The BR1 MIni, really useful, really cost effective router - until you need to set a bunch of them up and the only way you can do that is by moving a SIM between them as they don’t come with an active WAN port.
Massive waste of time.
Please change the default state of the WAN ports so that they can be used to allow for IC2 management straight out of the box. User data can still be blocked of course until the WAN port activation license is applied.
Yes!
To add to this I would like to see the default setting be an ‘OR’ and a license activation to make it ‘AND’.
This way you can choose to use it out of the box as a mobile LTE router or a hardwired PepVPN/router box and buy a license to do both and unlock fusion failover.
+1 this has been very frustrating for us as well.
Another thought is on the ports labeled as WAN on the mini’s perhaps they should be configured like the peplink switches are. Allow the WAN port to add as the external access interface. It’s not a WAN and not treated as one. It’s a interface that gets a DHCP ip from untagged, or a tagged vlan and uses that interface to communicate and check in to incontrol2.
Note the second image port 10 , is used to communicate to IC2
This would allow the unit to still be locked down to not have the WAN activated, but allow us to easily setup the devices like we have all other devices by plugging a network cable with dhcp in to the wan. We can get it online in incontrol2 , update the config, firmware etc. Then either leave the wan as external access interface or reconfigure it to work as a second LAN port.
The same issues are also occurring with the transit mini primecare devices, until you get them checked in to incontrol2 you can’t really do anything and if you don’t have a valid sim available it’s not possible to do much.
Dear all, the request is interesting and I know where you come from. Possible to share the used case to enlighten the team on how this feature can benefit your implementation/troubleshooting?
We know BR1 Mini comes with cellular WAN only by default. So, I believe the deployment just need a single cellular connection since BR1 Mini was chosen. If the required settings are pre-configured in InControl2 and those settings will be pushed to the BR1 Mini when it is connected to the cellular network in the customer environment, do you think this helps to deploy the BR1 Minis without moving a SIM between them?
I believe you all should have the better used case or the problem you faced with the single cellular deployment. You are welcome to share and let the team considers it.
Thanks.
For me its when I have 20 or 30 BR1 Minis ready to install in CloudCases for customers who will be providing their own SIMs. I have a shelving system where I can power up 20 devices at a time but I don’t want to light up 20 SIMs or even 5 SIMs to do the preparation work we do before shipping (firmware updates, private APN settings etc).
It would save hours of time and hassle and messing about with SIMs if IC2 could work over the WAN port - even if the WAN license had not been applied.
To further add to Martin’s comment, we also don’t want to use the our own cellular data for downloading the latest firmware, applying settings etc. I think the OOB(Out of Box) should support a similar interface like the peplink switch , it’s not a wan, it’s a port that is designated to receive a DHCP ip so it can connect and report in to incontrol2. Then when it receives it’s config we can leave the labeled wan port as the ic2 external interface, choose to activate it as WAN, or enable it as the LAN port.
Another use case example is when we activate a customer on T-mobile in our office , the service is terrible. We don’t want to put in another sim just to update the firmware, and upload a config file to it.
Thanks for the feedback. I will relay your used cases to engineering team.
+1
Use Case 1 )When configuring a Mini without Wan licence with a sim card that needs a specific APN we have to connect localy on each Mini deployed to configure APN or start them first with a sim which does not need a APN, then configure APN and start again with final card. Connecting them all with Wan and then applying bulk configuration + automatic rules would be much faster :-).
Use Case 2 ) When problem with LTE connection on a Remote router we ask customer to take device to their HQ and connect Wan port on their Lan or a WAN so we can access it remotely again and repair/reset. We cannot do that with BR1 Minis without Wan licence.
Thank you.
Hello Everyone,
+1 for this also, just preparing to deploy a fleet of BR1 Mini’s including pre-provisioning onto InControl2 and some other features before getting sent to the client. We currently have to either rotate our lab/support SIMs through each or manually log in and provision each of the routers manually. Having the LAN/WAN port in factory default as a WAN port would save hours for pre-provisioning fleet deployments on the BR1 models.
+1 again, sometimes we don’t order the minis just so we don’t have to hassle with the setup.
I still feel strongly that the right approach is to introduce a external interface on the “wan” port.
See my post above on this.
This would allow the device to automatically check in to ic2, and still not enable a “wan” port.
This would be implemented just like it is on switches.
Lan&console port would work as normal to also be used on as a LTE modem.
This should be in the default factory firmware on both the BR1 mini , br1 mini core, and transit mini core.
Then the license could still be sold at a later date if the client wants to enable the wired wan.
I also really liked the idea of it being cellular or wired wan device, so that when it comes factory fresh you can choose if you want just the wan or just the cellular and later buy the license to activate both.
This would allow us to sell it to clients for pepvpn tunnel capabilities as a wired router , any later upsell them on cellular if their primary wan goes down.
Very useful for home users of co-vid where we don’t know how well their primary internet is going to be!
I agree with this. I had one project where I could have put in 300 BR1-minis, except that in order to configure them I would have had to pre-activate all the cellular accounts which was a problem for this project.
since there is now the concept of a WAN port that is active only for IC2 (i.e. when “usage limit” is hit and set to allow only remote management), this could be applied on a mini with no WAN license - port is up but unusable except for IC2
+1 for me as well. I’ve had a number of customers where the BR1 Mini has been an issue for this reason only. Bulk activations and deployments of these devices are not practical. Please change this!
Great Point.
Having the wired WAN restricted to management only until license activation would work great as well.
@Keith and senior engineers can we please look in to this, this limits our desire to order Mini’s , primecare units/devices that only have cellular enabled by default.
Yes, this looks like a neat feature. I’ll send in my vote
I wrote a script to automate the deploy of the mini’s , but it would be nice to still have the devices report to ic2 with wired wan.
See my script here: Automated deployment for batch of 100 BR1 mini's
