miniPCIe 3G/4G modem - recommendations

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
#1

Hi all,

Recently I flashed older TP-Link MR200 AC750 to OpenWrt v18 and it works great ;-). I love OpenWrt (and LEDE too). Thank you for great work!

LTE modem in that router died but I tested mini-PCIe slot and it’s still functional. Could you please recommend me a cheap miniPCIe modem (for example something from eBay) so I can build backup WAN?

I’m based in UK but I think that for example US modem will work since it’ll have at least one frequency that works in UK…

Or do I just need to buy something that works under Linux kernel 4.14 and it’ll automagically work?

Thank you.
Radek

#2

Is this compatible?

#3

It's not a LTE modem

#4

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Quectel-EC25-E-Mini-Pcie-4G-FDD-TDD-LTE-CAT4-Modules-IPEX-SMA-Pigtail-Antenna/282917399727 ?

No idea how/if it's supported by Linux however

You're probably better off getting a modem/dongle that preferably does bridge mode (rare).

#5

Much better choice. Should work out of the box with OpenWrt 18.06 if you install uqmi and kmod-usb-net-qmi-wwan

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#6

I have been using ME909S-120 modem for awhile now. It is compatible, but needs some modifications and drivers. Make sure you choose a modem that supports the frequency band of your mobile ISP. The modifications will depend on the modem capabilities.

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#7

Any idea which modem supports bridge mode?

#8

What do you mean by that in context of a wireless modem?

In my experience the carrier provides a single IP on one or both of IPv4 and/or IPv6. The IPv4 addresses are almost always not publicly routable, no matter the pool drawn from.

#9

My ISP provides a fully routable non RFC1918 address IPv4 address.

I have a Huawei E3372 usb dongle in an openwrt outer. I want to make openwrt router to support IP passthrough, and feed it into my main pfSense router.

#10

As I recall, this is dictated by the Huawei firmware. There is both a "stick" and a "HiLink" mode, one of which NATs and the other does not, as I understood it. One reference is

https://www.0xf8.org/2017/01/flashing-a-huawei-e3372h-4g-lte-stick-from-hilink-to-stick-mode/

I do not own the device and do not know if the flashing instructions and/or firmware at that link are reliable.

#11

I have the Huawei modem in 'stick mode', and is not doing NAT any more.

How do I pass my WAN IP to the LAN device? Do i need to bridge WAN/LAN and disable DHCP?

Teltonika cutom openwrt image does provide IP passthrough, here is a video of it.

#12

As this is drifting off topic, you'll probably get better responses if you open your own thread with that question. You should probably explain in that thread what you want to accomplish, because, at least from what you've described, you're reducing your OpenWrt device to be not much more than a switch.

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#13

Correct, it's a pain to flash these and even upgrade to a recent firmware however. :confused: