I’m trying to find out exactly how smartcheck functions versus pinging or dns checking.
Is their any kind of a watchdog setting that will reboot the router on failure?
Twice now I’ve had two separate MAX-BR1 6.1.1 1524 units that are cellular only go offline and the only way to get them to reconnect is to power cycle them.
Thanks
Hello,
SmartCheck is more optimized for cellular connections as it smartly takes into account the latency fluctuations that are more associated with cellular connections. Smartcheck is only available for cellular and not available as a health check method for a cable/dsl connections.
Also, a watchdog feature will be available on the next firmware 6.1.2.
Is there an ETA for 6.1.2?
Is this alsothe firmware that will enable remote configuration (pepmin) from inControl2?
I do not have a ETA as of right now for 6.1.2 firmware but will be sure to announce this once a date has been set for release. Yes this will include the pepmin for remote access from IC2 as well.
Is this going to be a true hardware watchdog that cycles power or reboots unit? Do any of the other PepWave cellular products already have a watchdog function? We had one of the same units again yesterday become disconnected from the cellular network and had to again send a tech out to power cycle the unit to get it to reconnect to the cellular network. 2nd time in two weeks and customer wants us to replace the unit with something different. We are looking at using networked power managers that have an auto-ping function to automatically cycle power to the PepWave unit if they can’t reach the internet but are costly to deploy on a large scale.
I know the “Smartcheck” feature is optimized for cellular but exactly what is it doing? Is it pinging “active dns” servers or some other address such as Google or Level3 public DNS or inControl2? The reason I ask is we’ve had cases where we’ve setup “active ping” to monitor connectivity and in some cases have had the provider temporarily block the IP of the pinging device causing a false “failover” state. We are looking at implementing our own hardware as a ping destination for failover decision to prevent this false failover problem.
Hi Wheeler,
SmartCheck monitors WAN link in this way: When there has outbound traffic but no inbound, Peplink will generate ICMP traffic to Internet for health check. When there has both outbound and inbound traffic, Peplink health check will sleep and consider the Health Check Result is good.
Hey 1wheeler1 & Peplink,
We are having similar issues with our new MAX-BR1 6.2.2 1790. We are only using 2 SIM cards (no WAN) and the problem we are having is that when 1 of the cellular networks fails (either out of data, or cellular problems) it will never fail over to the second cellular network. We have waited up to 20 minutes, still nothing. The only way to get it to switch over to the other network is to power cycle the device.
When we run out of cellular data, I believe doing a dns test won’t fail because there are still some pages available via the web. E.g their homepage and a few other selected sites.
We do use SmartCheck however so don’t think that should be an issue? But thought maybe we should try using ping test or something other than SmartCheck?
Thoughts?
Kind Regards,
Jeremy
Hi Jeremy,
For your case (run out of cellular data), you should enable “Bandwidth Allowance Monitor” to monitor the bandwidth usage for the cellular WAN. “Bandwidth Allowance Monitor” allow you to “Disconnect the cellular WAN when usage hits 100%”
For more information, please refer to the attached screenshot.
Thank You
Thanks for that, however that is not ideal for us as we have to top up our account frequently with datablocks. i.e there is no set monthly allowance. Shouldn’t this device just fail over to the other sim automatically when it runs out of data?
I suspect its because some web pages are still available when it runs out… Perhaps I’m better off using PING instead of SmartCheck?
MAX router would not know the the SIM is out of data unless you enable the monthly “Bandwidth Allowance Monitor”.
This is very subjective and it’s depend on the subscribed data & service provider. Some service provider may limit the available download/upload speed & some may disconnect the cellular connection. You may further check on this to confirm the suitable health check method. Again, if ISP is limiting the download/upload speed, the cellular WAN will still consider up as internet traffics still can pass-through the cellular WAN connection.
Thank You
