Using mobile hotspot for WAN
-
@madbrain
Hi,
The Netgear hotspots will work in IP Passthrough mode, I am not sure if this is the same as Bridge Mode though.
I am in a place where I can get Comcast (cable, used to have it), AT&T fiber, but I chose to go wireless (and complicated the hell out of my life, lol). I dropped the cable, because it is a lightning surge risk (a major no-no for me, nobody properly grounds these), I was going to get AT&T fiber, but they insist on me using their gateway, which I won't do - I never use carrier branded equipment. So until AT&T start allowing us to buy our own modems, I am out. The only option left was to go wireless, but then the carriers still insist on you using their crappy gateway. So I had to get a SIM by becoming a member of FMCA and getting one of their plans : )
But... The plan comes with a 100 GB of priority data and is deprioritised after that, although it is marketed as unlimited. $60 a month.
Additionally, it comes with a heavy video throttling
. So I have to run a VPN on my pfSense box in order to get rid of the video throttling. -
@sarrasine Yes, IP passthrough is the same as bridge mode. Comcast calls it bridge mode, and it is easy to find. Verizon calls it IP passthrough, and it is buried behind quite a few clicks in the web admin.
You are lucky to be able to get fiber, cable and wireless Internet. Until recently, I could only get cable.
I don't find the carrier gateway to be a serious issue, from a technical standpoint at least. As long as they are in bridge/IP passthrough mode, and the ISP provides public IPs, it all works great with pfSense. I have my Comcast XB8 in bridge mode, and Verizon ARC-XCI55AX gateway in IP passthrough mode. That means all router functionality is disabled, as well as Wifi. It would be better to have a strict modem without routing or Wifi, but economies of scale probably means such a device would sell less, and cost more.
Of course, the price of the device is built into the service cost. I prefer to have one time cost than a recurring one. Comcast will not offer unlimited data service if you use your own equipment, unfortunately. It's not every month that I use over 1.2TB of data, though.I also have a 3rd ISP in trial right now, Sail Internet. They installed a fixed wireless antenna on my roof. I was supposed to get 200 / 200 Mbps, but a palmtree grew in the line of sight. They had to install a new antenna pointed somewhere else. I get about 200 / 30 from it.
Sail uses a POE modem that's actually on the roof. It is a straight modem, not router. They asked me if I needed a router when I signed up, and I told them no, as I have my own pfSense box.I don't get why you are so concerned about lightning surges. If the cable is not properly grounded, can't you get the cable company to come over and ground it properly ? It should be their responsibility. Also, there are surge protectors for coaxial cable. I'm not sure how effective they are, but name brands usually provide some kind of insurance, which could cover some damage to your equipment.
All my equipment is plugged into surge protectors. I even installed many surge protecting outlets. I also have a heavy duty surge protector installed in my main electrical panel, and 2 in electrical subpanels as well.Right now, I have two coax cables coming into my office, once from Comcast and one from Sail. In my home theater, there used to be another 2 coax, one from my OTA for TV channels, and another from Dish. The Dish came down a few years ago during fumigation. I was able to keep the OTA, which I still use daily with a HD Homerun DVR and attached USB SSD.
We had some serious lightning strikes in 2020 around here, but no actual issues at my home, except that we were subject to a pending evacuation order that fortunately never came. The air quality was awful for a month following all these fires, though..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2020_California_lightning_wildfiresI would not choose wireless if wired was reliable, but unfortunately it isn't. 100GB is about 3% of my usual monthly consumption with Comcast. I have exceeded the 1.2TB cap a few times, but am paying for unlimited data.
Funny that your ISP only throttles video and not VPN traffic after you exceed your high-speed data.
-
@nimrod
I tried this not using a phone but a wireless access point called Pantech 4G from Verizon (I was charged $35.00 per month to have this device activated), which plugged into a usb port. It worked, however it was spotty like a cell signal can be and the biggest problem was if pfsense was restarted the configuration would be lost; something about the order of loading USB drivers in freeBSD caused a hickup. So are you able to reboot pfsense and not loose the configuration? As someone below stated they don't like using USB devices because of lack of support. -
I don't get why you are so concerned about lightning surges. If the cable is not properly grounded, can't you get the cable company to come over and ground it properly ? It should be their responsibility. Also, there are surge protectors for coaxial cable. I'm not sure how effective they are, but name brands usually provide some kind of insurance, which could cover some damage to your equipment.
Lighting surges are a major phobia for me. I have changed many high-end surge protectors (Panamax, Furman, ZeroSurge and finally top of the line SurgeX).
Coaxial can never be 100% protected and Comcast would definitely not do it properly. I live in an apartment and a few of my neighbors lost electronics due to surges on the coaxial line. Theirs were not expensive to buy again, but I have Mark Levinson gear that would be prohibitively expensive to replace. So, I have sworn off cable for good.
Fiber would be best, but as I said I hate the idea of using AT&T provided gateway, even if I could configure it with real IP passthrough, which I can't. Who knows what kind of deeply imbedded spyware they have (just my own two cents) in their boxes. It is a hard pass for me.
If you are still looking for wireless 5G modems/hotspots, make sure they have at least a Qualcomm X62 or better yet X65/67
modem, as that will ensure you have all the necessary bands.
Also, you might want to take a look at Peplink. -
@The-Party-of-Hell-No Thanks. Good to know about USB devices being problematic for pfSense reboot. Does this issue also apply to USB NICs ? I am using one right now for my 3rd ISP which is Verizon 5G. I have not tried rebooting pfSense to find out.
-
@madbrain Unfortunately, the Warp 5G SIM still didn't provide the expected results in my Samsung S22 Ultra. Despite the fact that the phone is unlocked, and that the Verizon web site IMEI check page says my phone is a perfect match for their network, the only thing that worked reliably initially was voice and texts, ie. GSM. For data to work, I had to add 3 APNs manually. I got a 5G signal, but speedtest is very slow, in the 0-2 Mbps range down and 0-3 Mbps up. The phone also sometimes loses the 5G data signal altogether. It does not drop down to 4G. This does not make a lot of sense to me, because the Verizon 5G home router/gateway in the same room a few feet away gets 100 Mbps down / 12 Mbps up. I am guessing the phone doesn't support all the 5G bands that Verizon uses, as it was originally locked to T-Mobile. Sigh. I suppose 0-2 Mbps up / 0-3 Mbps down is better than 1 kbps down / 0 kbps up I got 3 years ago. And it's better than the 0.07 Mbps / 0.03 Mbps that T-mobile achieves in the same location. Obviously, neither is suitable as a 5G WAN for pfSense. Perhaps if I had an unlocked 5G phone designed for the Verizon network and supporting all the bands, I might get different results. I thought the Verizon IMEI check would do the band check for me, but I was obviously mistaken.
As far as the IP addresses given, the v4 address starts with 100.118 and is not pingable or routable. At the moment, I have IPv6 disabled on my LAN/WAN in pfSense, and haven't checked whether the v6 address is the same. Time to turn it back on. -
@madbrain Looks like the IPv6 address on Warp 5G might be routable. At least traceroute goes through about 10 hops before it fails. That is better than the IPv4 address. The addressed cannot be pinged. It could be that the phone is blocking ICMP over cellular. Or it could be the carrier doing that, of course. Or both.
-
@NollipfSense said in Using mobile hotspot for WAN:
I had plan on trying this with the iPhone but the seller didn't have possession on eBay so I didn't bother...Ethernet to pfSense.
Cool gadget!!! Perhaps I take also one of them!
-
FYI, for those who want to follow in my footsteps and try to use a US Mobile Warp 5G SIM (Verizon network) and smartphone for backup WAN, I was not successful at doing that. When at home, my unlocked Samsung Galaxy Ultra 5G, originally for T-mobile, gets 4 bars of GSM (voice/SMS) signal in my home office, but no data whatsoever, whether 2G, 3G, 4G or 5G. Meanwhile, the Verizon 5G Home Internet gateway, model ARC-XCI55AX, gets a perfectly good 5G signal, and is perfectly usable over gigabit Ethernet with pfSense, getting peak speeds of about 105 Mbps down / 12 Mbps up.
The only explanation I have for the gateway having a good data signal, but not the phone, is that they must be operating on different bands. The 5G gateway admin page unfortunately does not list the band, just signal strength.
It's unclear if the issue with the phone is the phone not supporting all the same 5G bands that the gateway does, or if the MVNO is deprioritized and not allowed on those bands. But the result is the same - I cannot use the phone for WAN with pfSense, at least not if it's located in the same room. The phone does get a weak 5G data signal in other rooms, and could potentially be used over Wifi, if I added a Wifi NIC to my pfSense box. But the 5G speeds I achieved on the phone of 1-3 Mbps are so low that it's not really a viable backup ISP. No streaming possible for sure with that setup.
I did get a much better 5G signal with the phone in other cities earlier today - achieved 100 Mbps down / 10 Mbps up. Way better than 0 / 0 at home. -
@madbrain said in Using mobile hotspot for WAN:
FYI, for those who want to follow in my footsteps and try to use a US Mobile Warp 5G SIM (Verizon network) and smartphone for backup WAN
FWIW, my ISP apparently is planning on providing backup over 5G.
-
@madbrain
You probably know about this, but there is a wealth of information about mobile internet (both cellular and satellite) here:https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/
-
@sarrasine I didn't know about it, actually.
It looks like Verizon might be using a band called n77 in my area. That works fine with the provided 5G Gateway. But does not with my carrier-unlocked S22 Ultra originally for T-mobile. Some are saying I can flash the firmware to the U1 version instead of U version and make it work. I don't think I'm going to bother.
I don't know if any of unlocked 5G modems / gateways support this particular band or not.
-
Using a mobile hotspot for WAN (Wide Area Network) connectivity can be a convenient solution in various scenarios, especially when traditional wired or fixed wireless options are unavailable or impractical.
-
@madbrain said in Using mobile hotspot for WAN:
Some are saying I can flash the firmware to the U1 version instead of U version and make it work. I don't think I'm going to bother.
Don't do that, it might trip the e-fuse and cripple your phone permanently. There is no way to restore to original state if that happens.
Both the Netgear hotspots (MR6150 and MR6550) appear to support band 77:
https://kb.netgear.com/000065402/What-are-the-specifications-of-the-NETGEAR-M6-and-M6-Pro-mobile-hotspot
But I know you had reservations about them.
The latest Peplink routers have the X62 modem, which guarantees all the necessary bands (n77 as well):https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/next-generation-qualcomm-x62-modems-coming-to-peplink-routers-at-last/#New_Peplink_Modem_Module_Specs
-
@sarrasine Thanks for that ! I definitely don't want to brick my phone.
My objection to the Netgear 5G routers is mainly the cost. The Peplink routers look nice, but are even more expensive :-(
I'm also not entirely confident in my operator at this point. The Warp 5G SIM that runs on the Verizon network also had other issues with my Samsung phone. The APNs don't get setup automatically. They have to be added manually. And every time the phone is rebooted, they are lost. It takes a good 10 minutes to add all the APNs. If you don't do it, you get only voice and SMS, but no data.
US Mobile blames it on a Samsung regression. I'm caught in the middle of that. So, I just requested my cell line to be ported back to GSM 5G / T-Mobile.It looks like these 5G internet access solutions are still fairly fragile. I haven't seen an MVNO offering home internet service, much less recommending a particular 5G modem/gateway. This may be a case where the only option for me is the Verizon 5G home internet unlimited service at $50/month. I hope they will add a cheaper limited option in the future. 10-20GB/month would likely be sufficient to cover the Comcast outages. Or perhaps T-Mobile and AT&T will eventually add closer towers in my area and support 5G home service as well. The T-Mobile service costs more, though - $60/month. And AT&T costs $55/month. So it seems that Verizon is the lowest cost, and that's what I have access to. A significant part of the service price must be going towards the cost of these overkill (for-me) router/Wifi AP/modem gateways. But there is no option to purchase the gateway to lower the monthly cost. And no cheaper metered 5G option either.
-
I would really have a look to get equipment for home and mobile.
The gadget is good is something occurs at home or for home usage,
but if you leaf the home, there is nothing because in normal you may
take your phone with you.A mobile or LTE modem for home usage would be my way and looking
mor for a cable based internet if it will be able.
