Requirement:Customer wireless deployment needs to be constantly connected to a data center backbone which may either be in the headquarters or somewhere in the Internet. For seamless connectivity, all of these deployment subscribe to more than one WAN link for redundancy and failover. This is achieved with multiple uplinks, such as MPLS, DSL 3G, 4G, etc.
Solution:Starting 6.4.3.0 release Netgear 341U modem from Sprint has been added as a cellular uplink interface. This modem is supported in all deployment modes - Master, Standalone, Local and Brach Office Controllers(BoC). There is a restriction for Branch office controllers. During the initial bring-up of a BoC using zero-touch provisioning(ZTP), we only support wired port as the primary uplink. After the BoC has been deployed, cellular interface can be configured and used as a secondary failover uplink.
- Netgear 341U model is supported starting 6.4.3.0 as a backup USB cellular LTE uplink on the controller.
- This is supported with the controller being in any mode: Standalone, Master, Local, (BoC)
- This uplink is NOT supported as the primary uplink during BoC during initial bring-up.
- This has been supported on the Sprint LTE network in North America.
Feature Usecase:
The Netgear 341U modem has two modes of operation - NAT mode and IPT.
NAT Mode:
In NAT mode, which is the default mode, the modem supports router network addres translation. This mode hides the actual cellular interface IP and the DHCP server on the modem provides a private IP in the 192.168.X.X/24 range, usually 192.168.1.4. While using this mode, we need to make sure there are no other interfaces have the same subnet.
IPT Mode(IP Pass through / Bridge mode):
IP pass through mode allows the USB modem to act as a pass through only, instead of a router. In this mode WAN IP is on the controller directly. All the IP traffic is sent unfiltered to the controller in this configuration with NAT routing disabled.
Modem parameters :
Connect modem to laptop and visit http://sprintmodem or http://192.168.1.1 while the modem is in NAT mode. Default password is "password". From here you can change the subnet, mode and other parameters.
Note : Visit Sprint website and the modem user guide will help with initial modem configuration.
Configuration:
To use this feature, start by configuring the wired interface under Uplink Manager. Once configured this will be treated as WAN uplinks. You ca add multiple interface to the Uplink Manager and assign different priorities. The highest priority interface becomes the active uplink.
• Configure all wired uplinks in uplink manager.
• Enable uplink manager.
(Aruba7010) (config) #uplink
cellular Cellular uplink configuration
disable Disable uplink manager
enable Enable uplink manager
health-check Uplink reachability checks
wired Wired uplink configuration
(Aruba7010) (config) #uplink wired vlan 900 priority 200
(Aruba7010) (config) #uplink enable
Verification
• Plug in modem.
• Confirm output of following commands:
(Aruba7010) #show usb
USB Device Table
----------------
Address Product Vendor ProdID Serial Type Profile State
------- ------- ------ ------ ------ ---- ------- -----
3 AC341U 1199 9055 355745050399857 Cellular NETGEAR_341_NAT Device ready
(Aruba7010) # show uplink
Uplink Manager: Enabled
Uplink Management Table
-----------------------
Id Uplink Type Properties Priority State Status Reachability
-- ----------- ---------- -------- ----- ------ ------------
1 Wired vlan 900 200 Initializing Waiting for link Reachable
2 Cellular NETGEAR_341_NAT 100 Connected * Active * Reachable