I have an RB411U with a Sierra Aircard MC8700 in the PCI-E slot. This setup works great when it works with low latency and good speeds. The issue is that after being on for some time (usually around one week) the modem stops responding to the RB411U completely. A soft reboot of the 411U fixes the issue.
RB11U has latest version of routeros and MC8700 has latest firmware - still the same problem.
Any help would be greatly appeciated. See attached file for modem log after it stops responding:
It’s the latest 5.12. tried running at+cfun=1 and also tried putting it in the init command. Since upgrading to RouterOS 5.12 about a month back the modem has actually been a lot worse. This modem is actually used at a clients premises so it’s kind of hard to debug but I thought the combination of Sierra MC8700 + Routerboard would be extremely stable hence why I recommended it.
Attached is another log from the client which appears to be a different issue than the last. Apparently the MC8700 + Routerboard would notmake a connection where as their cheap usb modem would.
The MC8700 has proven to be an extremely well performing modem so it’s a shame this setup doesn’t work reliably.
Stable work of 3G card is out of interests Mikrotik team and community, I think.
I wrote a simple script that correctly restart mc8790 card if it became freezed.
Thanks for your help Begetan - have read your thread and it seems to make perfect sense that that’s causing it. Could you share your script that restarts the modem? (I don’t really know a lot about Mikrotik) Thanks!
if the modem doesn’t respond on any USB channels then you need to power cycle the board (remove the power and plug it back).
If you are able to get into the channel and apply AT command sthen try sending AT+CFUN=1,1 and usually it will reset the modem.
I just received two Huawei EM820w modems. Setup was easy. Testing is started. I will get back to you in a few days with an update. Mainly i use the combination of RB411U and Novatel EU870D for SCADA and Telemetry and it performs well but since is an old modem the link speed will not pass over 2mbps even with the firmware update. The Huawei EM820w was able to reach out of the box 8.5mbps download and almost 1mbps upload and i don’t have HSUPA+ coverage in this area. I will re-test in an area with HSUPA+ coverage.
could you tell me if you had to go through any special steps to get the Huawei em820w to work. I tried RouterOS 5.22 and 6.0rc4, neither detected the USB device. Also upgraded my firmware 3.0. The board simply doesn’t detect the modem - I just want to be sure it’s not a software/driver issue before I go through the motion of RMA’ing my modem.
Do you mean EU870D, mainly used for DELL 5520 laptops?
I’ve bought one (sold as 5520 modem, but in fact it’s an EU870D).
I have 2 channels, but one is not responding. If I use AT commands to reset or to set link mode (3G, EDGE, and so on), it responds with “ERROR”.
I can’t neither use AT+CFUN command.
After about 40 hours USB resources doesn’t detect modem, so I need a power-off restart.
Is this a known bug of Routeros or about modem?
Is there a way to update the firmware of the modem directly form RB411U?
No special procedure needed. Just inserted the card in the slot, secured with the two screws, powered the RB411U and the modem was detected by the OS and drivers were loaded.
@el berto
Yes, indeed i’m using those modems from Dell laptops. Connected them to my laptop using a USB adapter. These are the screens with the modem specs. To be able to update the modem firmware you should remove it from the RB and hook it up to either a laptop with SIM slot or to a USB adapter with SIM slot.
This is the daily chart for a RB411U + EU870D which i test right now. Fixed IP from the carrier (vodafone) testing with ping from The Dude. Stable over the last 30 hours. After reaching at least 6-7 days of uptime for the link i will start to test the Huawey modems.
Consider that the modem interface is USB not mini pci-e. for example, the EU850 which has onboard SIM support can be used in any laptop even without SIM socket. But the interface on the laptop should support USB devices also.
