I just purchased 2 Peplink Max Transit devices. I have a SIM card in slot A (top slot) only, B is empty. However if I have antennas on the Main 1A and Aux 1A antenna ports the modem is unable to find any cell towers. Once I swap the antennas to Main 1B and Aux 1B, it finds and connects no problem. I can unscrew the antennas on the B ports and see on the GUI the cell bars drop. Adding antennas to the A ports doesn’t help. Once connected, everything else works fine.
Is this normal behavior? I don’t see anything in the manual. The issue is I am planning on buying a lot more of these for field work and I need to put together some instructions for users. Should I expect this behavior from all of them or is this a bad batch and should be replaced?
Oh, I didn’t see that in the manual. The PN I have is MAX-TST-GLTE-G-T-PRM. That does look like the Cat 18 modem. I am using B48 here, so that would make sense why the antennas on B connectors were needed.
Where did you find that information? I looked in the datasheet and manual that I downloaded from peplink and didn’t see that information.
That is from the Telit LM960 hardware manual. Peplink‘s manual wants you to use all 4 ports because you don’t know which frequencies the cell tower will choose at a given time. That Cat 18 modem is meant to use up to 5 frequencies in the downlink and up to 3 in the uplink.
Thank you for this information, that helped me understand what is going on.
Seems like that could be a labelling improvement for Peplink. With the A and B designation for antennas and SIM card slots, it is very easy to assume that they are related. If they want all 4 antennas connected, maybe just designate the ports as 1,2,3, and 4 without the lettering to imply that they correspond to the SIM slots. The included literature in the box doesn’t even say to connect all 4 antennas.
