Dissapointed with Chateau LTE6 and its modem reliability

RouterOS General
1

Hello, we are a small ISP and we have installed the Chateau LTE6 for new customers, and we are dissapointed with its modem reliability (FG621-EA).

Without external antennas has bad reception, but its major issue is very bad reliability: we need to reboot it almost each day to keep it connected to LTE. It disconnects for whatever reason and never reconnects, or it shows “connect failed” in red and we need to disable the interface and reenable it, or reboot.

We have even seen, not once, not twice, that the lte1 interface disappears until a reboot! We updated its firmware to latest version (16121.1034.00.01.01.04) with same results. Updating RouterOS and its firmware doesn’t help either. It’s frustrating.

What’s your experience with this modem?

2

Well, then you should contact support@mikrotik.com additionally. It’s OK to ask community here for experiences, but to really resolve the issue its better to contact MT or the distributor where you buy your devices from.

3

You are right, but we would like to hear other experiences before if possible. Thanks for your reply!

4

We have a couple of thousand R11e-LTE6 out in the field and are evaluating the FG621-EA as replacement, but so far I’m not happy with the FG621-EA. In order for it to connect after changing APN or SIM provider, I had to set

modem-init="AT+CGDCONT=0,\"IPV4V6\",\"\";AT+CGDCONT=1,\"IPV4V6\",\"\""

(derived from http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/hap-ax-lite-lte6-wont-connect-to-cellular-network/172195/1 and http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/chateau-lte6-eu-3g-lte-issues/168036/6). With the roaming SIM cards we have, the modem still hangs every time (“status: connect failed”) when the SIM card tries to connect to a different cell operator, and the only way to recover seems to be to disable/enable the LTE interface. I’ve got open tickets for both problems (SUP-144507 and SUP-153303).

5

Hello,

We face the same issue. The lte modem is not really reliable. We are using .10 firmware and 7.20.2 RouterOS. But we have a lot of problems like modem lte failed, mbim errors…

I don't know id there is a solution in next versions.

6

Check change log for 7.21 testing chain (currently rc1).
Quite a lot of lines with lte in changelog, I also see things for lte6 and FG621-EA.

Having said that ... I have lte6 modem in SXT device and for the past month and a half I used that device as internet fallback for my daughter (moved in new house end of october but up til yesterday, there was no wired internet connection).
I dismantled the setup yesterday. It has been working relatively reliable for that period (last invoice period they pulled 78Gb over that lte connection. Not super fast but enough for TV, little home work, light PS5 gaming, ...).

As far as I know firmware for LTE6 is V039 ?? What is .10 you mention ?

And what is your definition of "not reliable" ?

7

Hello,

Thank you for your answer.

The firmware used is FG621-EA-16121.1034.00.01.01.10 (the last one).

I said it isn't reliable because in less than 1 month I deployed several Chateau LTE 6 and I noticed that I have a lot of LTE modem error. In the most case I have to reboot the router. Enabling and disabling the lte interis not possible. I opened support tickets but the answer always I'm in RMA case and I should replace my device.

I share some logs below. I don't know if you see one of them:

lte1 mbim: error: wdm send failed: 19

lte1 mbim: >>> E #2 - connect: radio state, error: FAILURE

lte1: no response for: AT+MSMPD=0

lte1: no response for: AT+CGPIAF=1,1,0,1

lte1: no response for: AT+GTACT=10,,,0

lte1: no response for: AT E0 V1

lte1: no response for: AT+CGREG=2

lte1 mbim: error: continuing after: network mode selection failed