Wireless Joint

(UPDATE 8/4/2020: Scroll to the end of this post for my workaround.)

Hi all,

First a huge thank you to everyone who participates in these forums. You've all been incredibly helpful as I've figured out how to get a good LTE router setup up and running out in the sticks. But now I've got a problem that is not-so-slowly driving me insane.

About 2.5 months ago (at the beginning of quarantine), I started using a Mofi 4500 (SIM4 COMBO) with AT&T service. Out of the box, performance was excellent -- I was consistently getting 40-70 down, and 15-30 up. That certainly exceeded my expectations given the lack of other options where we are in upstate New York. For about two months, everything was rock solid. No difficulty delivering what we need for two people working from home, plus a handful of smart devices and some occasional HD TV streaming. I was thrilled.

Then about three weeks ago, we started losing Internet access out of the blue throughout the day, requiring a reset of the Mofi router. We'd unplug the Mofi and plug it back it, it would initialize, and everything would work great. Until it inevitably dies again, usually anywhere from 45 mins to a couple hours later. So we have been constantly resetting the router throughout the day, and the randomness of it is wreaking havoc on our work lives.

Some unusual (to me anyway!) notes about the behavior when service goes down:

• The indicator light for an internet connection on the Mofi stays green even when we lose service.

• While all of our web browsing dies at the same time on various connected devices, if either of us is in a video call (usually using Google Meet or Zoom), somehow that person can generally continue on with the call for a considerable amount of time, sometimes another 30 mins, even as we can't do anything else. (And even the person successfully still on the video call can't do anything else on their device.)

• When I log in to the Mofi control panel once things have gone down, and try to do the "Internet connection test" from the main screen it does indeed fail. However, when I go to System>>Diagnostics, and do things like run a ping test to openwrt.org or do a traceroute, they work and return live results.

My setup and what I've tried so far:

• The router is a MOFI4500 4GXeLTE SIM4COMBO, using AT&T service. Signal strength is usually 4 or 5 bars.

• Current Mofi firmware is 4.1.8-std, which was just released a week or two ago I believe. I was having the same problems with the prior firmware; I did the Remote Update through the control panel to update to this latest firmware a few days ago hoping it would improve things. No change, same problems all around.

• Bandlock is on Band 12, on advice of Mofi (see below). Or at least I think it is, there is a quirk in the control panel I can't explain. When I go to the Mofi "Modem Status" page, it says
  Current Band: B2
  Module has NO Bandlock filter in place
  Bandlock set to the following: LTE_B12
  Advanced Bandlock: No Advanced Bandlock
  
  I did indeed follow the instructions to lock to Band 12, but I can't tell if it's really locked or not. Or if this has anything to do with my issue or not.

• Internal modem module is Sierra MC7455

• Our normal setup is to connect all devices to a Netgear Orbi mesh system, which is then physically plugged into the Mofi router. However, even taking the Orbi completely out of the equation and connecting all devices wirelessly to the Mofi, we have the exact same issue.

• I replaced the AT&T SIM card, and also had the data provider completely delete my account and assign me a new one, just to see if it would help anything at all. No change, still have the same problems.

Mofi support was great when I was asking questions before I bought the router, but it has been rather frustrating as I try to troubleshoot this. They've been very slow to respond, and don't have much to say. The only piece of advice they gave me so far was to do a bandlock, which I did (band 12 had the best signal so that's what I chose) and it didn't help.

Does anyone have any ideas on other things I can try? I'm getting rather desperate here, and it is seriously impacting our ability to work and also just generally driving me crazy. Based on the behavior, I'm convinced the issue is within the Mofi somewhere rather than the AT&T service, but I'm certainly open to trying anything and everything.

Help! I will happily wing a nice bottle of booze your way. Or one of my organs. It has come to that.

Thanks everyone,

J

UPDATE 8/4/2020 -- HOW I "FIXED" IT

Since I started this thread, I figured I should post in one tidy spot how I fixed (or rather "fixed") this problem.

I tried many things, including:
-- Three different AT&T network providers and plans, using multiple APNs
-- Tried Verizon and T-Mobile network plans, and had no problems, confirming the issue was AT&T (but signal strength wasn't strong enough on those to stick with them)
-- Another Mofi router, and another non-Mofi router. Many threads on Reddit, wirelessjoint.com and the Wireless Joint facebook group make clear this issue has nothing to do with Mofi, and people are having it with AT&T on many devices.
-- A half dozen different configurations/firmware installs on the Mofi

In the end, going through a VPN saved us. Once we installed VPN software on our primary devices (we used NordVPN, more on them in a moment), everything just worked. No more lost Internet connections, ever. And even though the VPN software was only installed on our connected computers, phones and tablets, the many other devices on the network that weren't going through the VPN -- Apple TV, a zillion smart home devices, more -- continued to hum along just fine, without ever triggering the need to reset the Mofi router.

My best guess is that at some point, some sort of traffic/device limit was being triggered with AT&T and it was disabling HTTP traffic. But I really don't know, and for now, I really don't care. Everything finally works great.

NordVPN (www.nordvpn.com) was incredibly easy to set up, and they seem to offer great deals (in the end, paid about $80 for three years). That allows for six simultaneous connected devices. Though again, we only put the VPN on our heavy-use devices, like our laptops and iPads. Technically, you can install NordVPN (or other VPNs) at the router level, and the Mofi 4500 makes this incredibly easy to do with built-in setup for NordVPN. But there was a huge performance hit doing it that way, as the Mofi just isn't strong enough to process the VPN encryption. Enabling the VPN on Mofi dropped our speeds by about 80%. Enabling it on the device level we see truly NO drop in speed.

I did briefly buy a souped up ASUS router from FlashRouters (www.flashrouters.com), with a massive processor and built-in custom firmware for various VPNs, including Nord. It worked great, and speeds were much faster, but in the end I found the router unwieldy and couldn't get it to play as nicely with our Orbi wifi. I ended up returning it. The people at FlashRouters were fantastic and I would highly recommend them. If you install the VPN at the router level, obviously everything is much simpler in terms of connected devices -- and that only counts as one device.

We've only run into two quirks with using the VPN: Some web sites (including Google every once in awhile) will occasionally force you to do one of those I-am-not-a-robot captchas, as the VPN traffic triggers something or other on their end. And, more frustrating, Bank of America's website and mobile app cannot be accessed through NordVPN. This is a known issue, apparently BofA blocks a lot of VPN traffic. So when we log into banking we do have to temporarily disable the VPN on the device we're using, which again the Nord software makes super easy.

The final point I'd mention is that if you go down the Reddit rabbit hole on NordVPN you'll see that they had some sort of compromising issue in the not-too-distant-past, and some people who are using VPNs for hyper anonymity don't like them for that reason. But (a) Nord claims they've fixed all that and (b) I'm just using it to get my Internet to work, not launder drug cartel money.

So, there you go. Not so much a fix as a workaround, but it really does work, and now we're back humming along with fast speeds and no router resets at all. Good luck.

J

Hey there. Quick question. What plan are you using for the ATT? Can you put the SIM into another device, like a phone or ipad and see if it works ok like that?

Also, I'm guessing not, but, do you know how to run AT commands on the mofi user interface?
It'd be super nice if I could get the output from a command called

AT!GSTATUS?

from your modem.

The output looks like:

at
OK
at!gstatus?
!GSTATUS:
Current Time: 483762 Temperature: 45
Reset Counter: 2 Mode: ONLINE
System mode: LTE PS state: Attached
LTE band: B12 LTE bw: 5 MHz
LTE Rx chan: 5035 LTE Tx chan: 23035
LTE CA state: ACTIVE LTE Scell band:B2
LTE Scell bw:15 MHz LTE Scell chan:1125
EMM state: Registered Normal Service
RRC state: RRC Connected
IMS reg state: No Srv

PCC RxM RSSI: -82 RSRP (dBm): -110
PCC RxD RSSI: -80 RSRP (dBm): -107
SCC RxM RSSI: -94 RSRP (dBm): -129
SCC RxD RSSI: -94 RSRP (dBm): -128
Tx Power: 23 TAC: A6FF (42751)
RSRQ (dB): -12.9 Cell ID: 006F9F15 (7315221)
SINR (dB): 6.8

The best way I know of is to SSH in with a free program called putty.

Let me know if you want more directions. Check here for a posting that has some help for how to get that output:https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?t=263

The reason I'd like to see that output, is it may show your issue, it may not.

Thanks for taking a look!

I'm on an AT&T unlimited hotspot plan through one of the ebay resellers. It's someone who has a ton of active positive feedback, so I don't think I'm on a dodgy plan that isn't delivering as advertised. That said, switching data providers is one thing I haven't tried yet.

And yes, can run AT commands from the Mofi interface. Mofi also has a one-click report that runs GSTATUS plus some others, so I'm dumping the whole thing here in case useful:


0:[AT!GSTATUS?]
1:[!GSTATUS:]
2:[Current Time: 58646 Temperature: 52]
3:[Reset Counter: 3 Mode: ONLINE]
4:[System mode: LTE PS state: Attached]
5:[LTE band: B12 LTE bw: 10 MHz]
6:[LTE Rx chan: 5110 LTE Tx chan: 23110]
7:[LTE CA state: NOT ASSIGNED]
8:[EMM state: Registered Normal Service]
9:[RRC state: RRC Connected]
10:[IMS reg state: No Srv]
11:[PCC RxM RSSI: -63 RSRP (dBm): -86]
12:[PCC RxD RSSI: -62 RSRP (dBm): -85]
13:[Tx Power: 12 TAC: 0954 (2388)]
14:[RSRQ (dB): -7.8 Cell ID: 0C5E6B11 (207514385)]
15:[SINR (dB): 14.6]
16:[OK]


0:[ATi3]
1:[Manufacturer: Sierra Wireless, Incorporated]
2:[Model: MC7455]
3:[Revision: SWI9X30C_02.30.01.01 r7792 CARMD-EV-FRMWR2 2018/07/13 02:24:52]
4:[MEID: xxxx]
5:[IMEI: xxxx]
6:[IMEI SV: 16]
7:[FSN: xxxx]
8:[+GCAP: +CGSM]
9:[OK]


#--------- CARRIER ID START ------------

Carrier ID: 310410

#--------- CARRIERID END ------------

0:[AT+CGDCONT?]
1:[+CGDCONT: 1,"IP","broadband","0.0.0.0",0,0,0,0]
2:[+CGDCONT: 2,"IPV4V6","broadband","0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0",0,0,0,0]
3:[OK]


0:[AT+CSQ]
1:[+CSQ: 27,99]
2:[OK]


0:[AT+rscp?]
1:[+RSCP:]
2:[OK]


0:[AT+ecio?]
1:[+ECIO: NOT IMPLEMENTED]
2:[OK]


0:[AT!GETRAT?]
1:[!GETRAT: NOT IMPLEMENTED]
2:[OK]


0:[AT!getband?]
1:[!GETBAND: B12]
2:[OK]


0:[AT*cnti=1]
1:[*CNTI: 1,LTE]
2:[OK]


0:[AT+COPS=3,0;+COPS?]
1:[+COPS: 0,0,"AT&T",7]
2:[OK]


0:[AT+COPS=3,2; +COPS?]
1:[+COPS: 0,2,"310410",7]
2:[OK]


0:[AT+CREG=2; +CREG?]
1:[+CREG: 2,1,"FFFE","C5E6B11",7]
2:[OK]


LAC:FFFE CELL ID:C5E6B11


0:[AT+CGREG=2; +CGREG?]
1:[+CGREG: 2,1,"FFFE","C5E6B11",7]
2:[OK]


0:[AT+CGATT?]
1:[+CGATT: 1]
2:[OK]


#--------- ROAMING INFO ------------

0:[AT^SYSCONFIG?]
1:[^SYSCONFIG: 2,0,1,2]
2:[OK]


0:[AT^SYSINFO]
1:[^SYSINFO: 2,3,0,9,1]
2:[OK]


#--------- END ROAMING INFO ------------

Pin Lock
0:[AT+CMEE=1;+CPIN?]
1:[+CPIN: READY]
2:[OK]


Network Lock
0:[AT+CLCK="PN",2]
1:[+CLCK: 0]
2:[OK]


#--------- START SIERRA DIAG ------------

0:[ATi3]
1:[Manufacturer: Sierra Wireless, Incorporated]
2:[Model: MC7455]
3:[Revision: SWI9X30C_02.30.01.01 r7792 CARMD-EV-FRMWR2 2018/07/13 02:24:52]
4:[MEID: xxx]
5:[IMEI: xxxx]
6:[IMEI SV: 16]
7:[FSN: xxx]
8:[+GCAP: +CGSM]
9:[OK]
#---------------------- i3 ---------------
0:[AT!image?]
1:[TYPE SLOT STATUS LRU FAILURES UNIQUE_ID BUILD_ID]
2:[FW 1 GOOD 2 0 0 ?_? 02.30.01.01_?]
3:[FW 2 GOOD 1 0 0 ?_? 02.24.05.06_?]
4:[FW 3 GOOD 1 0 0 ?_? 02.24.03.00_?]
5:[FW 4 EMPTY 0 0 0]
6:[Max FW images: 4]
7:[Active FW image is at slot 1]
8:[TYPE SLOT STATUS LRU FAILURES UNIQUE_ID BUILD_ID]
9:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 002.049_004 02.30.01.01_ATT]
10:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 001.005_000 02.24.05.06_BELL]
11:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 002.045_001 02.30.01.01_GENERIC]
12:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 001.023_000 02.30.01.01_ROGERS]
13:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 001.003_000 02.30.01.01_SIERRA]
14:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 002.045_000 02.30.01.01_SPRINT]
15:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 001.023_000 02.30.01.01_TELUS]
16:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 000.020_000 02.30.01.01_US-Cellular]
17:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 002.052_002 02.30.01.01_VERIZON]
18:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 001.001_000 02.24.03.00_VODAFONE]
19:[Max PRI images: 50]
20:[OK]
#---------------------- !image? ---------------
0:[AT!impref?]
1:[!IMPREF:]
2:[preferred fw version: 02.30.01.01]
3:[preferred carrier name: GENERIC]
4:[preferred config name: GENERIC_002.045_001]
5:[current fw version: 02.30.01.01]
6:[current carrier name: GENERIC]
7:[current config name: GENERIC_002.045_001]
8:[OK]
#---------------------- !impref? ---------------
0:[AT+cgdcont?]
1:[+CGDCONT: 1,"IP","broadband","0.0.0.0",0,0,0,0]
2:[+CGDCONT: 2,"IPV4V6","broadband","0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0",0,0,0,0]
3:[OK]
#---------------------- +cgdcont? ---------------
0:[AT!selrat?]
1:[!SELRAT: 00, Automatic]
2:[OK]
#---------------------- !selrat? ---------------
0:[AT!band?]
1:[Index, Name, GW Band Mask L Band Mask TDS Band Mask]
2:[10, LTE_B12, 0000000000000000 0000000000000800 0000000000000000]
3:[OK]
#---------------------- !band? ---------------
0:[AT+cpin?]
1:[+CPIN: READY]
2:[OK]
#---------------------- +cpin? ---------------
#--------- END SIERRA DIAG ------------

A couple more data points that might be clues:

-- Our connection just died again. However, while we lost the ability to visit any websites, our Sonos system continued to stream a live radio station via TuneIn (and it wasn't cached -- was playing live, and we let the stream go for about 40 mins before we reset the router). Also during this time, my iMac continued to receive iMessages. And that computer is connected only to Wifi. So weird. Http web queries aren't going through, other things are?

And in case it's at all useful, I re-ran the above report on the router while the Internet was down. Here are the results:

0:[AT!GSTATUS?]
1:[!GSTATUS:]
2:[Current Time: 64596 Temperature: 50]
3:[Reset Counter: 3 Mode: ONLINE]
4:[System mode: LTE PS state: Attached]
5:[LTE band: B12 LTE bw: 10 MHz]
6:[LTE Rx chan: 5110 LTE Tx chan: 23110]
7:[LTE CA state: NOT ASSIGNED]
8:[EMM state: Registered Normal Service]
9:[RRC state: RRC Connected]
10:[IMS reg state: No Srv]
11:[PCC RxM RSSI: -67 RSRP (dBm): -86]
12:[PCC RxD RSSI: -67 RSRP (dBm): -85]
13:[Tx Power: 4294967283 TAC: 0954 (2388)]
14:[RSRQ (dB): -7.3 Cell ID: 0C5E6B11 (207514385)]
15:[SINR (dB): 21.2]
16:[OK]


0:[ATi3]
1:[Manufacturer: Sierra Wireless, Incorporated]
2:[Model: MC7455]
3:[Revision: SWI9X30C_02.30.01.01 r7792 CARMD-EV-FRMWR2 2018/07/13 02:24:52]
4:[MEID: xxx]
5:[IMEI: xxxx]
6:[IMEI SV: 16]
7:[FSN: xxx]
8:[+GCAP: +CGSM]
9:[OK]


#--------- CARRIER ID START ------------

Carrier ID: 310410

#--------- CARRIERID END ------------

0:[AT+CGDCONT?]
1:[+CGDCONT: 1,"IP","broadband","0.0.0.0",0,0,0,0]
2:[+CGDCONT: 2,"IPV4V6","broadband","0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0",0,0,0,0]
3:[OK]


0:[AT+CSQ]
1:[+CSQ: 26,99]
2:[OK]


0:[AT+rscp?]
1:[+RSCP:]
2:[OK]


0:[AT+ecio?]
1:[+ECIO: NOT IMPLEMENTED]
2:[OK]


0:[AT!GETRAT?]
1:[!GETRAT: NOT IMPLEMENTED]
2:[OK]


0:[AT!getband?]
1:[!GETBAND: B12]
2:[OK]


0:[AT*cnti=1]
1:[*CNTI: 1,LTE]
2:[OK]


0:[AT+COPS=3,0;+COPS?]
1:[+COPS: 0,0,"AT&T",7]
2:[OK]


0:[AT+COPS=3,2; +COPS?]
1:[+COPS: 0,2,"310410",7]
2:[OK]


0:[AT+CREG=2; +CREG?]
1:[+CREG: 2,1,"FFFE","C5E6B11",7]
2:[OK]


LAC:FFFE CELL ID:C5E6B11


0:[AT+CGREG=2; +CGREG?]
1:[+CGREG: 2,1,"FFFE","C5E6B11",7]
2:[OK]


0:[AT+CGATT?]
1:[+CGATT: 1]
2:[OK]


#--------- ROAMING INFO ------------

0:[AT^SYSCONFIG?]
1:[^SYSCONFIG: 2,0,1,2]
2:[OK]


0:[AT^SYSINFO]
1:[^SYSINFO: 2,3,0,9,1]
2:[OK]


#--------- END ROAMING INFO ------------

Pin Lock
0:[AT+CMEE=1;+CPIN?]
1:[+CPIN: READY]
2:[OK]


Network Lock
0:[AT+CLCK="PN",2]
1:[+CLCK: 0]
2:[OK]


#--------- START SIERRA DIAG ------------

0:[ATi3]
1:[Manufacturer: Sierra Wireless, Incorporated]
2:[Model: MC7455]
3:[Revision: SWI9X30C_02.30.01.01 r7792 CARMD-EV-FRMWR2 2018/07/13 02:24:52]
4:[MEID: xxx]
5:[IMEI: xxxx]
6:[IMEI SV: 16]
7:[FSN: xxx]
8:[+GCAP: +CGSM]
9:[OK]
#---------------------- i3 ---------------
0:[AT!image?]
1:[TYPE SLOT STATUS LRU FAILURES UNIQUE_ID BUILD_ID]
2:[FW 1 GOOD 2 0 0 ?_? 02.30.01.01_?]
3:[FW 2 GOOD 1 0 0 ?_? 02.24.05.06_?]
4:[FW 3 GOOD 1 0 0 ?_? 02.24.03.00_?]
5:[FW 4 EMPTY 0 0 0]
6:[Max FW images: 4]
7:[Active FW image is at slot 1]
8:[TYPE SLOT STATUS LRU FAILURES UNIQUE_ID BUILD_ID]
9:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 002.049_004 02.30.01.01_ATT]
10:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 001.005_000 02.24.05.06_BELL]
11:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 002.045_001 02.30.01.01_GENERIC]
12:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 001.023_000 02.30.01.01_ROGERS]
13:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 001.003_000 02.30.01.01_SIERRA]
14:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 002.045_000 02.30.01.01_SPRINT]
15:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 001.023_000 02.30.01.01_TELUS]
16:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 000.020_000 02.30.01.01_US-Cellular]
17:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 002.052_002 02.30.01.01_VERIZON]
18:[PRI FF GOOD 0 0 0 001.001_000 02.24.03.00_VODAFONE]
19:[Max PRI images: 50]
20:[OK]
#---------------------- !image? ---------------
0:[AT!impref?]
1:[!IMPREF:]
2:[preferred fw version: 02.30.01.01]
3:[preferred carrier name: GENERIC]
4:[preferred config name: GENERIC_002.045_001]
5:[current fw version: 02.30.01.01]
6:[current carrier name: GENERIC]
7:[current config name: GENERIC_002.045_001]
8:[OK]
#---------------------- !impref? ---------------
0:[AT+cgdcont?]
1:[+CGDCONT: 1,"IP","broadband","0.0.0.0",0,0,0,0]
2:[+CGDCONT: 2,"IPV4V6","broadband","0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0",0,0,0,0]
3:[OK]
#---------------------- +cgdcont? ---------------
0:[AT!selrat?]
1:[!SELRAT: 00, Automatic]
2:[OK]
#---------------------- !selrat? ---------------
0:[AT!band?]
1:[Index, Name, GW Band Mask L Band Mask TDS Band Mask]
2:[10, LTE_B12, 0000000000000000 0000000000000800 0000000000000000]
3:[OK]
#---------------------- !band? ---------------
0:[AT+cpin?]
1:[+CPIN: READY]
2:[OK]
#---------------------- +cpin? ---------------
#--------- END SIERRA DIAG ------------

You posted EXACTLY what is needed. A log before problems AND during the problem. Bravo dude! If everyone did this, we could help more people much quicker.

General network info says your still good on the network.

Do you HAVE to band lock to B12? I would unlock it to see what happens. Your signal strength could improve, maybe some better positioning or bigger antennas. No boosters.

Maybe get a car inverter and drive your unit closer to the tower and see if the problem persists.

If you can, try the SIM in another device.

Your account status seems fine based on your stats.

Hi,

Another owner of MOFI4500 4GXeLTE SIM4COMBO is here.

The fact that you cannot get access to a webserver using HTTP _but at the same time you can use previously initialized TCP/IP connection tells us that most likely there is a problem with DNS (domain name resolution). This is when you can ping a website by its IP address for example "ping 8.8.8.8" but at the same time "ping google.com" does not work because the router cannot resolve the name i.e. to get to know the IP address of the server "google.com" by sending a request to the external DNS server or find the result on the previous DNS query in the local cache.

Anyway, I would suggest the following:
a) if you have a chance try to connect your MOFI to the Internet using WAN port and a different internet provider. By default MOFI comes with failover service enabled and WAN /wired connection has priority over WWAN (the modem), so it will kick in automatically.

1) If everything works just fine then some funky stuff is happening to DNS requests on the tower / mobile provider network;
2) If everything works as before i.e. the problem still exists then the problem is in MOFI software which is the heavily modified version of OpenWrt 14.7;

b) Try to use a different power adapter - a little bit mode powerful one. I noticed that the stock power adapter in certain situations let the voltage lever go quite low (I have somewhere on the forum this situation documented). I mean we want to make sure that MOFI does not suffer from power spikes when it uses the WWAN modem.

jmatthew wrote: Sat Jun 20, 2020 4:25 pm

• When I log in to the Mofi control panel once things have gone down, and try to do the "Internet connection test" from the main screen it does indeed fail. However, when I go to System>>Diagnostics, and do things like run a ping test to openwrt.org or do a traceroute, they work and return live results.

Some more ideas:

when the Internet connectivity is lost (your words quoted above confirm the fact that MOFI itself can reach the internet)

please do the following:
a) assuming that we are talking about Windows, open command prompt windows (run cmd.exe command) and execute in that newly opened console window the following command:
ping -n 10000 google.com

It will obviously fail, don't close the window let it stay open you will need it later;

b) I don't know how much you know about SSH/ putty but if it does not ring the bell for you then merely go to MOFI /Basic/System/Webshell - another window should be open and you can get access to MOFI OpenWrt command prompt.
Login to MOFI using you name password like root / your password.
Try to run the following commands (you are restarting the services without rebooting the device):

/etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart
/etc/init.d/odhcpd restart
/etc/init.d/firewall restart

Do it one by one and every time when you executed the command look at the console window where you run ping - at some point I hope it should start working - then you found the service that causes the grief.

Pure gold there, thank you for posting this info. Hopefully it helps the OP and many others!

Thank you SO MUCH for the guidance! I was able to do most of this, but I'm not sure it offered a lot of insight. You'll see below all of my activities after SSHing into the Mofi. It didn't seem to do anything with the odhcpd restart.

And: Even though Internet appeared to drop on all of our devices, I was able to successfully ping google.com from the command line, without any issues. (I didn't capture that below, but trust me, I did it before running the resets.)

So: I did a ping for google.com and it worked, I logged into the router and ran the restarts below, and pinged google.com again and it still worked. Yet all connected devices otherwise had no http connections. So frustrating!

Log dump below. Let me know if you spot any clues here, and thank you again so much for helping out!


-----------------------------------------------------

MOFI Version: 4.1.8-std

built on: #1 Fri Jun 12 16:20:35 EDT 2020

Commit: e112020a114efe821247d626336425369ec07ca1

-----------------------------------------------------

root@MOFI4500:~# /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart

udhcpc: started, v1.25.1

udhcpc: sending discover

udhcpc: no lease, failing

root@MOFI4500:~# /etc/init.d/odhcpd restart

Command failed: Not found

root@MOFI4500:~# /etc/init.d/odhcpd restart

root@MOFI4500:~# /etc/init.d/firewall restart

Warning: Section @zone[1] (wan) cannot resolve device of network 'wan2'

Warning: Section @zone[1] (wan) cannot resolve device of network 'wan3'

Warning: Section @zone[1] (wan) cannot resolve device of network 'wan6'

Warning: Section @zone[1] (wan) cannot resolve device of network 'module_dhcpv6'

Warning: Section @zone[1] (wan) cannot resolve device of network 'apcli0'

* Flushing IPv4 filter table

* Flushing IPv4 nat table

* Flushing IPv4 mangle table

* Flushing IPv4 raw table

* Flushing IPv6 filter table

* Flushing IPv6 mangle table

* Flushing IPv6 raw table

* Populating IPv4 filter table

* Zone 'lan'

* Zone 'wan'

* Zone 'vpn'

* Rule 'Allow-DHCP-Renew'

* Rule 'Allow-Ping'

* Rule #10

* Rule 'WEB'

* Rule 'WEBSSL'

* Rule 'WEB8080'

* Rule 'SSH'

* Rule #15

* Rule #16

* Rule #17

* Rule #18

* Forward 'lan' -> 'vpn'

* Forward 'vpn' -> 'lan'

* Forward 'lan' -> 'wan'

* Populating IPv4 nat table

* Zone 'lan'

* Zone 'wan'

* Zone 'vpn'

* Populating IPv4 mangle table

* Zone 'lan'

* Zone 'wan'

* Zone 'vpn'

* Populating IPv4 raw table

* Zone 'lan'

* Zone 'wan'

* Zone 'vpn'

* Set tcp_ecn to off

* Set tcp_syncookies to on

! Unable to write value: No such file or directory

* Set tcp_window_scaling to on

* Running script '/etc/firewall.voip'

* Running script '/etc/firewall.pptpd'

* Running script '/etc/firewall.dmz'

* Running script '/etc/firewall-cloudlink.dmz'

* Running script '/etc/firewall.pfilter'

* Running script '/etc/firewall.user'

* Running script '/usr/lib/nodogsplash/restart.sh'

* Running script '/usr/share/miniupnpd/firewall.include'

ip6tables: No chain/target/match by that name.

* Running script '/tmp/firewall.mssfix'

root@MOFI4500:~# /etc/init.d/odhcpd restart

root@MOFI4500:~# ping google.com

PING google.com (172.217.7.14): 56 data bytes

64 bytes from 172.217.7.14: seq=0 ttl=117 time=39.835 ms

64 bytes from 172.217.7.14: seq=1 ttl=117 time=38.474 ms

64 bytes from 172.217.7.14: seq=2 ttl=117 time=38.486 ms

64 bytes from 172.217.7.14: seq=3 ttl=117 time=37.811 ms

One more interesting data point I just discovered: The Internet just went down again. I again tried to ping google.com, and it worked. But then I tried pinging netflix.com -- which unlike google.com, isn't a site I have visited recently -- and it failed. What does that tell us?

Hello jmatthew,

Thanks for the logs, all looks good. But one thing confuses me - you ran ping from MOFI. We already know that is guarantied to work.

Let's begin at the beginning:

You said:

>>"Even though Internet appeared to drop on all of our devices, I was able to successfully ping google.com from the >>command line, without any issues. (I didn't capture that below, but trust me, I did it before running the resets.) "

Does that mean that you ran ping on your computer, i.e. you could ping google.com from Windows but at the same time you could not open google.com from the browser on the same Windows computer at that very moment? Did I understand you correctly ? if so then it would be really interesting.

There are several more useful commands (Windows):

"tracert google.com" - traces the route - run it when there is Internet connection and when you don't have one - you will see the difference.

nslookup google.com - DNS lookup (give the name get back the IP address)

C:\nslookup google.com
Server: S10.lan - this is my MOFI
Address: 192.168.10.1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: google.com
Addresses: 2607:f8b0:4000:812
172.217.2.238
---

and finally. Next time when you internet stopped working please run the following command:

ipconfig /all and show us the line "DNS servers" - does it point to 192.168.10.1 (you MOFI)?

The thing is that every Windows client can redefine DNS servers and it probably should be the next step.

Hello,

Sorry, did not see your question:
>What does that tell us?

It tells us that your computers ask for the domain name resolution (google) and gets the correct IP address. When you try to ping netflix it also asks for the domain name resolution (netflix ) and gets none. Why? Because most likely the IP address is retrieved from DNS cache (even Windows has DNS cache you see its content just run "ipconfig /displaydns", to empty it - “ipconfig /flushdns”) because you already used this name in the past while netxflix IP address is not in the cache and cannot be retrieved right away from the actual DNS server.

Another possibility is that you use DNS servers of you provided (you don't want it) and he simply blocks those requests for Netflix to make sure that you are not watching netflix using the cellular connection.

I am pretty much sure that you should be able to ping nextflix by its IP. And if you cannot then most likely is blocked by your Internet provider.

This is its IP:
>>Pinging neflix.com [34.218.19.240] with 32 bytes of data:

To the OP you are not alone in this. I've had the same issue starting around the same time. I'm using UbiFi so the same ATT network.

I've updated to the latest internal modem/router firmware, done a full factory reset on the router, and even purchased a new router trying to pinpoint the issue.

The only thing I've done that helps give a more stable connection is set the internal modem to restart every 2 hours. This at least only takes about a minute instead of the 3+ that the whole router takes.

I've been in contact with UbiFi and am trying to get them to send me a new SIM since that's the only constant though all of this.

The only thing I'll add is that when the connection drops my router loses its IP address assigned by the tower, but everything else you've said it's my experience "connected" activities (zoom, netflix, etc.) all continue but "new" ones will not load.

I'm having these same problems as well. Have you made any progress solving them?

Hi there,

I'm glad to know it's not just me! At this point I've tried the excellent advice offered here, and it hasn't helped. I also tried a new SIM, and then a new account with a different data provider (though still on AT&T), but the issue persisted.

I do have a new Mofi router arriving today -- this time a SIM7 instead of the SIM4 that I had -- and I also have a test account ready to go with T-Mobile, which doesn't work as well as AT&T where I am but works well enough to give this a shot. I'll let you know if any combo of moving to the SIM7 and going to AT&T instead of T-Mobile does anything to help the situation. Stay tuned. Siasl, were your issues on AT&T as well? I wonder if something changed with all those plans that has made them problematic with the Mofi.

Guys, the problem is that you were advised to follow a certain troubleshooting procedure but nobody provided any substantial feedback allowing to come to any meaningful conclusions.

All what I see is just "it does not work for me as well" and it does not help.

All that is not a rocket science, just very basic stuff. Looking at how many people have those strange problems I could even try to offer a remote assistance (to connect to the router remotely and run all that diagnostics what I mentioned before) - after all, spending 20-30 minutes of my time is not a big deal and is worth making someone happy.
But it is not going to work in principle because when you have those issues then it is not possible to connect to the router from outside (Internet /WAN), i.e. you are on your own since only you can access the router from LAN (local network).

I'm running Ubifi which runs off of ATT

Question for those of you having problems. Are you running off the internal router or are you in bridge mode to your own router? I'm running the latter.

siasl wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 4:21 pm Question for those of you having problems. Are you running off the internal router or are you in bridge mode to your own router? I'm running the latter.

I'm running off of the internal router.
The issue persisted for me with both the old SIM4 Mofi and a brand new SIM7.

I've now had mine up for about 16 hours with no disconnect, I made 2 changes from the factory defaults. I set up the band lock and advance band lock to use ONLY 12/17 since that is the best one at my house. I did make one other change and I'm not at home to verify where in the settings it's at but if it hits 24 hours I'll update with that also.

Festerw wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 7:43 am I've now had mine up for about 16 hours with no disconnect, I made 2 changes from the factory defaults. I set up the band lock and advance band lock to use ONLY 12/17 since that is the best one at my house. I did make one other change and I'm not at home to verify where in the settings it's at but if it hits 24 hours I'll update with that also.

Let me know what the second setting was you changed. I hadn't done the advanced bandlock, only the "regular" bandlock. I've now tried the advanced to see if that adds a layer of difference.

To follow up on the other things I flagged above: I tried the new SIM7 router, and, no surprises, got the same problem. But that was with AT&T. I also activated a T-Mobile account, and am going to spend some time the next couple days use using that to try to isolate whether the issue is with AT&T. The reason I haven't been able to go all-in on testing that is that while my T-Mobile download speeds are great (20+, I'll take it!) the upload speeds are miserable and not enough to sustain the video calls I do all day for work. But I'm about to be off for a few days and we'll try running everything through T-Mobile on the SIM7 to see if any change.

And the only other thing I'll throw out there: In our home we also have Ring cameras/doorbells, Sonos speakers, Honeywell Lyric thermostats and an August smart lock, all connected to the network. The issue clearly isn't one of wifi interference, but I do wonder if some device, somewhere, is doing something that is making AT&T kill the connection.

And finally: I am still using the firmware that Mofi labels "GENERIC," though I see in the settings there are options to pick carrier-specific firmware, including for AT&T. I haven't tried that yet.

More to come.

Edited to add one more update: When I lose the Internet connection, resetting the Sierra module restores everything, the same way doing a full reset of the router does. I'm not sure of the major distinction there, if that points to a router network setting or a network issue itself. Or if it means anything at all.

jmatthew wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:55 am Let me know what the second setting was you changed. I hadn't done the advanced bandlock, only the "regular" bandlock. I've now tried the advanced to see if that adds a layer of difference.

To follow up on the other things I flagged above: I tried the new SIM7 router, and, no surprises, got the same problem. But that was with AT&T. I also activated a T-Mobile account, and am going to spend some time the next couple days use using that to try to isolate whether the issue is with AT&T. The reason I haven't been able to go all-in on testing that is that while my T-Mobile download speeds are great (20+, I'll take it!) the upload speeds are miserable and not enough to sustain the video calls I do all day for work. But I'm about to be off for a few days and we'll try running everything through T-Mobile on the SIM7 to see if any change.

And the only other thing I'll throw out there: In our home we also have Ring cameras/doorbells, Sonos speakers, Honeywell Lyric thermostats and an August smart lock, all connected to the network. The issue clearly isn't one of wifi interference, but I do wonder if some device, somewhere, is doing something that is making AT&T kill the connection.

And finally: I am still using the firmware that Mofi labels "GENERIC," though I see in the settings there are options to pick carrier-specific firmware, including for AT&T. I haven't tried that yet.

More to come.

Edited to add one more update: When I lose the Internet connection, resetting the Sierra module restores everything, the same way doing a full reset of the router does. I'm not sure of the major distinction there, if that points to a router network setting or a network issue itself. Or if it means anything at all.

I lied, I changed 3 things the one mentioned before, and under Network I enabled IPv6 support, and in Internal Modem settings at the bottom I added DNS as an alternate reconnection check.

No idea why but those seem to have it "fixed" or at least a whole lot more stable than it was.

Hello All-

I'm just jumping in here because I'm also the proud owner of a MoFi4500 router on AT&T that is exhibiting the EXACT same issues as the OP, right down to being able to ping servers via a name as well as an IP address.

Some more information that I managed to scramble together. It appears that only websites are inaccessible (port 80/443).
I was able to open a successful connection via SSH to a remote computer from both my PC and the shell on the MoFi4500 (sensitive info removed)

--- SSH OUTPUT ---
root@MOFI4500:~# ssh *******
*******'s password:
*******'s password:

Who's On?

finger: unknown host: *******.edu
Login Name Tty Idle Login Time Office Office Phone Host
***** Brian ********* pts/10 * Jun 17 13:53 634EEC
****** Trevor *********** pts/0 * Jan 13 09:55 10-A421
ada:{27}

--- END SSH OUTPUT ---

I was able to re-run a speedtest from http://rochester.ny.speedtest.frontier.com/ (page was already loaded in my browser) and *also* from the Speedtest app on my phone (connected via WiFi). I was not able to re-load the speedtest page in my browser and run it again.

Hopefully a mod will approve my post s and I can join in the fun!

I think that may have done it! I'm currently at 15 hours uptime, which is a recent record. I suspect it's still losing connection, but changing the recovery method to dns seems to be allowing it to reconnect in a way that it couldn't before. So fingers crossed that this does it! I hope yours has stayed up...

siasl, did you try changing these settings too?

By the way, I found another recent thread on the Wireless Joint Facebook group with people complaining about the exact same behavior on AT&T, starting around the same time it started with us, but with a different router. It's possible they changed something with these plans or the network then. I do believe it's AT&T specific: I've had a Mofi 4500 SIM7 running a T-Mobile data plan for 3+ days now with no interruption. (I bought all that in my desperation to find more reliable service. Unfortunately, the T-Mobile service isn't fast enough for me to use for work.)

That was my suspicion also after the new router acted the same way. It has to be something tower side since everything on my end was changed.

I'm still waiting on a email back from Mofi to return the new router. I'm giving them until end of day tomorrow before I file a dispute with my CC. I'm planning on arguing about the restock fee since I reached out to tech support and received one email in response and nothing else.

Ugh. About 20 mins after I posted that message, my connection died, same as usual. So I’ve gone from celebrating to cursing. Are you still solid down no downtime? And can you confirm the only changes you made were enabling ipv6 and setting the reconnection option to dns?

By the way, I had the same MoFi experience — very difficult to get any tech support on this issue. Last dispatch from them was several days ago saying they are looking into it.

Still good here so far. I do have the router set to reboot every day around 5 am but that's the way I've always had it set.

I registered just to post we are having the exact same issue with UbiFi/ATT as of recently.

Some things I've done/tried with no success:

• BandLock to Band 12 (best and only one in my area) - Did not try Advanced Bandlock though.
  Reset Sierra Module
  Factory reset Mofi.
  Bought Netgear WiFi, making Mofi4500 bridge (happens with or without bridge mode)
  Spoken with UbiFi support, they suggested Sierra Module Reset, default settings of the Mofi should be sufficient without changing much, and upgrading the firmware. All didn't make a difference. UbiFi sent me a replacement Mofi4500, which has the same issue, unfortunately.
  Upgraded firmware to 4.1.8, and also rolled back to previous version.
  Replacement Mofi has v4.1.3 -std so it's not firmware specific.
  Tried grabbing system logs when it happens, but I can't access the interface when it happens. Power cycling is the only option to restore the connection.
  Occurs every few hours, to sometimes within 24 hours on the dot.
  Changed Carrier NetMask Override value.

Was great for the first 3 months, and then up until a few weeks ago, this began. Signal strength not an issue:
Band: B12 LTE bw: 10 MHz (700 Mhz)
Carrier Aggregation: NOT ASSIGNED
Signal Strength: -93 (dBm) (Good)
Signal Quality: -9.8
Diversity Signal Strength: -91 (dBm)

With the other Mofi, and newer firmware, the signal quality fluctuated quite a bit, from -6.0 to -10.0 whereas with the replacement Mofi and v4.1.3 std, the signal quality remains pretty consistent, not fluctuating so rapidly.

Lastly, it happened last night around 3:30AM, but this time the Mofi reconnected on its own without a power cycle. I checked this morning and it was on a WCDMA Band, instead of LTE band. I rebooted to restore to an LTE band.

I did just change the Alternate Re-connection method from "Ping" to "DNS" so we'll see how that goes.

UbiFi suggested I try a different tower, but I'm already pointed at the tower they suggested.

FWIW, the thread I mentioned in the Wireless Joint Facebook group has owners of Netgear M1 routers complaining about this same thing. AT&T remains the common thread. Seems like it started hitting everyone around the same time a few weeks ago. So frustrating.

jmatthew wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2020 11:10 am FWIW, the thread I mentioned in the Wireless Joint Facebook group has owners of Netgear M1 routers complaining about this same thing. AT&T remains the common thread. Seems like it started hitting everyone around the same time a few weeks ago. So frustrating.

For months now, ATT has been shutting down pretty much all prepaid accounts from being used in a router.
Unfortunately there's not much you can do in the router (at least legally) to fix the issue, maybe consider switching carriers such as Verizon or Tmobile.

To come back around with this.

I'm still losing connectivity from time to time once, maybe twice a day but it is far better than it was.

One more thing to note, I found there (for me) is no reason to reboot anything. Simply using the 'Band Scanner' function is enough to get things working again.

I am having same issue...for last 4-6 weeks...having to reboot ubifi mofi running att sim...still better than going back to sat but a bit of a pain.

Festerw wrote: Mon Jul 06, 2020 10:09 am To come back around with this.

I'm still losing connectivity from time to time once, maybe twice a day but it is far better than it was.

One more thing to note, I found there (for me) is no reason to reboot anything. Simply using the 'Band Scanner' function is enough to get things working again.

I wonder if that is because it forces the modem to connect/disconnect from each band to test if that band is available...
I've found that opening a local shell via SSH and issuing the AT!RESET command to the modem allows me to reconnect (I can't get to that option via the webpage when the issue occurs.

So my family started complaining about it not working a few weeks ago. Have mofi on att plan as well. Sounds like this is on att's side... I wonder if I can use an att phone sim with it.

techp1 wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 12:07 pm ... I wonder if I can use an att phone sim with it.

Worth a try. Search here if anyone else has posted about trying it

Checking back. Has anyone found a cure? This is really driving me crazy... And it’s especially frustrating that when the service works, it’s GREAT! So much better than Verizon or T-Mobile where I am. But the constant resets are killing me.

I see someone started a thread on Facebook having the same problem with a non-mofi router.

I have to be selfish here as my whole neighborhood depends on the ATT iPad plan to continue to work but the root effect is very simple - on the ATT iPad plan you need to stay below 22GB and ensure it's in an iPad.

Study how ATT changed how the plan behaves. Have you noticed ATT sending "ping" SMS to the plan? If the Mofi does not expose this information, try and access the modem directly or risk it and plug it into a phone with data off so you can see the "ping" SMS from ATT.

First things first, if you can't stay below 22GB, ATT does not want you to be using this plan. All effort will be wasted if this is a no go. I have mentioned here the combo I am testing for whole neighborhood while keeping to this limit: https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=32 ... 210#p10061

jmatthew, if that works for you, I can accept your MOFI + ATT SIM and set it up so that it works as you would expect without all the frustration.

No charges.

No beer needed, just cover shipping please.

Unfortunately, I cannot mention more details. The first two lines have all the information you need really.

OK, I've found a workaround: Use a VPN.

I activated NordVPN on the router, and no more dropped connections. It clearly has something to do with the way AT&T is routing/monitoring the traffic. The good news is this fixed the problem. The bad news is I took a massive speed hit for using the VPN: I was getting 60 down / 15 up, with the VPN activated I get about 8 down and 8 up. My next stop is to play around with other VPNs to see if I can find something faster. (Any recommendations?) I went with Nord based on online recommendations, and it's really easy to set up in the Mofi 4500 control panel. Also, in the grand scheme of things, not too expensive: About $80 for two years.

It also circumvents Stream Saver, if AT&T has activated that on your account and your reseller can't turn it off, allowing video to stream in full 4k without downscaling.

One hiccup: I can't access Bank of America, which seems to be a known issue between that site and VPNs. Various online forums suggest switching servers can help.

This is not ideal, as I know VPNs aren't for everyone. But it's a start.

VPN speed is more dependent on the router than on the VPN servers.. The encryption will keep your router cpu maxed out. To get your speed back, use a better router between the mofi and your devices, with the mofi set in bridge mode so it becomes a dumb modem.

Does anyone have any thoughts on why VPN would be fixing this -- and anything that tells us about other (better) strategies that might also work?

A VPN tunnel tends to bypass the router's and the provider's normal NAT and dns routing as everything runs directly through the VPN. Maybe try manually entering Google or OpenDNS addresses on both the router and your devices instead of allowing them to use the provider's dns...

Been following this thread for a while. Pretty much same thing... high ping on att sim but no network drop. Was using an ebay att account but switched to an att post paid ipad plan. I couldn't get purevpn to work so no comment on the vpn part but i did request the free 7 day trial for cloud link, I will report back once i get that going. my ping issue is only really during (i assume) high tower congestion. 6pm'ish till 10-11ishpm. i did notice my signal quality jumps from 8-10 to 15-20. I'm not sure if this is a problem with my set up. Did some test with the stock paddles and it was still the same.

I changed the mofi DNS to 1.1.1.1 (at least i think I did, I hate the mofi interface) and also change it on my pc. we will see around 5-6pm when the usual starts. It's so annoying having to switch to my phones hotspot during this time just to play a game. I am having trouble getting internet to work though with ip pass-through connected to a R7000 running Tomato. I'm sure is some setting i'm not changing. This has to be a 100% issue within the mofi.

Edit: Has anyone upgraded there mofi power supply? i recently ordered the 2.5a from The Wireless Haven facebook store. Anything that helps i guess.

Just an update to add that we installed VPN at the device level on our devices, and everything works perfectly. Which is to say: The Internet connection still gets lost on the router, but even when the connection is lost, connected devices using VPN can get through just fine. I really don't understand this, but that's what it is. We are using NordVPN, and there is no noticeable slowdown in speed.... Pretty much just as fast as without the VPN.

I'm ordering a higher-powered router so we can install the VPN at the router level and not have to worry about it on individual devices, but for now, this seems to be a reliable (if annoying) workaround.

I have also been having this issue with the MOFI on UBIFI. I tried several things that did not work, including updating the firmware, getting a new router, bandlock, etc.. nothing worked. I noticed that some youtube streaming would continue after everyone else lost connection. Divine inspiration told me to try a VPN because I thought it would make all the connections appear as a single connection. I tried PureVPN on the router, but had issues with streaming amazon. Not a big fan of PureVPN. Then I just tried ProtonVPN because I had that before and liked it. I put proton on each device (but not the firestick or chromecast) and it seems to have fixed my problems. I went from resetting 8-10 times a day to not once in the last 3 days since I made the switch. Hope this helps.

Update on my end. non of the in router settings did anything for me. VPN on router level slows down my connection way to much 25 to 5mbps. VPN on device level works but I still get dodgy ping to local server in SF with nord connected to SF. maybe it's a nord thing but at least gaming was playable (ping 80-100). The power supply came in but still getting ping jumps up to 500ms. I order a wg3526 and EP06-A from Richard on FB will see how that goes. i want to avoid a VPN all together. if the new modem fails I guess I'll just have to USB tether from 6pm-11pm every day to game....

Does using a HTTPS proxy instead of a VPN work fixing the disconnection issue?

Does using a HTTPS proxy instead of a VPN work fixing the disconnection issue?

I'd love to try that, but can't figure out how to set a proxy at the Mofi/router level works... I'm probably looking right at the proper setting. Any suggestions?

Also another interesting observation: As I mentioned before, using VPN at the individual device level fixed all of our issues. But it has also somehow enabled consistently faster connections, which makes no sense to me. When we enable VPN, we get 25% to 50% faster speeds than without VPN.

I have also been having this issue with my Ubifi ATT mofi router. Same symptoms, random frequent loss of connectivity but only for new connections. When I’m connected through my split tunnel vpn for work, I remain connected and can get to sites within the corporate network. I cannot get to anything outside the vpn. If I’m connected to a video conference call, that remains working fine. I ran a couple DNS queries and I was able to resolve websites that were outside the corporate network, but I couldn’t connect to the sites. This is garbage, especially for the amount we’re paying for this service. Ubifi should be able to help us. I am going to open a support case tomorrow, but I’ve seen other comments mention that they don’t respond so we’ll see... By the way, I’m also in western NY.

I have not heard/read anything official from ATT but it seems like ATT is starting to value their LTE at $13/GB and axing any usage that falls below that metric.

Since a large number of lines will be cancelled because of this decision, they are collecting logs of line behavior that can be shown to flout the T&C of each associated plan to help address potential lawsuits. More details should be forthcoming in the following weeks.

For those running VPNs on ATT and potentially significantly devaluing the $13/GB point, I would recommend to start doing some research, eg: Visible or the like when the lines do get cancelled (sometimes without notice).

I would highly encourage each affected person to file FCC claims at the least.

@LoveMeSomeCALTE

What research do you suggest?

Thanks for the info.

I am running a set of experiments to inform my rural community of LTE based backhauls they can use for internet.

While I personally have very poor connection to Verizon (and I STILL have not been able to figure out where exactly my closest Verizon tower is), the rest of my rural community half a mile out and onwards have excellent Verizon coverage, so Visible is my current list. The fact that I am unable to continually monitor the data for these experiments has affected my analysis but it seems Visible is a great fit for an LTE based backhaul AS LONG AS your usecase does not require sustained speeds.

I am yet to conclude my studies but 3 weeks of timeseries data shows that Visible has a very peculiar traffic shaping algorithm that seems to deprioritize a band ultra fast.

I have never seen anything like it before, the closest being Tracfone in behavior but this is a magnitude of an order quicker.

The end user will notice that a connection does not break but becomes "unusable".

VPN/Proxy/Disconnect WILL NOT fix the issue, only band changing will. It also seems they are changing their algorithm all the time. Atleast with Tracfone their behavior was entirely consistent to be throttling with a velocity based tier of the amount of throttling. Visible is unpredictable which means they are running multiple variants of traffic management strategies at once.

General browsing/email/youtube/netflix will be unaffected as will VoLTE.

When I was using the mofi firmware my connection would constantly be spotty. Pretty sure it had something to do with tls security breaking. Last time I checked mofi firmware is built on barrier breaker which is deprecated and no longer supported or updated by official channels. Goldenorb, while not as robust, is much more stable, secure and is based on current openwrt firmware.

I have the same exact issue. I am also using a Ubifi account over AT&T.

Based on the symptoms of existing TCP sessions continuing to function, but new ones failing...I assumed it was a bug in the router software with the handling of NATted sessions. Now it appears to be a bug on the AT&T side of things (messed up carrier grade NAT), or a deliberate attempt to gimp folks using their service as a WISP.

I tried setting up an openvpn client on the MOFI 4500 itself, but my god it can only do about 3-4MB up/down. So I am going to try putting it in bridge mode and doing the sitewide VPN using my Unifi USG Pro 4.

Hi, just curious if you were still running all these tests without the Orbi hooked up? I didn't notice anything about putting the MoFi in bridge mode while using the Orbi. I was having the same issue and the two routers don't like competition thus constant internet drops so isolating the Orbi as the single WiFi source solved the problem for me. I tried the same thing you did but turned out to be a timing coincidence while hooked up to the MOFI only.

Hi. I am new to the site and joined after finding this thread. Like others I have Ubifi as a a home internet service. I lose my external IP up to 16 times a day, with no pattern. Sometimes I can go for 5 or 6 hours without failure. I have tried two different MoFi's and many different settings. Right now I have 5 bars of signal running on Band 2 and also have 5 bars on Band 12. Has anyone found a solution? I don't have other options for Internet other than ATT and Satalite. I am hoping someone much smarter than me can find a workable solution. It looks like it is only happening to folks using ATT, would using a different LTE Modem help?

Thank you.

Since I started this thread, I figured I should post in one tidy spot how I fixed (or rather "fixed") this problem.

I tried many things, including:
-- Three different AT&T network providers and plans, using multiple APNs
-- Tried Verizon and T-Mobile network plans, and had no problems, confirming the issue was AT&T (but signal strength wasn't strong enough on those to stick with them)
-- Another Mofi router, and another non-Mofi router. Many threads on Reddit, wirelessjoint.com and the Wireless Joint facebook group make clear this issue has nothing to do with Mofi, and people are having it with AT&T on many devices.
-- A half dozen different configurations/firmware installs on the Mofi

In the end, going through a VPN saved us. Once we installed VPN software on our primary devices (we used NordVPN, more on them in a moment), everything just worked. No more lost Internet connections, ever. And even though the VPN software was only installed on our connected computers, phones and tablets, the many other devices on the network that weren't going through the VPN -- Apple TV, a zillion smart home devices, more -- continued to hum along just fine, without ever triggering the need to reset the Mofi router.

My best guess is that at some point, some sort of traffic/device limit was being triggered with AT&T and it was disabling HTTP traffic. But I really don't know, and for now, I really don't care. Everything finally works great.

NordVPN (www.nordvpn.com) was incredibly easy to set up, and they seem to offer great deals (in the end, paid about $80 for three years). That allows for six simultaneous connected devices. Though again, we only put the VPN on our heavy-use devices, like our laptops and iPads. Technically, you can install NordVPN (or other VPNs) at the router level, and the Mofi 4500 makes this incredibly easy to do with built-in setup for NordVPN. But there was a huge performance hit doing it that way, as the Mofi just isn't strong enough to process the VPN encryption. Enabling the VPN on Mofi dropped our speeds by about 80%. Enabling it on the device level we see truly NO drop in speed.

I did briefly buy a souped up ASUS router from FlashRouters (www.flashrouters.com), with a massive processor and built-in custom firmware for various VPNs, including Nord. It worked great, and speeds were much faster, but in the end I found the router unwieldy and couldn't get it to play as nicely with our Orbi wifi. I ended up returning it. The people at FlashRouters were fantastic and I would highly recommend them. If you install the VPN at the router level, obviously everything is much simpler in terms of connected devices -- and that only counts as one device.

We've only run into two quirks with using the VPN: Some web sites (including Google every once in awhile) will occasionally force you to do one of those I-am-not-a-robot captchas, as the VPN traffic triggers something or other on their end. And, more frustrating, Bank of America's website and mobile app cannot be accessed through NordVPN. This is a known issue, apparently BofA blocks a lot of VPN traffic. So when we log into banking we do have to temporarily disable the VPN on the device we're using, which again the Nord software makes super easy.

The final point I'd mention is that if you go down the Reddit rabbit hole on NordVPN you'll see that they had some sort of compromising issue in the not-too-distant-past, and some people who are using VPNs for hyper anonymity don't like them for that reason. But (a) Nord claims they've fixed all that and (b) I'm just using it to get my Internet to work, not launder drug cartel money.

So, there you go. Not so much a fix as a workaround, but it really does work, and now we're back humming along with fast speeds and no router resets at all. Good luck.

J

Hmmm... So I've been attributing my fixed AT&T problems to using custom DNS servers. I've entered 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 into pretty much every manual DNS spot in my LTE router and normal router. While that may or may not be what fixed it, I do ALSO have a VPN tunnel on my main Asus router. The router is only directing traffic from my ps4/xbone through the tunnel, so as not to affect my other traffic, but the tunnel is always connected, so maybe just having that open tunnel 24/7 keeps the connection alive and fixes the problem...

I've had my data connection timed out on my M1 after a few hours but using a VPN does solves the problem. I'm using ExpressVPN through a L2TP connection instead of OpenVPN. OpenVPN kills my data speeds by half when using on a router. L2TP maintains my original speeds. AT&T seems to be killing connections on port 443 and 80. This may be there way of trying too discourage ppl off the iPad and Car Connect post paid plans that are using them in hotspots. I also went the extra mile by changing the imei # on the M1 to the iPad they have on file on my account. Setting the TTL to 65 on your devices/router doesn't do anything so don't waste your time going that route. Just use a VPN that doesn't directly connect to port 443 and 80. Problem solved!

Hi! I'm new in the boards here. I signed up to chime in. Same problems here. I have two AT&T-based reseller plans and on the one I've been using for the last few weeks I started having this problem somewhere around when my router got an SMS message stating that I hit the 22GB mark. I'm wondering if everyone here can confirm that this is only an issue after 22GB.

Also, I'm wondering if this is only on reseller/iPad plans or if this is across all AT&T data plans, direct sales included.

Anyway, things I've tried:

• Rebooting - works until it doesn't

• Disconnect/reconnect modem in router UI - works until it doesn't

• Having a VPN connected, though not used directly, to any port other than 80/443 - works until it doesn't

• Disabling ipv6 on router - works until it doesn't

• Specifying Google's DNS servers on router and clients - works until it doesn't

• Switched out SIMs to my other AT&T plan purchased from a different reseller - just did it so have to wait a while...maybe until I hit 22GB, hmm??

I'm simultaneously checking an actively used VPN with my wife's computer while using the alternate plan/SIM - I figure if we have the connection problem then at least she won't get pissed at me.

I contacted one of the resellers today and they are aware of the issue and state that it is AT&T's fault. I will contact the other reseller when they are open on Monday, if we start to see the same behavior with the new SIM.

Is anyone on one of these plans, is over 22GB and is not experiencing this problem?

Also, does anyone know what kind of pricing I'd be looking at for a proper AT&T business plan for 500-750GB of monthly usage?

AT&T really does have great performance where I am, so I'd like to continue taking advantage of their infrastructure if I can. I get 110+Mbps in the mornings here with them and always at least 50Mbps any other time of day. Uploads are good too at 20+Mbps always. I use a Sierra 7565, FYI.

Thanks all!
Ken

Any chance we can mark this again as unsolved? The VPN is a workaround, not a resolution. It may be sufficient for the OP but the problem is very much still there.

Thanks!
Ken

khuffmanjr wrote: Sat Aug 08, 2020 10:23 pm Hi! I'm new in the boards here. I signed up to chime in

Welcome Ken

khuffmanjr wrote: Sat Aug 08, 2020 10:23 pm I will contact the other reseller when they are open on Monday, if we start to see the same behavior with the new SIM.

Is anyone on one of these plans, is over 22GB and is not experiencing this problem?

Please, look at my post history to understand why "this problem" is here to stay. The best you can do right now is pay $80/mo to ATT for a 100GB plan.

Also, do update us with feedback from these resellers, please.

khuffmanjr wrote: Sat Aug 08, 2020 10:23 pm I'm wondering if everyone here can confirm that this is only an issue after 22GB.

Also, I'm wondering if this is only on reseller/iPad plans or if this is across all AT&T data plans, direct sales included.

I will put one of my carefully guarded iPad plans to test this weekend if a backup plan comes through. I will update this thread with my status.

khuffmanjr wrote: Sat Aug 08, 2020 10:23 pm Also, does anyone know what kind of pricing I'd be looking at for a proper AT&T business plan for 500-750GB of monthly usage?

1. What's the min sustained speed you require?
2. Are you in a rural, decongested area?

khuffmanjr wrote: Sat Aug 08, 2020 10:23 pm ...
Also, does anyone know what kind of pricing I'd be looking at for a proper AT&T business plan for 500-750GB of monthly usage?
...

Thanks all!
Ken

I've heard its the way to go to be legit and I've heard it isn't ridiculous, but is expensive, though you get highest priority. I've not done so myself.

I'm new here but came across this post while trying to figure out a solution to this exact same problem. I've recently updated to the most recent firmware 4.2.8-std on a MOFI4500-4GXeLTE-V2. This firmware was released on Aug. 23, 2020 that was supposed to "Fixed some re-connection issues on ATT" according to the mofi-network downloads page. I was able to capture a screenshot while monitoring my mofi signal to see what happens when my internet does go out. It looks like the signal gets completely disconnected for a few seconds. I average 4-5 bars with a booster and 2-4 bars without. I generally get 10-20megs down and 1-5 up. I have my mofi band locked to B2 both under "Advanced Bandlock" and "Bandlock" as this seems to be the best speeds and signal strength. I am located rurally so not too much traffic. I've tried the various options mentioned throughout this post such as enabling IPv6 support and the DNS reconnection options. I have not tried the VPN option as that is more $$ I do not need to spend. Has anyone come to a "fixed" solution on this yet?

I’ve had pretty much the same issues for weeks. Today I went out disconnected the cables and found a little water inside. Dried it out sealed it and it’s been doing great all day.

I want to thank the original poster for the great information.

Besides saying that I have had the exact same symptoms on AT&T service for months, I will mention that the problem is the same with three different providers of AT&T service I have tried and with not only the MOFI SIM7 router, but with two different Nighthawk MR1100s as well. No difference. Reboot required several times or more each day.
One of the AT&T plans was an ebay reseller, the second was a company called Millenicom, the third was my brother's old iPad plan direct from AT&T (which still works fine otherwise, but exhibits the need-to-reboot problem now).

I recently tried T-Mobile using the same MOFI hardware setup and it works OK, except for slow speeds, especially slow uploading. If it was a bit faster i would switch to T-Mobile and be done with it, but that does not appear to be possible at my location.

The VPN approach might be the only answer for AT&T plans, though I am a non-techie and would prefer to avoid it.

Hopefully this information about multiple providers and other devices saves someone else some time and money.

I don't know if this will be of any help to you folks but this is that has worked for me in my area with AT&T for over two years now, obviously your mileage my vary. I am in a VERY sparsely populated area so de-prioritization & "network management policies" generally don't apply out here. Especially with Covid restrictions driving up internet traffic, if you live anywhere even *close* to towns/cities this probably won't work for you. My monthly usage varies from 50GB to 250GB a month, last cycle was 215GB.

Router: Mofi 4500 SIM4
Firmware version: 3.7.8-std
Firmware carrier mode: AT&T (not Generic)
APN: i2gold
Bandlock: Varies depending on season, mid-summer all I can get is band 12 or sometimes band 5. In winter I get to go all out and use 4+4 CA.
SIM: An old smartphone (AT&T still shows the smartphone's IMEI on my bills, do NOT give AT&T the IMEI of your Mofi)

Plan: Business Unlimited Plus with Private Wi-Fi, 3 lines, all-in just a hair over $200/month (the router plus two other actual phones)
Plan Add-On: PMC (formerly CCS) STATIC IP Address $3.00/month on the Mofi line (you will have to call or e-mail your regional business account rep to have this provisioned, they can't do it over the phone or in-store)

That last $3 add-on makes all the difference. You get to legit completely bypass AT&Ts CGNAT (carrier-grade NAT)...with this you can even get on XBox Live and get an Open NAT without using a VPN. It's also quite helpful if you want remote access to anything on your LAN while you're away from home, or if you plan on ever hosting...anything.

Unfortunately access to the i2gold APN and the $3 per line static IP is only available to Business accounts, and there *IS* a contract involved that *MAY* include ETFs (early termination fees). That said, if I recall there is a grace period where you can back out no-penalty, don't remember if it's two weeks or a month.

Do I recommend it? Not really, not if you have any other alternative. I pay way too much money for what I'm getting, especially considering I had to build all the infrastructure including a 50 foot antenna tower myself. But AT&T is a monopoly carrier here, and I can't use satellite because of the latency...so I don't really have another option.

Hello,
I HAD, a similar issue, I think,

I have a MOFI4500-4GXeLTE-V2 from Ubifi.net with a Wilson Outdoor Directional Panel Antenna.
Unlimited ATT plan.
I get 5 bars on Bands 2,4,5,12/17 and 30
I have set Advanced Bandlock to bands 2 and 5
Bandlock is set to Auto, (This allows Carrier aggregation).
I get 70 down and 30 up.

The Problem,
Basically everything would work fine for 3-4 hours then I would lose the ability to pass traffic. Then two minutes later it would work again, for 3-4 hours.
It originally started on or about the time I updated to "mofi4500_4GXeLTE_V2Firmware4_1_8std" firmware.

Some Diagnostics

There is a built in check in the Mofi4500 that runs every minute (default setting) that pings google.com, if it fails it tries every 10 seconds for 65 seconds and then will automatically reset the module. After the module resets traffic will pass. If I disable this check traffic will not pass until a reboot.
Ubifi and ATT support where no help.
I friend of mine two miles away has the same setup but was not having this issue. The only difference was her MOFI was running "mofi4500_4GXeLTE_V2Firmware3_9_2std" firmware.

My Solution
I found a copy of the 3.9.2 firmware and installed it, Problem is gone. I stay connect all day.

Where can I find the old firmware? I couldn't find it on the Mofi Site.
Thanks

For old firmware go to https://mofinetwork.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=21 and identify the version you want. Then copy paste the below line (pulled from the link on that page to download the current version) and just modify the URL to match the firmware version you want.

Current version link:
http://mofinetwork.com/firmware/mofi4500v2/mofi4500_4GXeLTE_V2Firmware4_2_8std.bin

Change to:
http://mofinetwork.com/firmware/mofi4500v2/mofi4500_4GXeLTE_V2Firmware3_9_2std.bin

I downloaded that version, as well the latest version 3, 3.9.8. I will be trying them this weekend to see if it does indeed help.

LonnieM said:

I will mention that the problem is the same with three different providers of AT&T service I have tried and with not only the MOFI SIM7 router, but with two different Nighthawk MR1100s as well. No difference. Reboot required several times or more each day.

With this problem existing on Nighthawk routers as well, I can't see how firmeware is the issue here? One would say this is probably an AT&T generated issue. I'm having the same problem with MoFI Sim 4 here too. I have to reboot generally around 2 hours. My cell provider (Bix Wireless) provided a sim card change but that didn't fix the issue. I tried to reach to MoFi and their phone #'s listed on the web page aren't good. I also tried their support email and no reply that way either. Are they in business or providing any support? My service with this router has almost been flawless for nearly a year. I've noticed a speed drop to about half too since this all started.

Update... I guess I'll have to revise my comment about firmware
I recently updated my firmware to 4.2.8 from 4.1.8 and it seems my problem is now fixed. I've been running 17.5 hours now without having to reboot. We did have one instance where the internet was lost but the router recovered without having to reboot (It happened twice and this @ time 2.5 hours.) I notice that my IP v4 time matches the time since it recovered. I thought 4.1.8 was the latest revision as it is the last revision accomplished with the "auto update" feature. To install 4.2.8 you have to manually flash this load which isn't hard either but apparently not done with the "auto" feature. So far so good on this end. Instructions and link to download is on the MoFi download site. BTW my issue started with the version before 4.1.8 as I did an auto load and thought I had the latest as it told me so... Further review and mentioned under other threads here indicated another load. So far so good. I'd say make sure you try 4.2.8 before reverting to earlier loads.

With this problem existing on Nighthawk routers as well, I can't see how firmeware is the issue here? One would say this is probably an AT&T generated issue. I'm having the same problem with MoFI Sim 4 here too. I have to reboot generally around 2 hours. My cell provider (Bix Wireless) provided a sim card change but that didn't fix the issue. I

While perhaps an earlier firmware on the MOFI does something to overcome the problem, it is definitely an AT&T generated problem and occurs with the Nighthawk as well and it does not seem to matter (so far as I can tell) who the reseller is, or at least many different ones are involved. I have tried three, plus my brother's AT&T direct-provided account iPad Unlimited, and they all do it.

Nor does the problem only occur after 22GB are used in a new billing cycle, I was having to reboot mine before I hit even the 16.5GB warning threshold this month. For me it is 3-6 times/day, depending on usage.

As others have pointed out, you don't really lose the Internet connection, AT&T quits responding to new requests. My brother points out he can continue streaming Youtube videos if he has already connected, but he cannot pull up a new webpage. I have noted that if I leave the speedtest app up after it has selected the server and then the 'stoppage' occurs, I can run multiple speed tests with normal results but if I close the app and reopen it, or try to change servers, I will get a speedtest error message that I am not connected to the Internet. For whatever reason, AT&T will not process new requests until I reboot the modem.

I don't have a point, other than I don't think asking the modem provider will yield anything useful. But my speeds are normal before and after, so that may be an unrelated problem. I don't want to go the VPN route if I don't have to. Someone suggested purchasing a fixed IP address might help, but I am skeptical that it would solve this issue. But I am a non-techie.

Good luck to all, and I hope a realistic solution appears.

Hello,

Add me to the list of those having this problem.

I found this place while looking up the issue online. I'm using a mofi4500 with a unlimited att plan I purchased from an ebay seller.

When the connection drops I'm still able to stream and game online. Just can't open any new connections like a website. I been having to manually reboot my mofi to get it back up and running. Usually 1 or 2 times a day.

I updated to the most recent firmware with no luck. Problem still persist. I read through the comments and see some work arounds. However, would rather not bother with a VPN or pay for a static ip. Hopefully this gets patched with another firmware update or someone much smarter than I comes up with a permanent solution. Will be checking in on this topic!

Thanks all.

DWRIGHTKM wrote: Sat Sep 12, 2020 10:33 pm Hello,

I updated to the most recent firmware with no luck. Problem still persist. I read through the comments and see some work arounds. However, would rather not bother with a VPN or pay for a static ip. Hopefully this gets patched with another firmware update or someone much smarter than I comes up with a permanent solution. Will be checking in on this topic!

Thanks all.

Did you do a manual "Manual Flash Firmware" and not just the "Remote Update". If using the "Remote Update" it will only load firmware version 4.1.8 an then tell you that you have the latest loaded, You have to use the "Manual Flash Firmware" option and upload 4.2.8. Download this load from their site to your computer first.

I now have been running two days without a hard fault since I uploaded this release. Their fix apparently restarts the IP v4 protocol as you can see the timer change to zero after it restarts yet the "Uptime" counter keeps appending in time. I see a momentary loss of internet around this time and it recovers much quicker than doing a "reboot" under system or unplugging and then re plugging the router. While not an elegant fix it does provide a usable workaround.

Thanks for the info!

Yeah, I did it manually. I followed the online video and It says 4.2.8 on the status page.

I rewatched the video last night to see if I missed anything. Sure enough, I turned the video off before the end where it mentioned to do a factory reset. I did a reset last night and so far its staying connected. Been about 12 hrs now. So finger crossed this works!

Thanks again for the reply