I didn’t do a full 5-6 round test while swapping SIMs around (and obviously haven’t tried all 3 SIMs in all various combinations of the four SIM slots), but it’s enough to get an overall picture.
Modem 1 is a bit more erratic in it’s times - one time the event log said it connected on startup in 10s, other times 1m30s. Resets can take between 4-5m. Once when rebooting a “no device detected” popped up, another time it persisted until I disabled and re-enabled it. Fun fact, “no device detected” never showed up in the previous month of glitchiness with 8.20.
Modem 2 always connects in ~1m and resets take ~4m.
Maybe I’m misremembering reset times being faster (2-3m vs 4-5m) before due to all the failed connections that needed disabling or reboots, combined with spontaneous resets so I’m just more sensitive to delays.
I haven’t had the router on for extended use, but so far aside from Modem 1 being a bit wonky it seems fine - after 10+ reboots everything connects aside from the “no device detected” which wasn’t the case before and that acted normally after it was juggled out of disabled.
Time will tell whether the router still freezes up the WAN/LAN connections for 30s-2m I guess, but if it doesn’t given Peplink has no ETA turn-around time for RMAs and doesn’t do loaners I think I’ll just keep my now slightly funkier bad modem. I’ll see if I can buy a PrimeCare plan from Source One & their “spare in the air + actual t1/2 support” plan in case it craps out at some point.
It is odd how issues that came up with 8.20 were partially fixed when reverting from 8.13.
@erutan, on FW 8.13 the dropouts were far more frequent. On 8.20, it was only 3 or 4 times during working hours.
I’m not 100% certain, but the sequence of events in my setup were: upgrade router to FW 8.20, change VPN clients on personal laptops to WireGuard protocol, start of dropouts.
So it may be worthwhile for my setup to upgrade back to FW 8.20. But I’m not going to fiddle with it until I take several days off work.
Ah ok, you weren’t getting dropouts on 8.13 before you upgraded to 8.20 - but you also weren’t using the WireGuard VPN protocol yet which was causing them.
That’s a better scenario for you! Get WireGuard working on 8.13 when you have time, and then hope 8.20 will work.
I have never seen a modem show up as “no device detected” until downgrading back to 8.13 from 8.20 . So… that’s exciting. I’m hoping that the hard locks won’t happen anymore. Time will tell.
@alembicwireguard support is being looked at / planned for firmware 9.0.
It seems unlikely to work before then, so not worth troubleshooting at the moment: Peplink | Pepwave - Forum
The “device not found” for the modem clearly indicates a hardware issue and my RMA process is streamlined, instead of sending it to them in MN and waiting for it to be tested & debugged the partner we bought it from will send a transit pro out once they receive our duo (no more duo’s left). We should have a window coming up where this can work without the $300 AHR one-off they’re now offering as well.
So far it’s working ok as long as it finds the modem, but it’s still a bit of an alarming situation. It’s sorting itself out and I do appreciate Peplink working with me to ease the inconvenience of the RMA process.
Please test this: if your using any geo-filtering firewall rules thun them off and test again, please post results.
peplink needs a rule: if peplink geo servers can’t be reached drop/accept the connection. if you use geo filtering and their database servers can’t be reached the packets are dropped as your local unit can’t process the rule
@ken4 I’m not using any geo-filtering firewall rules.
On 8.13 the device works properly aside from the occasional “no device found” on startup for one of the modems, which is solved by a hard restart. Some of the features in 8.20 are nice, but I can live without them.
On another note, the whole multi-partner handoff process in tickets (peplink > distributor > retailer) is really frustrating. I asked Peplink what they did something for a ticket someone mentioned in a thread, they’ll ask Frontier and MMH, who point out it’s Peplink’s ticket, then weeks later after hours of my own research and testing they got back to me saying they didn’t do anything lol.
In this case I was told I could get a unit mailed to me without having to go through an unknown timeframe (I’ve asked multiple times) of mailing in the router, having it tested, then sent back another by Peplink EU, then was told by Frontier that it was a miscommunication. For $300 I can get a new one mailed out and then I mail out the old one, which is what I’ll do if/when the problem gets worse, but for now it’s simpler to just keep it as is due to it being a known quantity.
