Until yesterday I was using a BT Homehub 5a as a router, connecting to the internet via ADSL. Yesterday the copper ADSL lines were cut. I’ve ordered optical fibre replacement, but that will take some time to get going. In the mean time I got one of those wifi to 4g gizmos, which I have to say, works very well. I want to replace the ADSL wan interface with a wifi connection to the wifi to 4g gizmo. It seems like I should be able to reconfigure the interfaces >> wan settings to use the wifi signal from the gizmo. I also guess that I might need to create a wifi client in ‘Edit wireless network Device Configuration” screen. Can anyone draw might attention to Openwrt documentation or describe the process please. Thanks.
Thanks for that. It’s not quite what I had in mind. What i was thinking was I could connect to the gizmo over wifi, not via the USB port.
sorry, missed that tiny detail.
network -> wifi -> scan -> join (the gizmo's wifi).
put the new connection in the wan firewall zone.
probably not needed, but you can disable the ADLS wan port, there's a "bring up on boot" check box, you can uncheck.
done, celebrate with a beer.
Haha, sounds like a good idea. Here’s what I did:
[Network]→[Wireless]→Wireless overview → radio 1 → [scan] →’Join network’ →WPA passphrase (type in passphrase)→[Submit]→[Save]→[Save and Apply]
[Network] →[Firewall]→[Add]-’wwlan’→[Save]→[Save and Apply]
[System]→[Reboot]
In due course I’ll change the wifi link from the 2.4GHz radio to the 5Ghz radio. Is there anything I’ve overlooked? Thanks again…
you're good to go.
if your gizmo really is 4G, it shouldn't max out the 2.4GHz radio, there's no point in switching over to 5GHz.
Ha, yes. Sound advice. ta </Northern England vernacular>
once you get your fibre, grab one of these, and install OpenWRT.
Seems like a good device. I’ve had a couple of Zyxel routers which were excellent.
It is, I've got a rebranded model from a diff ISP, works great.
Depending on firmware installed, it might be a PITA to flash, but we've had reports of successful re-flashes of Trooli branded units.
Just a follow up to say, I did change to the 5GHz radio for the link to the gizmo, as the 2.4Ghz radio didn’t seem to want to work as both client and master. As soon as I moved the client link to the 5GHz radio the 2.4GHz access point started working again. Another tip, I reset the device (System→Backup→[Perform reset]), which seems to have made the whole thing run better. No doubt as a result of me trying and failing to get things working earlier.
there's a canned answer about using one radio for client and AP at the same time, could be relevant.
This is expected behavior when the same radio is used for client (STA) and AP modes simultaneously.
The reason is that the channel is chosen based on the upstream AP via the STA mode connection. Even if you manually specify the channel, STA mode will actually ignore that as it will simply try to connect (on any channel) to the upstream.
The AP mode operation cannot start until the STA mode is established. If the STA mode cannot connect to the upstream, the resulting situation is that the AP will not start.
There are two solutions to this issue:
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Put the STA mode on one radio and the AP mode on the other.
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Use Travelmate to "gracefully" fail when the upstream cannot be reached. This basically will disable the STA mode part of the config if the connection cannot be established after a timeout period. (Travelmate has other cool features, too).
Curiouser & Curiouser…After talking about the success of using 4G for broadband, a bloke at work gave me his ZTE MF286D “I can’t make it work at all“, so I though “How hard can it be?“ …I moved over my sim, did a factory reset and plugged my laptop into one of the regular LAN ports (not the WAN/LAN port). Linux MInt recognised it straight away with a message about being connected to a wired network. I used Firefox to go to the control panel in the MF286D and had a poke around. Nothing too complicated going on, so I checked for internet access on my laptop. All systems go. “I know, I’ll change from the tiny BT 4g Halo minihub to this. It seems like it’ll do a better job”. Haha, mocking laughter from The Fates. In spite of using exactly the same procedure as with the BT gizmo, I cannot get internet access using my Openwrt router, as I could before. Naturally I had taken a backup before trying, so no problems getting back to where I was. Still, it seems to me it should be straight forward to use this new gizmo. The interfaces →wwlan messages looks similar. Where else should I check to see what is impeding internet access (No route to host messages)
Check if LAN subnets are the same on the ZTE and the BT HH5.
Haha, hello again frollic. Thanks for taking time to reply. What I was doing was trying to use the ZTE gizmo in place of the BT 4G Halo minhub. In other words use the wifi connection from the ZTE device to the BT HH5a to provide broadband in the same way I’m using the BT 4G Halo minihub. I’m not sure I’m making myself clear here. Long-story-short, I had hoped to replace the BT 4g Halo minhub with the ZTE gizmo.
Yeah, and the question still stands 
Btw, the MF286D is supported by Openwrt, but a PITA to flash.
You are right of course. The ZTE gizmo is set to 192.168.0.1/24, the Openwrt router (HH5a) is at 192.168.0.2/24 and the BT 4g Halo minihub is at 192.168.1.1/24. This is the output of ip addr:
root@OpenWrt:~# ip addr
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN qlen 1000
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1508 qdisc fq_codel state UNKNOWN qlen 1000
link/ether a0:1b:29:5b:60:42 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet6 fe80::a21b:29ff:fe5b:6042/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: lan3@eth0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master br-lan state DOWN qlen 1000
link/ether a0:1b:29:5b:60:42 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
4: lan4@eth0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master br-lan state DOWN qlen 1000
link/ether a0:1b:29:5b:60:42 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
5: lan2@eth0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master br-lan state DOWN qlen 1000
link/ether a0:1b:29:5b:60:42 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
6: lan1@eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master br-lan state UP qlen 1000
link/ether a0:1b:29:5b:60:42 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
7: wan@eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN qlen 1000
link/ether a0:1b:29:5b:60:46 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
8: br-lan: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP qlen 1000
link/ether a0:1b:29:5b:60:42 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.0.2/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global br-lan
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 fd72:4b15:dd57::1/60 scope global noprefixroute
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 fe80::a21b:29ff:fe5b:6042/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
9: phy1-ap0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master br-lan state UP qlen 1000
link/ether a0:1b:29:5b:60:44 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
10: phy0-sta0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP qlen 1000
link/ether a0:1b:29:5b:60:45 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.1.164/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global phy0-sta0
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 fe80::a21b:29ff:fe5b:6045/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
root@OpenWrt:~#
Does that offer any clues?
Change HH5's LAN subnet to 192.168.2.1/24, and it'll work using both gizmos.
For some reason changing the OpenWRT address to 192.168.2.1/24 didn’t work for me. However I did resolve the issue by changing the ZTE gizmo settings to match the BT 4G Halo minihub, ie 192.168.1.1 (and with the OpenWRT router still set at 192.168.0.2). The ZTE gizmo does give about 20% faster download speed, although that could be due to a number of factors. However it runs A LOT cooler, so there’s that. Anyroadup, a big thanks to frollic for the help.