Purchased the Max-On-The-Go about a month ago and have not been able to get it to work. I’ve been on the phone with Tech support over a dozen times and they have not been able to help me. I believe I have a defective unit but I’m wondering if there is some setting on the device that I have set wrong that tech support is missing.
How I’m using it:
I have four Verizon USB 4G modems model Novatel U620L. I’d like to use all four WANs in Priority 1 and load balance between the four in order.
What happens:
I can get each one to connect properly by themselves. I can also get two to connect and stay connected in priority 1. It doesn’t matter which two or in what combination. However, when I try to connect three or four WANs the next time the device does a health check all four WANs will disconnect. Once I go back to two then they will reconnect.
I’ve been told by tech support that it’s an issue with the SIM cards in the USB modems. However I know for a fact that there is no issue with the SIM cards. I have verified they all work individually. I’m also told that the PEPwave Max On-the-go is supposed to be plug and play and there are no special settings to get it to work the way I’m trying to get it to work. However, as I’ve explained it doesn’t work.
Has anyone had this experience? Does anyone have any recommendations?
From personal experience I would not recommend running 4 USB modems of the same carrier as you will get more of a benefit from using 2x2. Reason being is that all 4 USB modems will connect to the same tower and will be subject to shared bandwidth. For example let’s say each modem is capable of 10Mb down and the tower is only allowing 20Mb, each modem would only be able to perform 5Mb each for a total of 20Mb available. As opposed to having a 2x2 in which 2 modems would achieve 20Mb and the other two modems would receive a hypothetical 20Mb from a different carrier for a total of 40mb. Also, with the modems being the same and running on the same frequency, that would cause some interference.
I understand that it is best to use different carriers and that is our plan. However, we want to see that we can connect four modems easily first. I know this should work. We have rented this device a few times from a company called WifiRents (https://www.wifirents.com/product.php?productid=81&cat=40&page=1) and it has worked perfectly with 4 USB Modems from Verizon that they supplied. That is whey I suspect that either there is a setting that is being missed, there is an order I need to connect the modems, or that this device is defective. Thoughts?
FYI my ticket number is 760119 so you can see the background of this issue.
Another thing to note that I have mentioned before but I’m not sure it is being communicated to the engenieering team, is that I do not have the option to manually set the “Operator Settings” i.e. the APN connection info. That section is grayed out. I’ve been told by tech support that, that is strange, but engineering has not mentioned it in their responses to me.
So to update. I did a factory reset on the MOTG and am now able to get any three of the WANs to connect in any order but as soon as a plug in the fourth it fails. There has to be a setting that I’m missing. Any ideas?
So, you have 3 Modems plugged in and when you put the 4th modem in, all of the modems disconnect?
Two possible reasons that haven’t been mentioned.
Power, do you have a large enough power supply to power all four modems?
Signal Interference, When you stick a bunch of modems really close together, you can end up with some signal interference, I would try some USB extensions and spread your modems out a bit.
My first guess is the issue described by previous posters @TDComm and @Jarid_Petermann. If you absolutely must use multiple MODEMs on the same carrier I’d specially separate them as much as possible. Essentially, what is likely to happen is one device is likely to desense another when they are operating in close proximity. We’re likely dealing with signals in the -100dBm range – veeeery weak. Cellular MODEMs are full duplex devices. Each device needs to be able to “hear” without a similar device pounding on it from a few inches away.
Also, one may note that power density is a function of the inverse square law. So, for example, a doubling of the distance between emitter and receiver cuts the “signal strength” to one-fourth. Distance is important and anything helps.
So, what happens when you separate them using, say, an extension USB cable?
The separation of the extension USB cable doesn’t help much.
The unit disconnect all cellular modems when its CPU load is at 100% and most of the time while uploading. However, this never happens with a single modem.
So I set the limit of download at 20 Mbps and upload at 5Mbps and it seems to work fine since. CPU load rarely hit 100%
3 modems in priority 1
1 modem in priority 2
With a single modem I can get 30-40 Mbps down and 25-35 Mbps up.
I have to trade off the speed for load balancing and fail-over.
