Hello everyone
This is my first post here. I’m hoping you can help with a problem that is driving me mad. Apologies for the long and rambling post, but I thought it worth giving as much background and information as possible.
I am in the Scottish Highlands with a rather unreliable ADSL2+ service from BT/Plusnet, so being able to reliably use EE’s 4G is important to us. For some time, we have been successfully using a Poynting 4G-XPOL-A002 and Huawei B315 for 4G, via a Ubiquiti USG (which enables me to use the 4G in conjunction with the ADSL2+, such as it is). So I appreciate that this is perhaps a slightly convoluted configuration, but it gives us the best possible broadband — which’s I say, is quite important to us, given the remote location. Now, perhaps unwisely, I thought it might be worth upgrading the Huawei B315 to a B535-333, in the hope of gaining some extra download speed and, in addition, being able to control the configuration better than is possible with the B315 (which is fairly primitive).
The problem is that, with the USG connected to the B535 (just as I did successfully with the B315), I get absolutely no internet connection from anything connected to the ethernet and wireless that runs off the USG — which is our whole network, apart from one thing.
What works:
1. The previous setup with USG connected to the B315: everything connected to the USG has perfect internet access.
2. With the USG connected to the B535: ping6 (from the USG) to an IP v6 address.
3. Internet access from an iPad connected direct to the B535’s wifi. (This is of no practical use, because the 4G aerial and B535 are in a different building.) The iPad is given several IP v6 addresses as well as an IP v4 one.
4. Ping to
google.com from the B535’s GUI diagnostic page.
What does not work:
1. Nothing else from the USG or from any device connected to the its network. (I have tried many things, including ping to an IPv4 address and ping/ping6 to a hostname from the USG.)
2. Ping to 8.8.8.8 from the B535’s GUI diagnostic page.
This is all with the B535 in normal (DHCP) mode. If I put it in bridge mode, nothing at all works, not even the ping6 from the USG to an IP v6 address.
Comments and (very!) tentative conclusion:
1. The B315 appears to be operating purely as an IP v4 device, so the EE 4G network clearly tolerates that. Whereas it “knows” that the B535 is v6-capable, so expects it to operate accordingly. Incidentally, if I attempt to switch the B535 to IPv4-only operation, it fails to connect to the 4G network.
2. I understand that the EE 4G network uses 464XLAT, correct? So presumably the B535 does make use of that (which is presumably what is happening with the iPad connected directly). But it seems entirely possible that either (a) the B535 and USG do not play well together in this regard; (b) there is a problem with the B535's 464XLAT's implementation; or (c) perhaps more likely, there is something wrong in the way I have configured the USG (although please bear in mind that it works fine with the B315, IPv4 only, of course).
3. The fact that I can ping from the USG to an IPv6 address but not to a hostname (using either ping or ping6) makes me suspect that DNS requests are failing to work, possibly because they are not getting beyond the B535. In fact, if I try “ping
google.com” from the USG,
Questions:
1. Would you expect what I am trying to do — a second router (the USG) connected to the B535 — to work?
And if, at least in principle, it should:
2. Would it have more chance of working with the B535 in bridge mode? (Bearing in mind that even the ping6 to an IPv6 address stopped working when I tried this — although that may well be because the USG’s IPv6 config is wrong.)
3. Any suggestions for configuration options to try? (I have assumed DHCPv6 rather than a static IPv6 address and prefix delegation rather than static on the USG, for example.)
Any advice or thoughts that any of you can offer would be very much appreciated. And thank you if you have taken the time to read this far!
Andrew
