Newbie struggling with internet dropping

We have 10+ MAX BR1 ENT that started doing this.
We have ATT sim cards. Grandfathered accounts.
The pepwaves will stop passing web traffic (yet I can still log into them remotely and they show good on smartcheck.
Also I can ping 8.8.8.8 from a laptop behind the pepwave… just can’t pull up a website.
When I reboot the pepwave it comes back up working.
If you look under STATUS->WAN QUALITY->CELLULAR the “latency” says “no latency”…

Just a stray thought: Since this seems to be AT&T throttling (essentially) HTTP[S] traffic, try routing that traffic through a speedfusion connection to a SpeedFusion (solo) server or a SpeedFusion Cloud (thereby avoiding the HTTP[S] ports for the traffic).

Please report back.

S

1 Like

Yup exact same issue here. I’m able to remote into the network and reboot the device via web admin.

Hopefully you have a ticket going…

Its not a throttle thing. The internet straight up stops working. Like if you go to google chrome and go to www.google.com it will not load. BUT I can ping 8.8.8.8 (google dns server).

I can also remote into the pepwave from another location. If you go into the WAN quality reports the “latency” blue line just stops. But the cell signal is still good…

The moment you reboot the pepwave it all works again

1 Like

Yes, it’s getting old. It seems to happen about every two hours or so.

Instead of a reboot, I just toggle the 3G/LTE selection and it forces it to reconnect. The reboots were getting too tedious.

i’m having the same issue and had created this related thread

i had the problem again about 2 hours ago; here are the details. let me know if there are other tests i should be adding:

Date and Time: 7/30 5:54pm

Does the problem occur on multiple client machines? YES

Can you ping google.ac (i used a new domain, that i’ve never been to for each step) from a client computer? YES (a lot of times in the past i’ve not been able to do this)

Can you traceroute google.ac from a client computer? YES (a lot of times in the past i’ve not been able to do this)

Can you ping google.ad from another client computer? YES (a lot of times in the past i’ve not been able to do this)

Can you traceroute google.ad from another client computer? YES (a lot of times in the past i’ve not been able to do this)

Can you connect to devices via ports other than 80 and 443?

  • SSH (on port 6xxx)? NO

  • NTP (TCP port 13)? YES
    cat </dev/tcp/time.nist.gov/13

  • SFTP (port 22)? YES
    sftp [email protected] (password is password)

  • WIFI Call - interestingly, I got an iphone wifi call during the outage, and it came through and worked no problem… so I assume that doesn’t use 80 or 443??

Can you connect to the peplink modem and login as admin? YES

Can you ping google.ae from the modem? YES

Can you traceroute google.ae from a client computer? YES

Anything relevant in the event log? NO

I downloaded the diagnostic report in case it’s needed in the future

Good to know about the pinging. When it first started happening with, I swear that I was able to do it from my Windows laptop but couldn’t get the browser to open any URL. Then it became 100% packet loss, so I just assumed the first times were a fluke. I was also able to ping from the modem.

ok, so my test results over the last 3~ days are consistent with the report below and the previous report i posted. i get the same results each time…

interestingly during the outage google.com loads, and searches work… but no other website i try work (though i only tested around 10~). i know for sure i’d tested google.com in the past and it did NOT work, no website i tried worked - so i’m not sure what changed and why that one site works consistently now but no others do. i also don’t understand why sending slack messages failed, but i received messages…

Date and Time: 7/31 8:57am US ET (it also happened again just now, same results)

Does the problem occur on multiple machines? YES
(e.g,. Your laptop, phone, other machines, etc all can’t connect to the internet)

Can you ping google.com.af from a client computer? YES (34ms latency avg.)

Can you traceroute google.com.af from a client computer? YES

Is it all websites? Do any work?

Can you ping google.com.ag from another client computer? YES (53ms avg.)

Can you traceroute google.com.ag from another client computer? YES

Can you connect to devices via ports other than 80 and 443?

  • SSH? NO

  • NTP (TCP port 13)? YES
    cat </dev/tcp/time.nist.gov/13

  • SFTP (port 22)? YES
    sftp [email protected] (password is password)

Can you connect to the peplink modem and login as admin? YES NO

  • Can you ping google.com.ai from the modem? YES (29.4ms avg)

  • Can you traceroute google.com.ai from a client computer? YES

Anything in the event log? NO

I downloaded the diagnostic report just to have it…

Does the problem resolve itself? No (after 15 min i forced 3g only, it came back online, and i went back to forcing 4g only; faster than rebooting )

Just wanted to chime-in as I posted in the RC3 thread that I noticed something funky with AT&T. In the location I am in, I have never seen 3G. I loaded the 8.1.x RC firmware and started seeing 3G quite frequently. Before it was always LTE-A or LTE. I thought it could be the RC firmware or perhaps just coincidental timing with when I decided to load the firmware and its actually a cell tower/an AT&T issue? But this seems pretty widespread… although its not unheard of for cell tower radios/firmware to have issues with certain radios in client devices (I saw it happen once before years ago).

I was experiencing constant drops on my WiFi calling which led me to setup Speedfusion Smoothing. I never had issues with constant drops before. I could drag the cellular connection to disabled and then re-enable it and it would get LTE-A or LTE. Running a MK2. BTW, we’ve had some of our hottest days in the past week or two… wondering if temps are playing a role…

Perhaps someone wants to start a thread at: https://www.howardforums.com/forumdisplay.php/378-Data-Cards or https://www.howardforums.com/forumdisplay.php/50-AT-amp-T ?

Hi all, same exact issue for me as described in this thread. I spent $300 and replaced the Pepwave Max with a MoFi, and the issue still occurs. So it it definitely an AT&T issue.

I was told by my carrier that it’s due to increased usage with work at home, but if that were the case wouldn’t it have been going on prior to now? June 28th it started for me. Starting to think AT&T is having a much bigger issue affect fixed wireless installations.

@Matthew_Rice: I don’t think I noted what plan you are on – you may have said and I missed it. Is it a plan intended for use in a router or hotspot? Or is it a “tablet” plan or a SIM intended for use in a phone? Pre-paid or postpaid? And, can you say (in general terms) where you got it?

1 Like

I am now noticing tons of disconnects on AT&T whereas I never noticed this before…

@ Peplink support team ticket # 20070808

Thanks

PS. I started this thread on HoFo: https://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1919940-Anyone-noticing-connectivity-issues-the-past-few-weeks

1 Like

For me, my plan is a data only plan, intended for use in data only devices, not intended for use in a tablet or phone. It is post-paid. Obtained from AT&T directly.

@Rick-DC I got the plan though mobilemusthave.com but it’s a reseller of ezmobiledata.com, I presume it’s for hotspot use only but there’s not a lotta info there. I’d take suggestions on another plan if there’s something better.

P.S. I live in a town that has about 2000 residents, and AT&T only arrived here within the past year. I don’t think there are any other AT&T users nearby, it’s not a popular plan for this rural area. I think they built it as part of the FirstNet roll out. So tower congestion isn’t a factor IMO

Is there any chance this is regional? I am traveling and this only started when we came into New York state. That was somewhere at the beginning of July. We are in Vermont now and still having issues. We do get deprioritized on occasion, but usually the rural towns are much better like you say.

I have mobilemusthave.com plan as well.

I am using AT&T on a MAX HD1 Dome CAT18 and a MAX Transit CAT18 and have not seen this happen. My plan is through Nomad Internet, and I have been using the SIM/connection for the last 3 weeks without issue continuously.

The plan is a membership/pre-paid through them, and is designed to be used in a hotspot or mobile router.

I’m in the San Juan Islands in northern Washington State if that helps in terms of regional issues.

I am also using a DNS Lookup Health check, and have this connection as part of a SpeedFusion tunnel for redundancy. I’ve seen it fail for other reasons (signal level) but never gotten into a situation where it has passed health checks and not passed traffic or some other hybrid.

The current AT&T issue seems to block HTTP/HTTPS traffic, but already established SpeedFusion tunnels seem to stay up and functional even once the outage kicks in.

It would be interesting to see if your AT&T connection has any issues if you try it without the tunnel active.

1 Like

OK. The reason I ask is that using some “phone SIMs” and AT&T’s “tablet plans” are a “known issues.” The latter are available pre-paid for about $35/month – formerly unlimited and now capped at 25 gB/month. Lots of E-Bay sellers have been selling them with “special” IMEIs. Sometimes they work; sometimes not. When they don’t it’s not a “router issue.” So the salient question for your vendor is something like “is this plan approved by AT&T for use in a router?”

Now, as for @mystery’s situation – that’s waaaay different. Certainly nothing goofy about that – although I remain a bit more than suspicious of AT&T generally.

1 Like