WifiRanger Denali- LTE Modem?

[Suburbazine]

So, I've never used this WifiRanger pack (Spruce/Denali) but I was told by the dealer it had a Wineguard data plan available. I used a Pepwave instead so I never even turned on the kit nor did I set it up.



But today I learned it has shocking, phenomenal Wifi WAN range. At least quadruple the range of the Pepwave, even if the Denali not nearly as capable top-speed-wise.



I wanted to see if I could set up a cellular/wifi fusion using my AT&T data SIM, but before I climb on the roof and try to open the Denali I figured I should know that it has LTE capability. Looking in the WFR control panel, I'm not seeing the described LTE device nor does the one default enabled cellular device show anything inside its settings. So I'm suspicious that I lucked out by making the dealer install a different cellular modem without waiting to find out if the WFR had it.


EDIT: And one accidental click later, I found the LTE modem stashed under the WFRControl box. So my post can be safely ignored

[docj]

Originally Posted by Suburbazine

EDIT: And one accidental click later, I found the LTE modem stashed under the WFRControl box. So my post can be safely ignored

I'm glad you got your immediate problem resolved.

However, if you'd like to learn more about how your WiFiRanger operates you might want to take a look at our revised and expanded user manual which is much more detailed than any other documentation you currently have. Youcan download a copy here: https://wifiranger.com/wp-content/up...1-09152021.pdf

[Suburbazine]

The updated documentation is very helpful. I don't know what version I was on before it updated to b11 but the UI definitely changed a bit.

There is some odd behavior with the installed SIM (which isn't FreedomGO apparently) which is causing the modem in the Denali to tie up the internet connection after connecting to 3G. WFRControl wasn't able to disable the cellular modem without also breaking the Wifi-WAN capabilities of the Denali... I had to go into the Denali to turn off the cell modem until I can swap the SIM card.

Judging from the new documentation I will have to unpair them anyway to multiwan with the Denali.

[docj]

Originally Posted by Suburbazine

The updated documentation is very helpful. I don't know what version I was on before it updated to b11 but the UI definitely changed a bit.

There is some odd behavior with the installed SIM (which isn't FreedomGO apparently) which is causing the modem in the Denali to tie up the internet connection after connecting to 3G. WFRControl wasn't able to disable the cellular modem without also breaking the Wifi-WAN capabilities of the Denali... I had to go into the Denali to turn off the cell modem until I can swap the SIM card.

Judging from the new documentation I will have to unpair them anyway to multiwan with the Denali.

WiFiRanger has posted information on its website regarding the shutdown of the 3G system by AT&T (and soon by the other carriers as well). If you haven't installed the "hotfix" in you modem that could be the reason you are having issues. Some 4G devices used the 3G network as part of the connection and authentication process. In the absence of the 3G network they will no longer connect. The hotfix fixes that problem. Look on the WiFiRanger website for info on how to install it.

There's no reason for you to have to "unpair" your Spruce and Denali in order to be able to use MultiWAN unless you want to use the Denali's cellular modem AND its WiFi as part of the MultiWAN. I'll be glad to help you configure your MultiWAN if you need assistance.

[Suburbazine]

Originally Posted by docj

WiFiRanger has posted information on its website regarding the shutdown of the 3G system by AT&T (and soon by the other carriers as well). If you haven't installed the "hotfix" in you modem that could be the reason you are having issues. Some 4G devices used the 3G network as part of the connection and authentication process. In the absence of the 3G network they will no longer connect. The hotfix fixes that problem. Look on the WiFiRanger website for info on how to install it.

There's no reason for you to have to "unpair" your Spruce and Denali in order to be able to use MultiWAN unless you want to use the Denali's cellular modem AND its WiFi as part of the MultiWAN. I'll be glad to help you configure your MultiWAN if you need assistance.

Supposedly the hotfix has already run because it doesn't do anything, but the modem is still kicking down to 3G and hanging. I can't swap SIM cards until it stops raining, so I can't see if it's just whatever weird SIM card is in there. The modem is the EC25-AF.


And I'm not sure if the Denali has an issue, but its uptime doesn't seem to get past 4 or so hours before it reboots or something. The uptime clock on the Spruce is currently 18 hours and the Denali is 2.

[docj]

Originally Posted by Suburbazine

Supposedly the hotfix has already run because it doesn't do anything, but the modem is still kicking down to 3G and hanging. I can't swap SIM cards until it stops raining, so I can't see if it's just whatever weird SIM card is in there. The modem is the EC25-AF.


And I'm not sure if the Denali has an issue, but its uptime doesn't seem to get past 4 or so hours before it reboots or something. The uptime clock on the Spruce is currently 18 hours and the Denali is 2.

Please open a ticket at WiFiRanger.com so we can help you get to the bottom of this. You can email you issues to
support@wifiranger.com

Please include the 6-digit ID numbers of your Ranger devices.

[jasondietz]

Originally Posted by Suburbazine

Supposedly the hotfix has already run because it doesn't do anything, but the modem is still kicking down to 3G and hanging. I can't swap SIM cards until it stops raining, so I can't see if it's just whatever weird SIM card is in there. The modem is the EC25-AF.


And I'm not sure if the Denali has an issue, but its uptime doesn't seem to get past 4 or so hours before it reboots or something. The uptime clock on the Spruce is currently 18 hours and the Denali is 2.

I also had an uptime issue with my everest/aspen as well, it would randomly reboot every 4-36 hours on the b11 firmware. Prior to the upgrade when I was on b10 I could go 30+ days. I worked with support but were unable to resolve the issue on the new firmware so my everest/aspen was downgraded back to b10 to give development time to sort out a fix. I hope you don't have to do that but wanted to share it with you just incase you run into that issue.

[docj]

Originally Posted by jasondietz

I also had an uptime issue with my everest/aspen as well, it would randomly reboot every 4-36 hours on the b11 firmware. Prior to the upgrade when I was on b10 I could go 30+ days. I worked with support but were unable to resolve the issue on the new firmware so my everest/aspen was downgraded back to b10 to give development time to sort out a fix. I hope you don't have to do that but wanted to share it with you just incase you run into that issue.

I would like to make it clear that the downgrade was done for you as part of our process of debugging why you are were having this problem. It is not a general recommendation to our customers. Most Rangers are currently operating on the b11 firmware without issues.

[jasondietz]

Originally Posted by docj

I would like to make it clear that the downgrade was done for you as part of our process of debugging why you are were having this problem. It is not a general recommendation to our customers. Most Rangers are currently operating on the b11 firmware without issues.

To be clear I wasn't trying to imply there was a general recommendation to do that for all customers. I was only mentioning it due to the unexpected low uptime "but its uptime doesn't seem to get past 4 or so hours before it reboots or something" as the Suburbazine mentioned. The constant low uptimes on b11 was an indicator for me, I check my usage and status pages daily.

If the hardware can't go past a few hours/days of uptime without an unexpected reboot then what I said becomes extremely relevant and warrants further review.

[docj]

Originally Posted by jasondietz

To be clear I wasn't trying to imply there was a general recommendation to do that for all customers. I was only mentioning it due to the unexpected low uptime "but its uptime doesn't seem to get past 4 or so hours before it reboots or something" as the Suburbazine mentioned. The constant low uptimes on b11 was an indicator for me, I check my usage and status pages daily.

If the hardware can't go past a few hours/days of uptime without an unexpected reboot then what I said becomes extremely relevant and warrants further review.

I'd venture a guess that your full-time usage of Usage Tracking is probably what was causing the reboots. We're aware of a memory leak in the Usage Tracking feature that we still haven't pinned down; I typically suggest to customers that they use it to get a sense of their usage but not full-time.

[docj]

Originally Posted by Suburbazine

Supposedly the hotfix has already run because it doesn't do anything, but the modem is still kicking down to 3G and hanging. I can't swap SIM cards until it stops raining, so I can't see if it's just whatever weird SIM card is in there. The modem is the EC25-AF.


And I'm not sure if the Denali has an issue, but its uptime doesn't seem to get past 4 or so hours before it reboots or something. The uptime clock on the Spruce is currently 18 hours and the Denali is 2.

Are you, by chance, using Usage Tracking, SafeSurf, MultiWAN or any other "advanced features"? If so, would it be possible to drop back to a "basic" connection for a while to see if things become more stable?

[jasondietz]

Originally Posted by docj

Are you, by chance, using Usage Tracking, SafeSurf, MultiWAN or any other "advanced features"? If so, would it be possible to drop back to a "basic" connection for a while to see if things become more stable?

I had turned that off during all the troubleshooting and ran the most basic of configurations. Even went as far as to turn off all wifi, used a cat 6 cable to my laptop (from aspen) running LTE (Sprint tethered hotspot or the cat 4 modem of the everest). Only when my company provided dell latitude 5500 laptop is connected do the random reboots occur. I can run my other client devices just fine with no unexpected behavior. I also tried unpairing the IDU/ODU and running each independently, the same behavior occurred.

I didn't want to hijack the original thread but I do welcome any thoughts you might have on that or you can PM me. I'm an IT guy for 24 years so you won't lose me in the technical details. After support got stumped I worked with Davey directly for over a month, he sent me another aspen with b11 thinking it was hardware or firmware upgrade related but I could reproduce the issue on the new aspen. He downgraded one of the aspens to a b10 so we could a side by side comparison with b11, moving one client connection over at a time and testing till we figured out the one causing problems.

[Suburbazine]

Support is now working on mine and all the additional features have been disabled. I hope they find the issue because my Spruce is now rebooting every 30 minutes and the Denali every 4 hours or so.



In my case I'm not severely inconvenienced by it because my primary service is through a Pepwave. I'm just a bit disappointed to find the WFR system unstable since it would be cool to supplement the Pepwave with an additional cellular connection and Wifi WAN. I picked a single-modem Pepwave and the Wifi-WAN feature on that is simply abysmal.

Originally Posted by jasondietz

I had turned that off during all the troubleshooting and ran the most basic of configurations. Even went as far as to turn off all wifi, used a cat 6 cable to my laptop (from aspen) running LTE (Sprint tethered hotspot or the cat 4 modem of the everest). Only when my company provided dell latitude 5500 laptop is connected do the random reboots occur.

So far my random reboots don't have a specific reason and the only connected device is the Pepwave via wired Ethernet to the Spruce. I have noticed that if I pass any traffic across the Denali, its little processor starts chugging away at 100%.

[evofxdwg]

Originally Posted by docj

I'm glad you got your immediate problem resolved.

However, if you'd like to learn more about how your WiFiRanger operates you might want to take a look at our revised and expanded user manual which is much more detailed than any other documentation you currently have. Youcan download a copy here: https://wifiranger.com/wp-content/up...1-09152021.pdf

Hey! Thanks for that new manual link. I will go thru it on our next trip and see if I can optimize mine for campground wifi.

We are not full-time and the Verizon sim is still not approved for Denali. We have to use Verizon at our sticks and bricks home and the extra $$$ for an ATT account is not viable.

Ive set up our Spruce/Denali system and played with it with campground wifi only at several places in the past year we have had our new coach. I had unacceptable dropout issues at a few and tolerable issues, with usable streaming, at others. I never knew if it was the best that could be achieved or I had some setting not optimized.