I have a Pepwave 5G Dongle I got at the Peplink Summit. I have this neat USB-C to POE Ethernet adapter I use to charge my phone and connect to switches when I’m in the field.
I want to be able to plug this into the dongle, assign it an IP address, and give it to one of my field techs so I can remotely access a switch at a location where we’re having issues. That way, I can be local to the switch if something goes wrong.
The adapter is able to power the dongle, but I have no network connectivity.
This would be a neat little device to keep in a technician’s bag in case engineering needs to access a switch.
I don’t know what exact modem they have in that usb device but I do have some experience doing exactly this with other modems.
Usually when you use a modem sled that is doing this with modern modems you have the realtek 2.5G PCI-E adapter on the sled hocked to the modem and put the modem in PCI-E host mode. This obviously isn’t possible with how this device is set up.
Basically, Peplink would have to embed usb drivers for a number of common USB ethernet adapters in to the firmware of the modem itself and switch the usb port from being a device to being a USB host port. This is, in theory, possible but once done, it’s stuck like that, it won’t work as a USB modem anymore until you send the correct AT commands to undo it (and you couldn’t with USB anymore since you turned that in to a host port). If they wanted to, integration with Incontrol, you could do the changes there with a lot of work and a working cell connection.
Basically, yes the SOC in the modem could be made to do this but don’t hold your breath. With enough work, they might even be able to have it auto switch USB modes.
The problem is, they need to get a full copy of their os converted on to the SOC for this to be viable and this product would then directly step on their BR1 products. Less network ports, worse in every way but basically still where you would have to get it from a programming perspective.
If anyone from Peplink wants to chime in if I am fundamentally wrong, let me know.
I don’t own a Pepwave 5G dongle but I have done a fair bit with standalone Quectel x62 and x75 modems, direct USB, PCI-E host, installing tailscale or wrt directly on the modems, etc. What I can tell you is that they work, they are fast but they are not a reliable finished product Peplink would be willing to sell.
So the new Dongle has router firmware on it and InControl works on it so that is why I was hoping this would work to get me into the management port of a switch.