I’m unable to log into one of my four Balance 305s via InControl2 but can login without issues via the WAN IP address. All of my Balance 305s have the same general configuration.
The configuration is clearly being managed by InControl2 as shown above. The connection simply timesout when trying to access via InControl2 for this device regardless of whether any bandwidth is being used on any of the WANs or not.
I’m also having issues with the same Balance 305 and a newly installed Verizon AC791L Jetpack. InControl2 shows the Mobile Internet is Connected, so does the Balance 305 itself.
The Mobile Internet connection is configured to use “SmartCheck” as the Health Check Method.
This method seems to be no better than setting the Health Check Method to “Disabled” since the Jetpack clearly shows in is not connected to the Verizon network but Incontrol2 and the Balance 305 report everything is good (at least on the surface).
I understand the Jetpack is not connected to the Verizon network and therefore can’t be used as a valid WAN connection and I have to fix that with Verizon but why are InControl2 and the Balance 305 reporting the Mobile Internet as “Connected”?
The communication to Incontrol2 uses udp port 5246. This is fine, as you see your device Online. The Remote Web Admin uses tcp port 443. There might be some firewall rule in between blocking this somewhere.
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While that seems reasonable, the only firewall rules on the Balance 305 are the Default rules so that cannot be the issue. I’ve tried from inside the firewall and outside the firewall.
It might be the Jetpack or Verizon. You could check with another Balance 305 where the Remote Web Admin works.
Please open a support ticket here for support team to check.
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As soon as I marked the Mobile Internet as Disconnected, access via InControl2 was immediately restored. I realize my Jetpack is not provisioned with the Verizon network and that is something I will have to address when back on-site next week. However, the Balance 305 should not report the Mobile Internet connection as Connected if it cannot not pass a Health Check when the method is set for SmartCheck and the mobile device is not even provisioned. This is a failure of the firmware not to detect a failure of Internet connectivity over an unprovisioned mobile device.
If you plug a laptop into the Jetpack and go to browse a website what happens? Does your session get redirected to a Verizon “Hey you need to activate this” page or something like that?
Frequently see the mechanisms MNO use to be informative (like 'You need to top up your data" pages) confuse the hell out of the Peplink device since they tend to respond to DNS, the next few hops in the routing chain are pingable and data flows (if only the white-listed MNOs informative pages).
I tend to use the http health check and look for keywords in the returned text for mobile network WANs because of this.
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As previously stated, I don’t have access to the Jetpack until next week but realize the Jetpack’s lack of provisioning is an issue that I have to address when back onsite. The following excerpt comes from a Peplink article addressing Health Checks-
SmartCheck: Available in Cellular/USB WAN, SmartCheck initiates when outbound traffic goes unresponded for 10 seconds. When SmartCheck initiates, it will run an ICMP health check.
ICMP health check to where? If all it is doing is checking to see if a USB device is plugged in, that really isn’t much use as health check. The health check should be checking for connectivity to the Internet not a locally connected devices. This particular device reports that it is not connected and no pings are successful beyond the 192.168.1.1 LAN IP of the Jetpack. If the SmartCheck cannot discern this, it is no more useful than setting the Health Check Disabled.
I’m in the UK. If I use an EE pay as you go SIM and put it in any device when I go to connect to the internet ie www.bbc.co.uk instead of the bbc website I get an EE ‘you need to buy data’ page. So outbound traffic has gotten a response. That’s why I run http checks against a known website and check for known returned page content.
I’ve never used a Jetpack, but I think that if there is no internet connection, when you request an internet URL it returns its own admin page. So in the same way your outbound request has occurred and there has been a response. This is likely why smartcheck thinks the WAN is up.
With ‘normal’ cellular connections (indeed with most wired WAN connections) if their is no internet connection then nothing is returned.
From memory I believe smartcheck looks to ping two hops away along the routing path, so ignores the default gateway on the Peplink WAN (your Jetpack in this case) but pings the next router (which should be in theory be in the ISP’s network). However, I don’t think this is kicking in because internet access requests are being responded to - by the jetpack itself.
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