Firmware 8.4.0 RC 1

I have been providing feedback since FW8.3.0, but the bug that Send All Traffic To is grayed out and cannot be configured when configuring ConnectProtect or Balance router and SpeedFusionVPN in WebAdmin has not been fixed.

This has been the case since FW8.3.0 regardless of router.

It is due to the hardware limitation as this feature is consuming more resources.

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Short update from our side.

Deployed it to our Max HD2 devices - but Starlink support doesn’t work. Under Network > WAN > you can see it for a split of a second and then it disappears. So looks like, Max HD2 is not supported?!

The original HD2 has too little CPU power. Only the HD2/HD4 MBX versions are supported according to the list.

The B20X is a lot faster (ARM 32bit) chip than the HD2 (MIPS) and even that can’t handle it currently. BR1 Pro (ARM 64bit) is the ‘lowest’ CPU that can handle it. My guess is only ARM 64bit and X86-64 CPU’s can support it currently.

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Hello @Lai & Peplink team,
We have created Peplink TIcket 23090046 with a possible bug where the device is using Wi-Fi WAN and also broadcasting an SSID. We also suspect that there may be a bug with InControl2 as a change was pushed out from InControl2, yet none of our team initiated this change.
We will leave it to you to investigate.
Happy to Help,
Marcus :slight_smile:

Hello @Lai & Peplink team,
We have observed with multiple models and firmware releases that the GPS stops getting captured in the following scenarios:

  • Cellular modem loses connection (out of range of service provider)
  • Cellular modem is switching SIMs
  • Cellular modem is resetting

We have also noticed that the GPS details that do get captured inside the router while offline from InControl2 are not always getting pushed over from the router to InControl2 when connectivity between the router and InControl2 is re-established, resulting in gaps of GPS data on InControl2.

The impact of this has been that there are incomplete fleet tracking details.

Firmware versions this has been observed with:

  • 8.1.x (and all beta releases)
  • 8.2.1 (and all beta releases)
  • 8.3.0 (and all beta releases)
  • 8.4.0 (Beta 1, Beta 2 and Release Candidate #1)

Models this has been observed on

  • Pepwave MAX HD4 MBX (5G)
  • Pepwave MAX Transit DUO (Cat12)
  • Pepwave MAX BR2 Pro 5G
  • Pepwave MAX BR1 Pro 5G

Please investigate this further; it has been a niggling issue for too long. Previous related support tickets and forum posts:

We have created Peplink TIcket 23090047.

Happy to Help,
Marcus :slight_smile:

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As far as i understand it the gps antenna is attached to one of the cellular modems, hense if that one modem reboots it would loose tracking. I always thought the gps antenna should be attached to each modem for redudency. The only soulution I can see is to have mupltilple pepwave devices with gps antennas attached , or a seperate tracking device. Same issue happens with cell signal tracking when the modem resets automaticly when it switches to the wrong sim card. I’ve asked before to implement DSDS / DSDA, as this would better track each carrier availability per modem. When I looked up some the documentation on Sierra it seems it’s supported, but not sure if the hardware is properly cabled up. Seperately from GPS, I have my doubts that all events that would have been pushed to ic2 are stagged when it’s offline and doesn’t have access to ic2. @TK_Liew , @sitloongs Thoughts?

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Interesting. So if one has no cell connection or disables the cell WAN, and say uses a Starlink WAN, the GPS tracking stops?

I think it would still track the gps if it’s enabled, but without cell signal, but disabled it probable wouldn’t track it.

There is definitely a real world performance problem with Balance One Core with 8.4.0 RC 1 (build 5585) not reaching is rated 600Mbps stateful firewall specification. It is reaching 300Mbps on Ookla’s Speedtest.com, the gold standard speed test for most people, and 450Mbps on Fast.com which increases the size of their average payload. Ookla sticks with the MTU size, a reasonable real world test approach.

This has been verified for multiple Balance One Core routers, and by more than one person. I bench tested three different Balance One Core routers, after resetting to factory defaults, on a 1.2Gbps Comcast line using a Firewalla Gold Plus in between a 1Gbps modem and the Balance One, then in between Surf Soho. The Firewalla easily reaches 900Mbps. The Surf Soho reaches 120Mbps on Ookla and Fast, its rated speed. The Balance One Core is reaching 50% of its rated speed on Ookla and 75% of its rated speed on Fast.com, the same results as when directly connected to the 1Gbps modem.

The difference between the Surf Soho and the Balance One Core is the CPU usage. This is particularly evident when running the Firewalla internal speed test where the Surf Soho can reach 140-150Mbps at 70-80% CPU while the Balance One Core can reach 550Mbps to 650Mbps at 90-100% CPU. The Firewalla uses much bigger packet sizes than the modem MTU to achieve this.

I also discovered that the difference in speed tests results is highly dependent on what the router is doing internally. I.e., at idle the Peplink routers CPU can range from 17% to 35%. And I always thought it was Comcast that was causing variable speed test results!

I hope that Peplink engineers can rapidly confirm the Balance One Core speed test results, and then let us know what the next steps will be. Peplink has always been conservative in their numbers, so my hope is that there is some bug that is easily fixed, although my testing on 8.3.0 and 8.2.1 produced similar results, so this is not unique to 8.4.0 RC 1. Or will this take longer to remedy? Or worse, will we have to live with the reduced Balance One performance on version 9 and beyond?

See Are all Balance One’s running half speed on 8.3? for more testing details from myself and others.

Hi Marcus,

The reason and solution have been provided. It is due to the default settings of the GPS chipset can’t meet the speed requirement as the speed is too fast. We have configured the GPS chipset and below is my last response to you:

Since the expansion module from XXXX-XXXX-6206 has now been moved back onto its original MBX of XXXX-XXXX-6BC7, you should replace XXXX-XXXX-6BC7 with XXXX-XXXX-7630.

Hope this helps.

How do I test the Bring Your Own (BYO) eSIM feature? Is there any documentation on how to set this up?

Pretty sure this isn’t fully enabled yet. Despite it being teased, it required an InControl update which has yet to happen.

Venus finally updated. Now I just have to figure out where this option is :slight_smile:

Great, I just found a feature present in RC1 which was not there before but is also not mentioned in the Release Notes?

I can now do Band Selection specifically for each SIM type, so SIM A, SIM B, RemoteSIM, FusionSIM and SpeedFusion Connect 5G/LTE.

Not sure if the way of how it looks is the most logical, but it does work like this. It would be nice for a SIM type to be hidden if it is not selected in the selectable SIM options.

So now we can move all our devices to 8.4.0 firmware when it is released :smiley: .

I prefer to see all the options so I can compare or change even if the sim isn’t active.

what device are you seeing this on? i really really need this feature (i’m using third party multi-IMSI SIMs since SFC5g/lte isn’t supported in the menus like you’ve shown)

This is per sim , A/B/esim/remotesim, not multiples on the same sim.

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yea, totally get it, but i’m not seeing this on my hardware with RC2

What model and hardware revision are you using

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