Clients packet loss on WRAP board + CF Card Licence NR

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

Hi.

I installed ROS 3.16 on a 128M CF card, which I switch between 2 differnt WRAP boards (2E and 1E) I’m doing tests. I enabled on both boards the USB feature, normally disabled and unpopulated with electronic parts (ESD ckt, connectors, etc). They’re USB 1.1. At USB I have a E156 3G Huawei modem.

I configured them a for a minumum job (NAT+Firewall+PPP) using Winbox => MAC scan => New Terminal => Setup and then only set up a 192.168.XXX.XXX/24 to Ether1.

Then using the http interface, I enabled basic routing rules (FW protecting both client/router and NAT) where my public interface is the 3G Modem on PPP. Standard config (e.g. add default route, use peer dns etc etc).

Everything run ok for 1 or 2 minutes then a ping terminal to any public address on any client time-out. And public interface stops receiving traffic. It’s necessary to hang-up and reconnect. More 1 or 2 minutes and again the same behaviour.

But: if I use the Tools => Ping on ROS and left it pinging any public address, the clients do not miss any packet! I mean: to keep this instalation working I need to maintain ping routine on ROS firing against any public address, sort of keep-alive.

Seems that clients send packets to ETH1 and then ROS miss the path from ETH1 to public address if public interface its not weighted by some traffic. If I stop Winbox ping but left any stream (audio) up on any client, everything run smooth, no packet loss on clients. As soon as I stop listening audio stream, packet loss increase again.

I tried the both boards, using different physical interfaces, even a SR2 Mini-PCI WLAN card as an AP. The same behaviour.

I did not tried the CF on a desktop because I don’t know why when I boot this desktop from CF - which is plugged to an USB adaptor - ROS reports a different software ID, so the recorded licence does not work there. I thought licence was tied to CF, independently if its connected to a embedded PC, to an USB, PCI or IDE adaptor etc.

Any ideias?

Regards

Marcus Ramos

2

If you want to use your CF on a PC simply use it in a CF<->IDE adapter, not in a USB adapter. I’m 90% sure it should work then. Problem is in USB adapter interpretation of medium and/or access geometry.

WRAP boards (2E and 1E) I’m doing tests. I enabled on both boards the USB feature, normally disabled and unpopulated with electronic parts (ESD ckt, connectors, etc). They’re USB 1.1. At USB I have a E156 3G Huawei modem.

There was no USB on the WRAP boards so you soldered the elements?

Paste here the full config of the router for a review and we may find what’s causing a problem, otherwise it probably is a hardware problem.

3

Thanks dot-bot

If you want to use your CF on a PC simply use it in a CF<->IDE adapter, not in a USB adapter. I’m 90% sure it should work then. Problem is in USB adapter interpretation of medium and/or access geometry.

Yes, makes sense. I thought use CF on a desktop PC to compare modem behaviour using other x86 hardware. But I can do this using a demo licence on any pen-drive ot HD anyway.

There was no USB on the WRAP boards so you soldered the elements?

Yes. WRAP with 1.11 firmware have USB option. The holes to a 10 pin dual-row fence connector exists at the PCB. So I soldered this 10 pin male connector there (the same we use to connect RS232 flat cable at those old HD and floppy controller / COM 1 & 2 / LPT etc ISA cards). Then assembled a “dead-bug” PCB with some electronic components as recomended at PC-Engines website (http://www.pcengines.ch/wrusb.htm) and that’s it. PCB 5V to usb is weak (0.1A) so modem power supply is separated from 5V WRAP have. Actually the PCB 5V @ 0.1A power supply feed a 2Gbyte USB Flash Disk, which I’m using as the Web-cache repository.

Paste here the full config of the router for a review and we may find what’s causing a problem, otherwise it probably is a hardware problem.

I’ll do this later. Since I made this topic some changes on stability. Now is much better than it was at the topic date creation (huge modem current sink + some specific AT+C… commands missing). But still one doubt, seems that CLIENTS<>ROS<>USB<>MODEM does not like 32 byte packets too much. Pinging with 48 or more bytes, no problem at all.

Thanks again, sir … :sunglasses:

Marcus