Tengonet AKA "The BORG"

I travel all over North America and often, to my dismay, find myself in a place where Tengonet is managing the internet. I have installed a PepWave Surf 400 and treat it as a WAN input for my Cradlepoint MBR 1400 router. The router has three Cell Modems that I use primarily. I would like to be able to load balance in the Surf 400 as one of the WANs. I have five computers on board and rout through the MBR1400 or I can go direct to the Surf 400.

My problem is that Tengonet will not allow me to use all of my computers at the same time. They seem to sense the MAC (or something) address of each computer and when one tries to connect, it brings up a Tengonet internet page that requires that we switch manually to the computer that is calling the internet. Each computer on board calls the internet all the time, so this is a huge problem.

Looking at the admin screen for the Surf 400, there appears to be a way to manually set a MAC address. So,

  1. Will this solve my problem and make the Surf 400 look like a single computer to Tengonet?
  2. If yes, what address should I put in the fields that are available?
  3. If no, is there another solution?

Thanks for any insight or help!

Regards,

Bob

Hi Bob,

If we have the Surf 400 connected to Tengonet in router mode and then all your computers connect via the Surf, Tengonet should only only see the MAC address of the Surf instead of your PCs’ MAC addresses. Or are we missing something here?

Thanks,
Kurt

Hi Kurt,

Thanks for the response.

All of my computers talk to the Surf 400 via wifi. I have also tried to plug the Surf 400 into the WAN port on the MBR 1400 using the ethernet port. I have also tried using the wifi as WAN feature on the cradlepoint. I get connection, but each time. The problem exists with all connections that when I try to connect from a different computer or even my Kindle Fire, the Tengonet send me to a page they setup for the local network and ask me to reset the connection to that computer.

I looked for something in the admin mode indicating “router mode” and did not see any area to set that.

I also had the same problem a couple of years ago using a Hawking Ethernet Converter. I was hoping the Surf would not have the problem.

Regards, Bob

Hi Kurt,

I got it working by resetting the Surf 400 to factory defaults. Once I established connection with Tengonet on one, the rest login without hassle.

Thanks

Bob

Thanks Bob, trust that you will enjoy your Surf 400.

Feel free to share your stories and be in for a chance to win our latest Surf On-The-Go - 3G/4G capable, 802.11n, latest addition to the Surf family. Read more at http://www.peplink.com/win-surf-otg/

Thanks,
Kurt