PfSense 2.1 and Huawei E398 / K5005 (on Alix 2D)

[abalakovpfs]

It took me some time to get the E398 from Huawei running an LTE connection with pfsense on my Alix2D board. Here are my learnings.

Environment:

• Alix2D13 256MB 500MHz

• pfSense snapshot as of 9th December 2012 (pfSense-2.1-BETA0-4g-i386-nanobsd-20121209-0441.img.gz) (I haven’t tried the stable 2.01 release but read some comments that e398 is running).

• Huawei E398 stick alias Vodafone K5005 Firmware (Revision) 11.335.21.20.11)

The Vodafone stick presents itself as product ID 0x14c3 (“usbconfig –d [ugen] dump_device_desc”). This product ID does not represent the “modem mode” as we require it to set it up under PPP in pfSense. You need to switch it to “modem mode” by using the tool “usb_modeswitch”.

In the shell run to install usb_modeswitch (version 1.2.1 of usb_modewitch is the latest at the time of the post):

/etc/rc.conf_mount_rw
pkg_add ftp://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/mirror/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-8-stable/sysutils/usb_modeswitch-1.2.1.tbz
/etc/rc.conf_mount_ro
You want your E398 to present itself as productID “0x140c” (regardless if it a original Huawei E398 or a rebranded Vodafone  K5005).

In the shell run (switch to modem mode):

usb_modeswitch  -v 12d1 -p 14c3 -V 12d1 -P 140c -M "55534243123456780000000000000011060000000000000000000000000000" -s 10
After the procedure you should find a “cuaU0.0” (with capital “U”) in the folder "/dev”. “usbconfig” should now show the right product.  In case you use a different OEM version make sure the “-p” parameter matches your product ID while the “-P” (capital-P) paremter remains the same.

I upgraded the firmware of the stick to 11.335.27.00.00 and from then on “usb_switchmode” was not required anymore as the stick presents itself immediately with the product ID “0x140c”. However, the Vodafone software does not recognize the stick anymore (as the model description changes from “K5005” to “E398”).There is no download of the Vodafone firmware. This means you cannot go back to the original firmware of the K5005.You need to take a decision if you want to do the firmware update (this is subject to your stick version/firmware).

As soon the stick is in “modem mode” (product ID 0x140c) you can set up “PPP” in pfSense. The German Vodafone account requires a blank user name, password and APN. This is no problem for pfSense and the chatscript in “/usr/local/sbin/mpd.script”. You don’t need to do any changes. The modem is identified as “Hayes compatible modem”. Just make sure that the link interface is “/dev/cuaU0.0” and the Phone Number is “*98#” (subject to you provider) when you set up the PPP device in the web GUI.

People were mentioning that the e398 requires a decent amount of processing power from your main processor. I can confirm this. I am not yet sure if the Alix 2D with 500Mhz has sufficient (processing) power to run the connection at full possible speed.

The setup is stable and also “survives” reboots of the system (in case of the firmware version 11.335.27.00.00).

Have fun!

[A Former User]

Hi,

we have a "Telekom Speedstick LTE" (branded as Huawei E398). We tried to change the ID like you described in your thread, but weren't successfull. Is it possible to get help?