Xiaomi 4C LTE Failover

Installing and Using OpenWrt Network and Wireless Configuration
1

Hi all,

I have an LTE backup router when fibre is down.

My setup is as the following:

Huawei EG8145V5 ONT/Router (the main router) that has fibre going into it. This is from the ISP and has the standard firmware loaded on.

Xiaomi 4C with OpenWRT flashed on and functioning marvelously.

Now, I would prefer to have the Xiaomi 4C (hardwired as a dumb AP) - and to implement MWAN/LTE Failover, but I doubt this is possible correct?

The other thing is, I see 2 vastly different tutorials on how to do this:

The first one is super simple, whereas the second one seems much more complex. Which one should I go with? I would prefer the simpler one, because the complex one looks a little daunting.

I noticed however that the complex solution has some settings that would enable the configuration the capability to constantly ping to check if the main connection is live, and I'm assuming the simpler tutorial does not have this?

Thanks for any advice.

2

You should start from the scenario you're comfortable with, I suppose it is the 1st one.
A few things to mention:

  • EG8145V5 should be used as ONT/Bridge
  • Xiaomi 4C should be the main router
2 Likes
3

Thanks AndrewZ.

When you say ONT/Bridge, and Xiaomi 4C being the main router, this would mean that I should avoid setting up the Xiaomi as a Dumb AP.

Secondly, this would also mean that I should hardwire a lan port from the Huawei to the WAN port of the Xiaomi router?

4

That's correct.

1 Like
5

Thanks Andrew. I will report back with how things go.

6

Hi all,

so I've followed through with the simple tutorial and I wasn't very successful. When I set it up as per the instructions on:

I am able to see the LTE router in the Overview/Upstream of the OpenWRT router. But when I disconnect the internet of the Fibre router, it does not seem to be able to switch traffic to the LTE router.

Here's my scenario:

Router A: Huawei Fibre Router (from ISP)
Router B: Xiaomi 4C flashed with OpenWRT
Router C: Huawei B315 LTE Router (connects only to a lan port, not a dongle-type)

Setup:
Router A IP Address: 192.168.18.1
Router B IP Address: 192.168.1.1 (Default OpenWRT Router)
Router C IP Address: static @ 192.168.1.250

Router A is connected from LAN1 port into the WAN port of Router B.

Router B is connected from LAN1 port into the LAN1 port of Router C.

I've set up the routing as per the instructions obviously. But I feel like I'm missing something, or doing something completely wrong.

Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks.

This is not the reason I bought the Xiaomi 4C, I am using it for other purposed. But I'm very curious to see how well this failover works and how well it works. It's a little experiment and if the outcome proves reliable, I think it could provide great benefit. But if I don't get it working it's not a train-smash so it's not the most important thing for me on this router honestly.

Thanks all :slight_smile:

7

It should be configured as a bridge, not a router. We don't really need to know it's address because it is used for management only, e.g. this IP address should not be used in your failover configuration.
Once everything is configured, show the output of ip r from your OpenWRT router.

1 Like
8

Thanks Andrew.

So I was not very successful in my experiment. I have to confess I duno what the hell I was doing. Resetted my OpenWRT router twice :joy:

Nevertheless, I stumbled upon 2 YouTube videos:

In that order.

These tutorials worked fantastically. I did however tweak the settings to use the metrics from the official mwan3 documentation provided by OpenWRT. But apart from that the tutorial is complete and comprehensive and covers the full scope of what’s needed to achieve a failover.

In my tests the failover seems to be quite reliable. I will obviously be doing more testing and report back what I find. I’m very impressed with OpenWRTs capability. For me this is probably one of the highlights of this open source firmware. I’m like a little kid with a new box of toys.

Thanks again for your assistance :pray:t3: