First of all, you are all awesome, I’ve delved into this treasure trove of knowledge before and it’s gotten me out of trouble a lot of times.
I know this is a super new product and not many of them out there, but I recently got my hands on a Quectel Redcap RG255C-GL modem to give it a try.
I can see RouterOS recognises the modem but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be able connect. The interface won’t go into the running mode despite having the APN set and I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to try next. When it comes to LTE modems I’m very “wet behind the ears” and well out of my depth at this point. As I understand there are linux drivers for this modem but I don’t have a machine that I can put this in to see if it will work there.
If I try to do a “Scan” it shows up “Couldn’t start, radio off (6)”
Any help here or do I just have to wait for the drivers to catch up? Happy to provide any logs or device information necessary - I just have no idea what’s needed to help you guys all help me make this work. I had hoped that the quectel drivers would allow this to work, and the wAP R does recognise it, it just seems it can’t do anything with it.
So good and bad news. Under advice from Mikrotik Support, I installed the latest RouterOS Release Candidate, and the modem functions perfectly after reboot, with the caveat that at this time, RouterOS doesn’t support passthrough for the RG255C. So at the moment, it is not a valid proposition, until passthrough support is implemented.
The redcap mean “reduced capacity” so are speed limited than “full” 5G modem… so IMO routing performance is even less important since it not going to be GBs. Thus I’m not sure NAT-less IP routing from a “main” router to the LTE device is the end of the world, vs. “needing” passthrough.
Yes, I know what Redcap means. It’s the only Mini-pcie 5G modem I could find to upgrade my LTAP Mini, for a decent price and with stock actually available.
For those of us using the device as a backup connection on WAN 2 of their router, passthrough is the effective and efficient way to set it up. There are no other ways to so it that I’m aware of without having to set the LTAP Mini up with its own firewall rules, security hardening, etc. With LTE passthrough, my main router can utilise the LTE connection as though the LTAP Mini isnt even there. So yes, it’s not the end of the world, but it’d be great to have it. Like eating dinner with a knife and fork instead of only having a knife.
For the uninformed, does this mean it’s possible to get the modem to function? I did have it working and then I shelved my wAP-R however when booting it back up it stopped working, the interface showing up as “inactive”. Not sure if I’ve broken something or if something has changed on ROS. Running the latest RC.
Yes, it will function on the latest RouterOS beta. However RouterOS doesn’t support passthrough with this modem yet, so useless for my use case as a backup WAN connection, without a lot of unnecessary configuration of firewalls, etc in RouterOS. Patiently waiting for passthrough support while running the old EP06 modem again.
I’d first make sure you also updated the firmware in /system/routerboard. If it was working in older version, you might want to grab a supout.rif while at 7.17rc and try the previous version again. Once again, make sure you also update /system/routerboard after downgrade. If that work, you might want to report it to support@mikrotik.com.
In the default configuration, it should just work with all the firewall stuff as a standalone router. Now, if you have a primary router, and want to use a backup/failure… layer3/IP routing is possible since it’s noted that “passthrough” is not supported (i.e. LTE modem is bridged to another router). So you can add new VLAN between wAP and primary router , or change the default LAN IP stuff (and disable DHCP server) to match the primary router & use IP routing instead of passthrough.
Okay, I like the sound of the first option you propose, however LTE is not an interface option on my LTAP Mini (Quectel RG225C installed internally) when I try to create a new vlan. Besides, I’m already using one for the passthrough (vlan on eth1, with ID number 3. The main router is then configured to use it as a secondary wan on VLAN ID 3.
Given the above It appears that at this stage, there is no other option with the LTAP Mini with integral modem other than passthrough mode (which is not yet support with the RG255C). What else can I try?
Well, who knew? (except Mikrotik) but it seems Mikrotik has implemented initial basic support for the RG255C-GL in Routeros 7.18 Beta 4. That and I was able to get the UCG Ultra to connect to the LTAP Mini on WAN2 without using passthrough (and with default SOHO firewall rules set on the Mikrotik, so no open external facing ports, confirmed with GRC’s tests. UCG Ultra also has it’s own firewall so not too worried). Observations so far. The RG255G-CL performs almost as well as the EP06-E does on Vodafone Australia’s LTE network, noting former is CAT 4 and latter is CAT 6. I’ll need to get hold of a cheap Telstra Data only SIM on Friday to test the 5G operation, as it seems that Vodafone uses 15mhz channel widths, which won’t play nice with this modem. Telstra uses 20Mhz channel widths which the RG255C-GL will support with current firmware. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes.
