Hello everybody,
I have a MikroTik LHGG LTE6 to which I have installed an EM160R_GL LTE modem. The setup worked just fine untill I swapped LTE SIM with another operator. Now I’m experiencing random disconnections from the network multiple times a day, and I’m forced to disable and re-enable LTE in order to get it working again.
Now I don’t know if the problem is caused by the operator or there is something wrong with LHGG/modem. Is there anyway we can investigate the issue?
For sure upgrade to “stable” (v7.7 as of writing) – there have been a ton of LTE fixes since v7.2.3. You want to make sure to upgrade RouterOS, the /system/routerboard firmware, and also /interface/lte firmware too.
ok I’ll upgrade ros to 7.7, but do you know if I can upgrade the lte modem firmware through routeros too?
I swapped the original LTE6 modem with an EM160R-GL, but afaik the “upgrade” function on the lte interface isn’t working
I presume signal is good here and/or it’s not disconnecting during peak usage times. Still really shouldn’t disconnect unless signal was terrible.
But pretty sure Mikrotik firmware update won’t work with non-stock modem module. Personally, I’d see if v7.7 helps first. But if you had a USB to M.2 adapter, you can use a PC to upgrade the modem.
Also, while I’m not the quectel expert, but likely want it in MBIM mode. It may default to this, but you can make sure by setting it to MBIM (vs ECM):
If that’s doesn’t help, you can increase the logging to see what may be happening before the disconnect. Since LTE debug logs can be long you can increase the log limit:
That worth a shot since if one initialization AT command is errors/missed/etc, perhaps can cause an issue down the road. Other scripts in this forum are even more sophisticated at using netwatch to restart the modem – but this add complexity and in reality the modem shouldn’t just disconnect unless its down by the carrier or signal quality is extremely poor.
I do suspect there is some incompatible firmware someplace (e.g. sometimes a carrier needs different firmware than the Mikrotik, or just bugs sometimes). Mikrotik does eventually respond to reports of LTE issues – but you really do need to enabled higher log level/limits to capture what’s happen when at the time disconnects (and supout) for them to have any hope of fixing it.
For now I have updated ROS to 7.7 (can’t update the modem since I don’t have the usb tool to do so), and I have created the log file that you told me to.
At the moment it’s 3hours uptime and didn’t go down, if it does I’ll post logs here so we can understand what’s going on
From my personal experience I can tell you that both Wind3 and Iliad are disconnecting at least every 24h, if not 12h sometime (at least in my area).
So it’s the operator, not the modem.
In my case I was able to make that happen at night and it stays for 24H most of the time, until next disconnection.
I had issued a disconnect at night and since then it takes the 24H cycle, so each night at same time it disconnects and renews IP and I have done this on both operators within 5min offset between them.
IMO it’s the needing a manual restart part that’s worth investigating before writing it off as a carrier issue. Certainly could be the carrier, but verdict still out.
If the LTE interface recovers on it own in a “reasonable” amount of time, that’s kinda different issue… than having to enable/disable the interface to get it working. The logs generally gives some good clues with LTE.
Sure then.
But those 2 operators that I mentioned are known for disconnecting clients every 12/24H and I tested this on couple of installation with different routers/modem.
So if Alessio is using one of them, it’s operator behavior to apply such disconnection, while if he is using something else, then it could be other reasons.
I’m on Kena (TIM), so no disconnections.
Anyway after updating RoS to 7.7 it looks like it’s not crashing anymore. I’ll keep checking for the next few days, if it keeps going like this, well the problem was RoS
Maybe that is some problem with one of the counters? Mine new router hangs every 6.86 or 6.87 GB Rx+Tx data transferred and then I have to manually disable/enable lte device. Still on testing SIM but that doesn’t seem right. 67500000000b is also processed as 38 bit number on the verge of being 39-bit, maybe there’s some issue that some variable is still 32bit - scratch it - 38 bit thingy int somewhere in the code that someone created in 80s and noone dares to touch it as it is scary and just fills a loop betwen 32 and 64-bit systems?