SmartCheck on single cellular WAN device - yes or no?

Product Discussion Pepwave MAX
1

Is there any benefit to running SmartCheck if the device’s only WAN is the single cellular modem?
For example: would Smartcheck kick start a hung modem or not?

2

Hi. Health checks are of immeasurable value in a multi-WAN environment. However, they do not do much for you in a single-WAN case. In the later situation we almost always disable this.

As to the specific question about a “hung” modem: Peplink routers are really stable and we have never encountered such a situation. A health check would not reboot a modem. There are many third party party devices that will reboot equipment (e.g., cable modem) when it loses contact with a pre-set device/address.

3

Thanks Rick, we did have an issue with a specific router in the field “hanging” with platforms travelling through low & no signal areas but have struggled to replicate the issue on other devices since I joined the project - my understanding of the benefits of Smartcheck seem inline with your experience and confirmation thank you but just wanted to check I wasn’t missing a hidden benefit. We had implemented daily reboot schedule for the population of devices for last season and we didn’t experience a situation again where the end user (guest) had to return to base nor client send a tech out to restart the connection but the daily reboot seemed to cause other issues that impacted the project’s secondary objectives so for this season we have dropped the reboot, have swapped out the device that encountered the hanging issue and will see how the population perform once the platforms have guests taking them out again.

4

OK. I think the only time we have ever seen a Peplink router go “out to lunch” was with a Balance 20 that was being severely over-taxed (application mis-fit) and it simply ran out of resources. (The diagnosis was made after furnishing a diag report.) In that situation I’d call the issue “owner induced.” However, sometimes when the devices are out of cel coverage they can appear to “hang” but they really have not.
Don’t hesitate to pursue the issue here if you learn more.

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