failover on a z1

[Al]

Hi there,

I'm trying to get a Z1 to connect through a 4g dongle.  It's a Huawei E392, which is on the compatibility list.  I have got it working on a laptop with a combination of "my mobile broadband" (which was on the dongle and I'm guessing are the drivers for it) and Huawei's "Mobile Partner" where I was able to set the APN.  Come to plug it into the Z1, and it goes no further than a flashing light , which means it's registered with a network.  Same happens on the laptop; it registers, but only connects when I connect it through the "mobile partner" software.  Am I meant to be able to get to the dongle and connect it through the Z1 (which is happily live through a wired connection)?  Or what's meant to happen?

Cheers, Al.

[MilesMeraki]

Hello @Al, by the description of your issue it appears that your cellular provider may require a custom APN for the Meraki device to be able to register the dongle. - Please refer to the bottom of the following Meraki support article - https://documentation.meraki.com/MX-Z/Cellular/3G_-_4G_Cellular_Failover.

My recommendation would be to reach out to your cellular provider to find out the 'APN' required and then opening a support case with Meraki support to pin the APN to your Z1 device. If this doesn't fix your issue I'm sure Meraki support will be able to assist you with troubleshooting the connectivity issues from there on-wards. 

[Al]

Thanks for that.  It's now been 2 weeks and a couple of support cases.  The first case started of by saying that despite having a Hauwei 392 (as in the supported modems documentation) , it was the wrong sort of 392.  Hmmm, OK; if it's that specific then perhaps the documentation could mention that....  Anyway, I then purchased a Hauwei E3276s-150, the exact model listed in the documentation, just so there could be no doubt.  This didn't connect either despite the APN being configured on the Z1, SIM PIN being confirmed as disabled, device re-booted....  The support guy then stopped replying to my emails, so I gave up and opened another ticket.  We then upgraded to the latest beta firmware, confirmed the PIN was off, connected via another router (TP-Link) to prove functionality of the dongle.  Finally, after another 5 days, I've been told that this model dongle, despite being the exact model in the documentation, has a different chip in it, so is not supported, and is a "problem on Linux based machines"

The advice is to "try another instance supported dongle or try the another of the same model"

Am I just having a bad run here and getting another "supported" dongle will be third time lucky?  (I'm a little bit hesitant to carry on buying dongles just in case one of them works.....)

Do people have a dongle model that definitely works?  Indeed, does anyone have a tested model that they know definitely works, sitting in a desk drawer that they would be willing to part with?

Al.

[thiago]

Hy, this week we had a similar situation with the Huawei E3372h-153 stick. 

The Huawei E3372s-153 is supported by meraki the Huawei E3372h-153 is according the  meraki support not supported.

When you buy the Huawei E3372 on the package is not visible if you are buying the h / s version (crap 😕 ). 

Now we have a working stick (Huawei E367 only 3G), means meraki recognize it but at the moment it is not connecting.

best regards

Thiago

[Al]

With the 2 sticks I tried, the first was not recognised, and the second was recognised (ie the z1 knew what device it was), but just sat at "connecting" without going any further.

I've since given up on the USB port and have now connected the 4G stick via a 3rd party 4G router and into the WAN port.  Not ideal, but as I mainly want it for the 4G connection, this works.  If I was using it in a failover situation, then in theory it should happen that rarely that I would just manually patch it over without it being too much of an issue.

Al.