I have a problem I can’t quite figure out. I have a Peplink installed in my RV with a Starlink uplink as WAN and a backup T-Mobile SIM card. When I look in the interface, everything looks good but I can’t use my cellular connection.
Using Starlink/WAN I am able to get online on all my devices.
If I disable Starlink/WAN and try to use Cellular, I am unable to get online at all. That being said, if I use the tools within the web interface (e.g. traceroute, ping, etc.) I am able to ping out from the device itself. If I attempt to do the same from a client connected to the router I get nothing.
I have full 5G service showing up on my cellular connection, and it has worked in the past… I’m not sure why it stopped. Rebooting the router didn’t seem to help.
If you can ping a public internet IP over cellular but can’t browse one of these things is likely happening:
DNS is not working via cellular - try setting the DNS manually on the Cellular WAN to 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1
Outbound policy is not letting your devices use the cellular even though it is working.
You have a connection to the internet but your operator is messing with you. Maybe you’re not using the right APN or maybe your subscription needs renewal.
Just for a test I manually set the cellular DNS to 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 to no avail
I checked my outbound policies, nothing there to cause this
As for #3, I would agree with you BUT
I can PING from Peplink as I showed above in the screenshots
I cannot PING from my laptop the exact same address
If I could ping from both my laptop and the peplink, but otherwise couldn’t use the internet it seems like the cellular provider would be the problem. But because I can only ping from the peplink and it works fine but I cannot ping from a client connected to the peplink – it seems like it’s a routing issue doesn’t it?
Actually, if you are using the default DNS healthcheck there are many times where a cellular connection can look like its online and the internet is accessible but in fact its not. Cellular operators can do weird stuff to routing when they want / need to.
To double check that, change the cellular WAN healthcheck to the following and confirm it stays green:
If it does then it might be something to do with your laptop but if it is that would be weird since it works with Starlink… so routing from your laptop via the Peplink to the internet works…
However, for your laptop to access the internet all it needs is an IP to talk to the router, a default gateway set that is the LAN IP of the router and DNS server entries for DNS servers it can reach via the router. So double check what DNS servers you have set.
So Cellular WAN is reporting green. It’s like the routing tables in the Peplink are screwed up and it’s not routing any traffic to the cellular connection from the wifi connections. From my laptop nothing works – can’t ping IPs or DNS names, no traffic is flowing at all out to the WAN if the cellular connection is active. Meanwhile, from Peplink itself it seems like all the traffic is flowing fine so the problem seems like some sort of routing issue between Peplink and the outbound WAN for this connection?
This isn’t a DNS issue either because I’m testing with pings to 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1 on the laptop not DNS names.
(Fyi, I am extremely technical so I’ve tried a lot of the sorts of basic diagnostic stuff)
Recently my trial of SpeedFusion expired so could this be something broken because of that? I don’t think I need to pay for speedfusion right?
Check outbound policy (which controls the outbound routing tables of course), turn on expert mode, add a new rule at the top for your laptop IP set to enforced and cellular as target. Does it work then?
What about Speedfusion Cloud - is that setup? Is it by any chance the target for traffic from your WIFI clients?
Btw http lookup without a matching string is not very useful. The whole point of http healthchecks is to detect when the mobile operator is doing a redirect to a ‘pay me more money’ captive portal so its always worth adding string detection.
Its actually quite challenging now to find a http rather than https site for these tests. your google.com test returns a 301 redirect to http://www.google.com which the does everything it can to redirect to https…
So weird. You haven’t accidentally turned on IP forwarding on the cellular perhaps?
If you look at the routing mode for cellular is it set to NAT still?
When I set the system to Cellular only, then I SSH into the console and run
support telnet go.com 80
I am able to connect to that server, perform an HTTP request and get a result back. At the same time, I am unable to do so from my laptop connected to the router.
If I have to factory reset, I will… but my concern there is if its a config issue wouldn’t that persist a factory reset / backup restore?
Ah. Its a primecare device so if you are out of primecare then a bunch of stuff gets deactivated. Not routing though. But VWANs yes - but you’re not using a vWAN when you are using cellular…
I do wonder if you have a SFC routing rule stuck behind the expired primecare status.
I’m still going to suggest a factory reset. Brutal, but its hard to know what else to do.
If that were the case, what would I have to spend in order to NOT have to factory reset this router? I normally wouldn’t mind but if I found myself unable to connect via WiFi I would be extremely upset as the router does not have a straightforward hardline setup right now. I really don’t want to go down that road if I can avoid it.
Not that I want to spend more money after dropping almost 2k on this router in the first place.
Completely agree. internet is working on both Starlink and Cellular.
Has to be routing / outbound policy. Unless you added some firewall rules recently…
