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[meritez]

Hmm . . . I'm not sure what to suggest for the next step. Perhaps it would be best to wait for meritez' input.

hang it out the first floor window and point it at the nearest mobile mast?
The thing to be aware of, it's only capable of seeing LTE bands 3 & 7, if Three are transmitting LTE band 1/20/28/32 locally it will not see anything.

The lack of signal is suggesting @Weaver may be in a band 1 or band 20 coverage area, while band 3 may exist, the SXT may require a professional installation to pick up the signal.

At which point, Weaver would be better off picking up a CAT12 ZTE mf286d for £45 from CEX:
https://uk.webuy.com/product-detail/?id=saccztemf286dr&categoryName=wireless-routers&superCatName=computing&title=zte-mf286d-4g-hub-wifi-router-%28unlocked%29&referredFrom=category

The SXT is CAT 3 and can only see bands 3 & 7

The mf286d is CAT 12, and can aggregate the following bands, 1/3/20/28/32 supports bridge mode, passthrough and could have an external antenna connected to it.

There's my two cents.

[johnson]

Looks like bands 3 and 20 on Three if I've got Weavers neck of the woods right on cellmapper:

https://www.cellmapper.net/map?MCC=234&MNC=20&type=LTE&latitude=57.18666592330695&longitude=-5.817383664025437&zoom=11.18916856155636&showTowers=true&showTowerLabels=true&clusterEnabled=true&tilesEnabled=true&showOrphans=false&showNoFrequencyOnly=false&showFrequencyOnly=false&showBandwidthOnly=false&DateFilterType=Last&showHex=false&showVerifiedOnly=false&showUnverifiedOnly=false&showLTECAOnly=false&showENDCOnly=false&showBand=0&showSectorColours=true&mapType=roadmap

[Weaver]

It’s pointing directly at the basestation a couple of miles to the east. Don’t get any ‘bars’ at all.

Will look at the ARP table in the Firebrick - good suggestion. I’ll check that Janet plugged the SXT into the main LAN switch.

@burakkucat Re cable - Unfortunately it is a ‘no’ to Cat5e until I can order one, as I only ever buy Cat6 cables, don’t have a Cat5e one at hand. Are you thinking about the fit of the plugs possibly? NB - The SXT is definitely not ‘dead’ as there’s that LED shining inside, so it is getting some Volts.

Have used these for PoE with TP-Link WAPs before though with no problems. I can soon swap out this cable for another one, to rule out the cable being faulty. (I don’t ever keep any random ethernet cables of unknown quality that are sent accompanying other devices; I just bin them. Every one I buy is supposedly of good quality.)

In fact I was planning to convert two of my current WAPs to PoE using these same kind of Cat6 cables, much longer ones, and use the Cisco PoE injectors that I have, so that will be a current test of PoE in general with these exact same cables. Can’t do it tomorrow as Janet isn’t available to help me.


The SXT has an A&A/Three SIM in it and I use those with my iPad so Three coverage is great here. So is EE. Sanity check: I’ve just checked that the SIM is ‘activated’ on A&A’s clueless.aa.net.uk control server, and it is, so sanity intact.

A thought. A&A will show whether or not the SXT is up on the mobile network, I think. They PPP-LCP-ping the device constantly but of course there will be no PPP connection in existence yet, because I haven’t interfaced the SXT to the Firebrick, so clueless.aa.net.uk should show the PPP link as failing LCP-pings by a distinctive coloured background in the CQM graphs. But anyway, I should possibly be able to see something showing on the AA mobile side, even without PPP.

A couple of questions: Did you say it acts as a DHCPv4 server when it starts up? I forget the IPv4 address, but it’s mentioned earlier further back in this thread somewhere, no? Does it also look for existing DHCPv4 servers? Does it also try to set up IPv6 addresses via the usual zeroconfig and acquire a public IPv6 address via ND when it starts?

[burakkucat]

. . . if I've got Weavers neck of the woods right on cellmapper:

Yes, you have it spot on.

[burakkucat]

@burakkucat Re cable - Unfortunately it is a ‘no’ to Cat5e until I can order one, as I only ever buy Cat6 cables, don’t have a Cat5e one at hand.

I was thinking about the limited access under the flap, the relative rigidity of Cat6 cable and arthritic fingers.

Are you thinking about the fit of the plugs possibly? NB - The SXT is definitely not ‘dead’ as there’s that LED shining inside, so it is getting some Volts.

In that case, I will say that the SXT is powered up but is not seeing a signal from the tower. 

[burakkucat]

A couple of questions: Did you say it acts as a DHCPv4 server when it starts up? I forget the IPv4 address, but it’s mentioned earlier further back in this thread somewhere, no? Does it also look for existing DHCPv4 servers? Does it also try to set up IPv6 addresses via the usual zeroconfig and acquire a public IPv6 address via ND when it starts?

I've just seen the added questions. Without going and looking, I believe that in the default configuration one could connect the SXT to an Ethernet port of a computer and if that computer's interface is configured as a DHCPv4 client then all will "just work". Which is no help to you, of course.

I've now looked --

The 192.168.88.1 address is designed as access for quick setup, connect to it, change IP to something else, save and apply,

[Weaver]

Re arthritic fingers. Very true, good point, but Janet assures me that she was successful, and I tried the fit of the RJ45 plug myself some while back.


Re IPv4 address of SXT. Indeed, now I remember. I hand configured the iPad’s WLAN interface to a nearby IPv4 address, in the same /24 and tried to ping that address for the SXT. Will try that again when I’m less tired.

[johnson]

Just skimmed the thread so might of missed something, but is the mikrotik not responding on its admin IP (192.168.88.1  from https://i.mt.lv/cdn/product_files/SXT-LTE_181002.pdf)?

Regarding signal, with bands 3 (1800mhz) and 20 (800mhz) available and a few miles the to the tower, I’d expect 800mhz to be primary (only?) received by ipads/phones in the house. The mikrotik only supports band 3, which will be weaker but I guess its 9db gain could make up for that.

I’m pretty new to 4G stuff so could be totally wrong, I’m just extrapolating from my experience with band 1 (2100mhz) and 20 here less than half a mile from a tower.

Edit:

A couple of questions: Did you say it acts as a DHCPv4 server when it starts up? I forget the IPv4 address, but it’s mentioned earlier further back in this thread somewhere, no? Does it also look for existing DHCPv4 servers?

I assume it will start with DHCP on 192.168.88.0/24 (given its stated 192.168.88.1 admin address) regardless of anything else on the network.

Apologies for butting in.

[Weaver]

@johnson hello Mr johnson, sir. Yes, will retest pinging that 192.168.88.1 admin address, iPad hand-configured to be in the same /24. I might as well set the IPv4 default gateway to that same address.

Re basestation, you are spot on. And I am IV49 9BN. What three words = pies.socialite.culling.


We don’t want the SXT to always be a DHCPv4 server though, do we? Have you all managed to work the other way round, so as to assign the SXT an IPv4 address from a DHCP server?

And may I ask about IPv6 support?

[johnson]

We don’t want the SXT to always be a DHCPv4 server though, do we? Have you all managed to work the other way round, so as to assign the SXT an IPv4 address from a DHCP server?

And may I ask about IPv6 support?

No, its just for initial configuration.

I don’t have any mikrotik gear, but its user interface should allow you to assign it a different IP and put it into bridge mode, then your firebrick should get a public IPv4/6 IP over the cell tower (afaik AA don’t use CGNAT).

But first thing is establishing communication with the SXT.

[Weaver]

Agreed. Yes AA hands out one public routable static IPv4, or more if you need it, I suspect. When I get the SXT sorted out, I’ll set things up on the AA website to route my existing IPv4 /26 and IPv6 /64 blocks to the SXT in secondary ‘failover’ mode, as I currently do with my 3G USB ‘dongle’ NIC into the Firebrick. (Meaning that if all DSL lines go down, it switches to the nominated failover link, which will be the SXT.)

[digression] IPv6. Because the AA/AQL/Three mobile network (embarrassingly) doesn’t support IPv6, I currently have to use AA’s IPv6 over IPv4 tunnel, and I will continue with that as is. I don’t know why there’s no IPv6 because it’s presumably all just PPP, so why should AQL or Three care what’s inside the PPP connection? Maybe it’s to do with the kinds of traffic in the various PPP setup phases ?

A thought: AA can do their own clever ‘data over PPP-LCP’ thing in Firebricks, so maybe that would stop Three/AQL from snooping / knowing / caring what’s in the PPP PDUs? It works successfully in confusing BT; AA has fixed customers’ problems with certain exchanges by using it iirc. So I wonder if that would make IPv6 work?
[/digression]

[meritez]

Looks like bands 3 and 20 on Three if I've got Weavers neck of the woods right on cellmapper:

https://www.cellmapper.net/map?MCC=234&MNC=20&type=LTE&latitude=57.18666592330695&longitude=-5.817383664025437&zoom=11.18916856155636&showTowers=true&showTowerLabels=true&clusterEnabled=true&tilesEnabled=true&showOrphans=false&showNoFrequencyOnly=false&showFrequencyOnly=false&showBandwidthOnly=false&DateFilterType=Last&showHex=false&showVerifiedOnly=false&showUnverifiedOnly=false&showLTECAOnly=false&showENDCOnly=false&showBand=0&showSectorColours=true&mapType=roadmap

Cell 0 listed is the primary and that's band 3, decent speeds show as possible on that reading from the 11th July 2022, 63 down and 18 up.

decent pictures here of how the rj45 connects and the size of the unit:
https://www.avito.ru/pyatigorsk/tovary_dlya_kompyutera/mikrotik_sxt_lte_3_7_band_rbsxtlte3-7_4g_4_g_2493682934

Yes in default configuration, it should turn up as 192.168.88.1 with a dhcp range of 192.168.88.2-254

internal photos of the unit in case anyone wants to see them:
https://www.unisi.ru/news/RBSXTLTE3-7/

[Weaver]

Just connected  successfully to the SXT at the default admin address 192.168.88.1.

I think I’ve found where to change to a different static IPv4 address.

I’ve deleted the DHCPv4 server object as that’s potentially a really bad thing later on. I hope that was ok?

I’m wondering about IPv6 support.


Dammit!    I’ve just locked myself out trying to change the IPv4 address of the SXT’s ethernet i/f to something in my LAN range. Setting my own i/f parameters back appropriately for the 192.168.88.xx/24, I now can’t talk to the original 192.168.88.1 ! (I have remembered ever time to set my own IPv4 address et al. )

I can’t seem to find out anything useful about the state of LTE. Before I locked myself out, I took a couple of screen shots, and there was a noticable red message which said "changing band" whatever that means. I had a go at correcting the APN, which was vodafone-related. I couldn’t get the ‘Scan’ LTE feature work: error: "not supported! (6)".

I should have asked for a bit of handholding before trying to set the IPv4 address. I wanted to give it two IPv4 addresses: the original admin one, and a static routable one that’s in my LAN range.


Janet did a button reset-to-factory-settings for me. I’ve now successfully set the WLAN i/f IPv4 address to what I want.   Yay!

I have also set the APN to m2m.aql.net - although I suspect that "" is ok; from some mention somewhere in a page at support.aa.net.uk, I don’t really need to specify anything.

I discovered this page, item #3 : https://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?t=162831  - is this true ?

I will need to prevent the device from being a router or firewall or NAT translator any such horrors. Instead we just make it into an L2 bridge.

[burakkucat]

I will need to prevent the device from being a router or firewall or NAT translator any such horrors. Instead we just make it into an L2 bridge.

Yes, that is my understanding. Back in Reply #50 I said --

. . . I believe that in the default configuration one could connect the SXT to an Ethernet port of a computer and if that computer's interface is configured as a DHCPv4 client then all will "just work". Which is no help to you, of course.

[Weaver]

To clarify, do you think it will bridge LTE traffic to the ethernet i/f now ?

I just realise - I need to set PPP up on the LTE side.

Probably I also need to configure its LTE i/f’s static IPv4 address, which I will set up in clueless.aa.net.uk. The SXT might be told its IPv4 address via PPP anyway. I can give the SXT one LTE single IPv4 address for itself and also route my existing /26 to it in failover mode in clueless too.

I managed to get it to talk to the internet, but only by temporarily setting up a DHCP client. It then successfully did a scan for software updates. When I just define a static IPv4 address, no DHCP, I see that I haven’t specified a default gateway, so no wonder it initially couldn’t talk to the internet, not until I let it acquire this info from DHCP. To set the default gateway without DHCP, do I just define a static route instead?


I mustn’t get drawn into all that fun though, wrecking the device and locking myself out several times more in future. I’d better find out how to save the config so I can keep a copy of my progress in good_so_far snapshots. I need instead to assess the LTE side of things.


What does "PLMN search in progress" mean? That’s what I see when I look at the LTE interface.

The "bands" [ ] 3 and [ ] 7 tickboxes were not ticked, so I ticked them, in the hope that that was a good thing.