WAN IP Dynamic not changing automatically

[Amar1995]

Hello everyone,

I hope you're doing well. I recently installed the latest version of OpenWRT 23.05 on my Zyxel NR7101 router and have been using it with a 5G SIM card. Everything seems to be working fine, but I've encountered an issue that I need help with.

My service provider refreshes the IP address of my connection approximately every two days. However, my modem doesn't automatically re-establish the connection with the new IP address, and I find myself having to manually press the "Restart" button. This isn't a problem when I'm at home, but it becomes a significant inconvenience when I'm away, as I can't access the services I have set up at home.

Is there a way to configure my Zyxel NR7101 and OpenWRT to automatically reconnect to the new IP address provided by my service provider without manual intervention? Any guidance or advice on how to achieve this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your assistance!

[frollic]

if you don't want to use an internet down check script,
schedule an interface restart in cron, every night, or every X hours ?

[pavelgl]

The watchcat package can restart an interface or reboot the device if a ping to a specific host fails.

[eduperez]

I do not think the issue is about IP refreshing, as the DHCP client should take care of that; this is about your ISP simply closing the connection on a schedule.

[Barney]

@Amar1995

... and I find myself having to manually press the "Restart" button.

I recommend to use a time switch. Configure the time switch for a daily off time during the night hours (e.g. ON-time 03:15 till 03:10). When the router powers on it has the same effect as pushing the restart button.

[andyboeh]

Unfortunately OpenWrt is very bad in maintaining an always-online mobile connection, especially if the ISP forces a disconnect (I'm on 4G and I'm facing a similar issue). There are a number of threads and workarounds for this in the forum:

Support 4G/5G automatic reconnection using ModemManager

Right now on an ISP-triggered 4G/5G disconnection, ModemManager will not automatically reconnect. It merely reports the disconnection to netifd and that's it. Work is needed to be done to the netifd protocol to tie things up to react to the reported disconnection and reconnect. Back in November 2022, I raised this issue here: And @aleksander0m wrote: The way to solve this, after briefly talking with @jow- about this in IRC would be to have the netifd protocol handler launch a "watcher" pro…

This doesn't only apply to ModemManager, for uqmi, I came up with a cron/script solution:

Uqmi: interface is up in OpenWrt, but datastatus is down

I have an LTE backup connection, managed by mwan3. The connection is meant to stay always online, which, unfortunately, isn't the case. I'm on a ZTE MF287Pro with integrated Qualcomm Modem (but this also happened on older ZTE series, I don't have other devices to try). After quite some trial and error I figured the following out: The "wwan" interface, managed by uqmi, is reported as up, yet data transfers don't work. I'm unsure about whether an IP address was shown or not, I shall check that n…

[Amar1995]

Thank you for the reply!

I think I'll try the watchcat solution for some days and then I'll let you know.

If it can work also for DDNS I don't think I need anything else, cause I found a little "slow" attitude to refresh the DDNS IP also, but it is manageble.

If it's not working I'll doing the classic reboot cron script, the only problem is if the ISP change the IP at 3:30AM and my reboot script is at 3AM, it's almost a 24H down... That's why I want to try this as a last standing