MAX BR1 Mini. 2 SIMS. Bandwidth Monitoring/Failover?

Product Discussion Pepwave MAX
1

Device is a BR1 Mini.
2 SIM Cards. Both T-Mobile that get throttled after 100GB
SIM A is maxed out, SIM B was just installed today with full 100GB still available but the device won’t use SIM B unless SIM A is physically removed.

Can the Pepwave be configured to monitor WAN quality between the two SIM Cards and utilize the one that is providing best bandwidth (unthrottled) with a preference for SIM A (configured with a Static IP for a P2P VPN)?

Thanks in advance!

2

You have a single modem device, only one SIM can be activate at a time, so there is no actively checking both for which has better signal and bandwidth.

3

The BR1 Mini can have SIM A as the preference but the only things that will cause it to swap to SIM B is failed health check / loss of connection / lack of bandwidth allowance/ or signal level threshold triggered.

It won’t automatically swap between SIMs from time to time to check signal quality or run speedtests.

4

Interesting question. I have a BR1 Mini with 2 SIMs, Verizon which has 1GB with $15/GB overages, and ATT which has 25GB.

[EDIT - it’s much simpler ]

If you look at the user manual on page 133: https://download.peplink.com/manual/pepwave-max-user-manual-8.2.0.pdf

Each SIM slot has a seetting for Bandwith Allowance Monitor

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So I think the answer is that you may be able to get the result you want by setting a 100GB limit on each SIM. Since both SIMs are on TMobile, it seems that would be a “good enough” solution for your situation, right?

1 Like
5

A date-based variant that may not be what you want (but has served us well in s a similar situation):

Assumptions:

  • You have two accounts, each allocated with 100GB per billing cycle (per month, presumably).
  • The billing cycle starts on a particular date (say the 1st of each month).
  • Usage is fairly evenly spread across the billing cycle,

Potential tactic:

  • Check the **“**Alternate periodically between SIM A Only and SIM B Only” box in the Cellular Settings pane.
  • Set “SIM Cards Alternate At NNth of each month”, where NN is the middle of the billing cycle (in our example the 15th)

Then each month you will have 2 x 100GB available, 100GB for the first half of the cycle, and another 100GB for the second half.

If you run above 100GB for a given half-cycle then you get throttled until the date for the next half arrives (i.e., for the remainder of the two weeks of the half-cycle). Either you live with that, or a manual intervention is required for that cycle.

Not quite what you asked for, I know.

Cheers,

Z