Slow Cellular connection crashes local network

I have a Mini BR1 used with SIM cards for AT&T and Verizon. Tonight, AT&T is a 3G connection, Verizon is a LTE connection showing good signal strength. However, the download speed is about 0.13 and the upload about 1.0. My problem is that this has crashed my local network. I use a Synology wireless router behind the Pepwave with an Ethernet connection to the Synology and a couple of other devices also via Ethernet. The main one being a local NAS. The Pepwave provides DHCP to the entire network. It takes “forever”, ok really over a minute to get a page from the Pepwave web server. I cannot access the Synology admin page as the browser times out before getting to a log in. The NAS is off line as it doesn’t respond when trying to access it. All of that goes away when I remove the Pepwave from the network and use the Synology via a WiFi link to my local campground WiFi which is amazingly fast for campground WiFi. My question is why would the slow LTE connection so drastically affect everything on the local network side of the Pepwave?

Where are you accessing it from (LAN Side? over WIFI or Ethernet?) and what are you using to access it?

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I’ve used an Ethernet connection, a connection through the separate router’s WiFi, and used the Peplink internal WiFi as connections. No noticeable difference with any of those. The access device is a Dell Windows 10 laptop. Nothing has changed in the network, except that cell connections. The system is in an RV and we moved yesterday to a new location. This all started because my practice is to check whether AT&T or Verizon has the best results and then leave that setting alone until we move again. AT&T here is only 3G. Verizon here is terribly slow (and also slow on my phone data connection as well) but my phone worked fine in another part of town.

Is the Verizon a unlimited plan? Are you over the data limit and being throttled down?

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Yes it is but the issue has nothing at all to do with cellular data or outside connectivity. And it’s a new month so the data usage so far is minimal. It is strictly an issue of the Peplink in effect crashing the LAN for unknown reasons, but the response time of anything else on the network was so bad that connections (web browser or Windows Explorer) were nonfunctional.

how are you accessing? via ip address? what happens if you disable the cellular / all internet connections? can you access your LAN resources?

Not exactly sure what you are asking. I wasn’t actually trying to get to the Internet once I saw how poor the performance was and then started trying to use the rest of the network. The LAN resources are either a management port on a local device (the Pepwave, the router, and the NAS) which are all accessed by IP address through a web browser. The NAS resources are available via name using a proprietary file protocol that I believe is SAMBA with some additions, but are accessed as any shared hard drive would be. The use the LAN net resources to broadcast a usable name. I didn’t try disabling anything in the Pepwave since at the time I found this it was because my NAS was effectively off line. That was fixed by taking the Pepwave off line and out of the system after spending a lot of time trying to figure out what had confounded the network.

I think where we are all struggling is that we’ve not seem this behavior from a Peplink device when the WAN connectivity is poor. Sure internet access will be terrible if you have very low bandwidth over cellular, but the access to the SOHO web interface and the interfaces of other devices on the LAN should be unaffected.

This is weird for sure.

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Hi . This is not expected behavior at all and we’ve never seen such an event occur. I’d suggest you talk with your point of purchase about this…

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if you are accessing the NAS resource via name and its not working, what happens when you try to access it via local IP instead?

The access to the NAS management console is by IP address and was slow as well, not as bad as the network access but not normal.

can you please provide more details? what do you mean by slow? how many mbps.

I didn’t try to figure out how slow with a LAN test, but when Firefox times out for lack of response, and Windows Explorer times out (on accessing the NAA) due to a lack of response, I’m not sure testing it makes much difference. The measured speed on the Verizon cell connection was 0.13 MB down and 1.0 MB up using the Okla app. But Google would time out when trying to reach that site.

I am at a new location and restarted the Peplink with the network put back into the previous configuration. The significant difference now is that both AT&T and Verizon have usable signals. AT&T is 18 down and 8 up. Verizon is 11 down and 3 up so AT&T is the selected SIM card. And everything is working as it has before except that one time when AT&T was 3G and Verizon 0.13 down and 0 up. So I have no explanation and cannot duplicate the issue since I have no way to recreate the external conditions. It may have to remain a mystery until and if it happens again.

I was saying speed connecting to your LAN resource. I.e. if you did a file copy locally on your LAN from your NAS how many mbps was it going

I couldn’t do a file copy because, at least using Windows Explorer, I couldn’t connect to the shared drives on the NAS. Explorer gave the long green bar across the top until it finally gave up and timed out. Once I took the Pepwave off line, normal operation resumed.