason - weak signal. I setup the Verizon ARC-XCI55AX gateway in IP passthrough mode. It is a perfectly adequate backup. The basic service, which I'm testing, costs $50/month, however. $600/year is a bit much to pay to cover the 4-10 hours worth of Comcast downtime that they shouldn't have in the first place.
It just so happens that my cellular provider, US Mobile, is an MVNO for both T-Mobile or Verizon. They offer a shared data plan, which would be perfect for our 2 smartphones, and a 3rd line for the home ISP backup. However, I need an unlocked 5G modem that will accept either an eSIM or a physical SIM. And it needs to preferably connect to pfSense via Ethernet. So far, I have not been able to locate such a device. Is there one ? One device was mentioned upthread, but it is only 4G LTE, not 5G, and the manufacturer does not have a 5G version.
The other possibility would be to use a smartphone for the backup WAN. I have not tried to enable USB tethering on my phone and connecting it to pfSense. Right now, the phone is still on the T-Mobile network, which provides speeds of 0.07 Mbps up and 0.04 Mbps down. Definitely not suitable as a backup WAN.
If USB tethering doesn't work, the other option would be to use the phone as Wifi hotspot, and add a Wifi NIC to pfSense for the WAN connection. It seems that this should work per https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/wireless/configuration-wan.html, although it does not mention how to input the Wifi password. Presumably this is part of the encryption settings.I would much prefer to use a 5G modem with an Ethernet connection if one exists, than use a smartphone, though. Phones are subject to getting updates and rebooting themselves at the most inopportune times, possibly requiring user interaction to restart, which is not always possible if I'm traveling and need to access the home VPN. Phones also depend on a battery with limited lifespan.
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@NollipfSense FYI, Verizon 5G Home Internet is providing me with a public, routable IPv4 address over DHCP.
DHCP6 also works, but I haven't messed with it .AT&T and T-Mobile don't have a usable data signal in my area.
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@madbrain said in Using mobile hotspot for WAN:
DHCP6 also works, but I haven't messed with it .
I think you'll find most, if not all, cell networks have moved entirely to IPv6. However, I haven't heard of any of them providing DHCPv6-PD to the clients. You can get IPv6 addresses to devices connected to the phone or router, but not beyond that.
Take a look at your phone's IPv4 address. If it's something like 192.0.0.2, your phone is using 464XLAT to provide access to IPv4 only sites over an IPv6 only network.
PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
UniFi AC-Lite access pointI haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...
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@JKnott I would take a look, but my phone, currently on a T-Mobile MVNO, isn't getting any data signal over cellular at the moment. Just 2 bars worth of signal. That's not usually the case. I have waited several minutes and don't see a change. Maybe the T-mobile cell towers lost power. From what I have read, T-mobile uses CG-NAT for their home internet service. Signal just came back, and the phone has a 192.x.y.z local IPv4 address.
The Verizon Home Internet 5G service, on the other hand, works fine even with IPv6 completely turned off on the router for the corresponding WAN interface. I have 3 ISPs connected to my pfSense box right now, and all of them are getting public IPv4 routable addresses. One of them doesn't support IPv6 at all.
Everything behaves even if IPv6 is disabled on all WAN and LAN links. I have tested VPN from the outside with all 3 WANs using dynamic DNS, but not at the same time, as I would need 3 separate VPN configurations and 3 dynamic DNS names. -
@JKnott I can confirm on my T-Mobile I am getting 192.0.0.2
Interesting thread. I know somebody with T-Mobile home Internet I wish I checked their IP now. With my T-Mobile hotspot I've had occasions where it will connect up and have signal but no data will pass from my travel router and I have suspected that this is due to the hotspot only getting an IPv6 address (can't remember if I've confirmed this I vaguely remember not seeing a IPV4 address listed in its status) and not having translation or the translation not working. Usually a reboot or 2 solves that although the hotspot doesn't give me high confidence either since it'll be 95°f out and it tells me it's shutting down due to "low temperature"?From what I understand most networks have switched to IPV6 internally which is what they should've done instead of carrier grade NAT in the first place. There's an entire address block for IPV4 within IPV6 it makes no sense to me why they're not just using that on the backend to route IPV4 into IPV6 and then back to IPV4.
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@wgstarks
I am using one right now and everything (except IPv6, but this is due to my carrier) is working excellently.I recommend buying an unlocked hotspot, so you can be more flexible with swapping SIMs/carriers. This is what I use:
https://www.netgear.com/home/mobile-wifi/hotspots/mr6550/
This one is cheaper and you only lose 5G mmWave and potentially Wi-Fi 6E if you use the hotspot as a Wi-Fi router (I don't and you can't, if you you want to incorporate pfSense in the setup):
https://www.netgear.com/home/mobile-wifi/hotspots/mr6150/
Where I live I get up to 450 Mbps, usually around 200.
Both devices can connect to your pfSense box either through Ethernet or USB and offer passthrough mode.
I can also point you towards an unlimited (with some caveats) BYOD plan, if you are interested.
Hope that helps.
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@madbrain " speeds of 0.07 Mbps up and 0.04 Mbps down"
That's either some really bad signal or maybe you're roaming? Was just up in upstate New York and whenever we hit an area outside of T-Mobile we roamed onto AT&T and they throttle the connection. My research sent me down to the info on AT&T emergency coverage just enough for calls and texts but it looks like they just agreed to leave it on all the time. Which is really annoying when you're trying to live stream something and the location you end up in is roaming but half a mile away isn't.
During this adventure I discovered that the data on the phone and the data to the hotspot with my Visible plan was different, I was using an iPhone. I was also reminded that the iPhone if it can connect to Wi-Fi like say a travel router won't forward data even though it's connected over USB tethering.... to the same travel router.Ouch $600 a month for 4 to 10 hours. Might be worth looking into Comcast Business (which guarantees me speed +10% or something like that ) but part of the package was a AT&T+Verizon cradle point back up gateway ( that's unfortunately completely locked down) instructions say to loop through it but then you have no control so I have it hanging off one of my extra WANs. approximately $250/m for 300mb and they text me when there's an outage. As much as I don't like normal Comcast.
If you do go to the Wi-Fi off the phone route. I have found rather than adding the complexity of Wi-Fi into PFsense (although supposedly it works just not with the cards I have). TP Link has a 20 something dollar travel router 2x2 cube that has a client mode and then just spits that out as ethernet fairlee transparently. I set it to a static IP 192.168.111.2 within the same NET IP of my hotspot 192.168.111.1 but this also works for cell phone hotspots. PFsense can be either dynamic or static doesn't matter I've done it both ways.
That's how I did it for years before getting Comcast only issue was AT&T policies, routing and billing and then we switch to Sprint>T-Mobile. -
@imark77 said in Using mobile hotspot for WAN:
From what I understand most networks have switched to IPV6 internally which is what they should've done instead of carrier grade NAT in the first place. There's an entire address block for IPV4 within IPV6 it makes no sense to me why they're not just using that on the backend to route IPV4 into IPV6 and then back to IPV4.
Originally, the cell networks didn't support IPv6 and CGNAT was the only way to provide IPv4. Some of those IPv6 blocks containing IPv4 addresses are using for conversion methods such as 464XLAT. Changing from IPv4 to IPv6 didn't happen all at once, but rather in stages.
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@sarrasine said in Using mobile hotspot for WAN:
Both devices can connect to your pfSense box either through Ethernet or USB and offer passthrough mode.
Does that include DHCPv6-PD to pfSense?
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Right now I can't confirm because it looks like T-Mobile does not provide prefix delegation, before T-Mobile I had AT&T and as far as I can recall, I was getting an IPv6 on all of my devices connected to the pFSense box.
Sorry I could not offer better explanation, I am trying to learn all of this new (to me) terminology and possibly sound dumb at times
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@sarrasine
Actually I went a different route. Found out that my local cable company will install cable to anywhere for about $8(US)/foot so paid them for about 4700 feet. Was really the only option. No cell towers within 2 miles. T-mobile was willing to sell me a plan anyway be the speeds were awful. Starlink is still not available in my area. -
@imark77 The 0.0.7 / 0.04 speeds are from really bad T-Mobile signal. It is not roaming. I live on a hill, and that's the speeds I get in my home office when the phone is on 4G LTE. Sometimes it switches to 5G, and the download speed goes way up, but the upload speed remains the same. This morning it wasn't getting any data signal at all for several minutes, just a few bars, presumably GSM only. Voice calls over cell tend to have frequent periods of >1s silence. This weak T-mobile signal was unfortunately the best cell signal I could get in this room, and in most rooms, between the major 3 carriers for the 14 years I have been here. 3 years ago I tried a Verizon 5G SIM with my phone. Speedtest got 0.001 Mbps down / 0.000 up. Ie. just 1kbps ... It was a free trial and I obviously cancelled.
Basically, only Wifi calling works for calls, or wired VoIP. I had Ooma before, and switched to voip.ms a few weeks ago using a Grandview HT802 analog telephone adapter. The Panasonic DECT 6.0 analog phone with the maximum 6 handsets covers my entire property inside and out, something that Wifi cannot do even with 6 APs, and that the cell carriers couldn't do either, but that may have changed recently with the new Verizon towers.As far as the price, not sure where you got $600/month. I clearly mentioned Verizon was charging $50/month, which is $600/year. I still think it's too much for a backup that's seldom used. I would prefer a less expensive plan without unlimited data. Maybe a plan with only 1GB of data included, and the ability to pay extra by the GB, as needed.
I am not sure how Comcast business is going to be any better than Comcast residential service (Xfinity) which I have at the moment. When Comcast does their so-called "scheduled maintenance", the cable modem loses sync. Unless they are running a separate cable on which they aren't doing this maintenance, I don't see how business will it help. It will certainly cost more, though, and I'm trying to minimize costs and ditch Comcast altogether due to both the outages and price increases.
I was paying $80/month for 1200 / 200 service. The speeds were more than good enough, as well as the price. But it went to $150 after the contract ended. I got a new contract, but the best they would do was $110, even though new customers pay $90 for the same service. For the first time in 20 years with Comcast, they just wouldn't match new customer price. The fact that speeds drop to 0 / 0 during all the outages is much more problematic though. I'm tired of having to go outside late at night to make a call and request a bill credit. I would like to trade some speed for more reliability, preferably without contract, which means without Comcast, and at lower cost than the $110 I'm paying right now.I believe a 5G smartphone could be used as a WAN with pfSense, either through USB tethering, Wifi hotspot, or even Ethernet tethering that I read about. All those should do the job, but they have one thing in common - they probably will only work for outbound connections due to the phone acting as a router, and performing NAT. That covers most of the use cases, which are principally outbound traffic late at night when streaming and getting a Comcast outage. I would like to also cover inbound traffic for remote access to my home, but this will require a public IP address from the carrier, either IPv4 or IPv6, and I'm not sure it's possible to get one with a SIM. Verizon 5G Home Internet does hand out public IPs, but requires the $50/month subscription. I need a device that will take a physical SIM to use a US Mobile Warp 5G shared data plan that uses the Verizon cell network. Fedex just delivered such a SIM a few minutes ago. I'm going to port my cell phone line from GSM 5G (T-Mobile) to Warp 5G (Verizon) while staying with the same MVNO, US Mobile. Hopefully, my signal issues on the phone will finally be history. And I will be able to see what kind of IPs the phone gets, once the port is done. It would great if one of the IPs was public.
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@sarrasine Thanks. I don't need the mmWave here in the hills. It is not economically viable to deploy it in this area. I saw those Netgear devices. Both are pretty expensive, though, and are a bit overkill. I believe a cheap 5G smartphone such as a used, unlocked Samsung A14 could do the same job. I don't need very high speeds at this is just for backup. Verizon throttles the home internet service to about 110 Mbps down / 12 Mbps max and that still works fine as a backup.
I believe Wifi can be used as a WAN in pfSense, both with these Netgear devices and a smartphone. But it is not the preferred method. USB or Ethernet would be better.
A smartphone will only act as a router when tethering, though. Will the Netgear hotspots work in bridge mode, as opposed to router mode ?
I'm interested in a BYOD plan, but probably not an unlimited one due to price constraints. I still would like to know what the terms are, and in particular whether a public IP is offered or not.
