WiFi Anywhere Multi Carrier 3G/4G WiFi Router
Contents Packing List... 3 Introduction... 3 Supported USB Modems... 3 Connecting USB Devices... 3 Accessing the Web Interface... 4 Interfaces... 4 Configuring Interfaces... 4 The LAN Interface... 4 The WAN Interface... 5 USB Modem Interfaces... 5 The VPN Interface... 5 WiFi... 6 Configuration... 6 Security... 6 Hotspot... 7 File Server... 7 Multi-WAN... 8 Failover Mode... 8 Load Balance and Failover Mode... 8 Traffic Rules... 9 Health Monitor... 10 FAQ`s... 12
Packing List Item QTY WiFi Anywhere 3GBR3 Router 1 AC 120/340V PSU 1 5 dbi Antenna 2 Quick Start Guide 1 Introduction The WiFi Anywhere device is a turnkey device that creates a long range WiFi network for connecting PDA's, Laptops, Wi-Fi phones and many other devices to the Internet. It is very easy to deploy just power on and it works wherever there is a cellular broadband network available. Internet access is provided by using multiple USB cellular data cards or a wired WAN connection where available. Traffic is balanced between all active connections and all connections automatically back each other up in case any one fails making the WiFi anywhere device the ideal 'Insurance Policy' when no internet access is not an option. The WiFi Anywhere device can combine up to 4 Internet connections, allowing you to subscribe to multiple Internet providers for maximum efficiency and reliability. Just add your Internet connections and automatic health check will monitor the Internet links status and reroute traffic in case of a link failure. Supported USB Modems Please check for the latest list of supported modems, if your modem is not listed it may still be auto detected and work with the device, if it does not we recommend purchasing a supported modem. Please Note: We cannot guarantee the performance and reliability of all modems. Connecting USB Devices The device features four USB 2.0 ports, three of these ports can be used for USB modems and one can be used for a USB flash storage drive. All devices should be connected before the device is powered on.
Accessing the Web Interface By default the web based configuration interface can be accessed by connecting your computer to one of the devices LAN ports and navigating to http://192.168.1.1 using an internet browser of choice, we recommend Mozilla Firefox. Your computer should be configured to obtain its IP address automatically via DHCP; alternatively you can manually assign it an IP address within the 192.168.1.x range. Username: root Password: root Interfaces The Interfaces page can be found under the Network Tab. This page displays information about and allows you to configure the various interfaces attached to the router. Configuring Interfaces To configure an interface simply click the Edit button located to the right of the interface name. The LAN Interface The LAN interface controls the four 10/100Mbps Ethernet ports and the WiFi radio (When the Hotspot service is disabled). Here you can disable the DHCP server or change the LAN IP range. For example changing the IPV4 address to 192.168.254.1 and restarting the router would result in a 192.168.254.x address being issued to the clients that connect to the LAN or WiFi.
The WAN Interface The WAN interface controls the 10/100Mbps WAN port; configure this port if you have a hard wired internet connection. USB Modem Interfaces You will have three configurable USB modem interfaces, DONGLE0, DONGLE1 and DONGLE2. You must input the USB modems dongles unique IMEI number for each interface you wish to use, this allows the router to identify the dongle and connect with the correct PIN, APN and CHAP authentication details (if required by your provider). The example below shows a dongle configured for the Three UK network with the SIM PIN code disabled. The VPN Interface Here you can connect to a PPTP server, once connected all devices connected to the router can access the resources available via the VPN. Once you have established a connection to your PPTP VPN server you may wish to enabled the Bring up on boot option located under the Advanced Settings tab, the router will then automatically establish the connection when booted.
After you have completed all interface configurations we recommend that you restart the router for changes to take effect. WiFi The WiFi page can be found under the Network Tab. This page displays information about and allows you to configure the WiFi radio of the router. Configuration To configure the WiFi radio simply click the Edit button located to the right of the wireless overview page. You will then be presented with the options shown below. Here you can change the WiFi SSID, Channel and Output Power. Please note the power output listed is EIRP (equivalent isotropically radiated power) so takes the units 5dBi antennas into account. Security The Wireless Security tab can be found within the Interface Configuration section shown above. Here you can enable wireless security and specify both the encryption and cipher to be used along with the key required for access.
Hotspot The Hotspot captive service allows you to set up a fully featured WiFi hotspot with billing facilities, bandwidth control, custom login pages and advertising. This feature can be used with almost any RADIUS server however we recommend www.hotspotsystem.com. To enable the service select the main Services tab, check the Enable Hotspot box and enter the details provided by your RADIUS service provider, for www.hotspotsystem.com simply input your account ID (Username) into the 'NASID' field and your Hotspot identifier into the LOC_NAME field. Then click Save & Apply, the router will automatically restart. When the Hotspot service is enabled it uses its own internal DHCP server and will assign clients addresses within the 192.168.254.x subnet, the router can be accessed at 192.168.254.1. Please note that the Hotspot service will only start if you have at least one active internet connection. If you intend to use the credit card billing feature of Hotpot service with the load balancer enabled it is recommended that you use traffic rules so that HTTPS (TCP Port 443) uses only one interface, see the Traffic Rules section under Multi-WAN for more information. File Server The file server must be used in conjunction with a FAT/FAT32 formatted USB flash disk or hard disk. When enabled the file server will make the root directory of the flash disk available via FTP on the LAN. If you wish to access the FTP server from the WAN you will need to open ports 20/21 in the firewall. A user account with full read/write access is created by default. User: ftpuser Password: ftpuser
Multi-WAN Multi-WAN allows for the use of multiple uplinks for load balancing and failover. Failover Mode In this mode the default route is set to a specific interface, failover destination(s) must then be specified in case of a link failure. The other links are kept as spare, ready to operate in case the active connection is interrupted. Although no automatic balancing takes place with this setting, traffic may still be balanced manually as explained in the Traffic Rules section To configure the router for failover only, first you must select a Default Route ; this is the route that all traffic that does match a specific traffic rule will take to the internet. After you have selected your Default Route for this example we will use DONGLE0, you must then configure the Failover Traffic Destination for DONGLE0. For example if we select DONGLE1 traffic would be routed over DONGLE1, if DONGLE0 were to fail. If DONGLE0 then recovered it would resume its role as the Default Route. You can repeat the process above to add additional failover destinations for example you could set the failover destination for DONGLE1 to be DONGLE2.. Load Balance and Failover Mode In this mode the default route is set to 'Load Balancer' and the outgoing requests to the Internet are sorted proportionally, based on their weight value. Each interface can be assigned a weight from 1 (Lowest) to 10 (Highest). A higher weight value has higher probability to be assigned a request. We thus gather that weight value must be set up proportionally to the bandwidth that a link may sustain. If all links have the same capacity, the weight value may be set to 10 for all gateways (This is the default setting).this mode provides automatic failover; if a link fails it is removed from the routing tables and will not be assigned any requests.
To configure the router for load balance and failover first you must select Load Balancer as the Default Route. After you have selected the Default Route, you must then configure the failover destination for all interfaces to be used. When operating in Load Balance mode the Failover Traffic Destination should be set to None for all interfaces. By default each interface is assigned a Load Balancer Distribution (Weight) value of 10 meaning Internet requests are sorted uniformly over the links. Each interface can be assigned a weight from 1 (Lowest) to 10 (Highest). A higher weight value has higher probability to be assigned a request. We thus gather that weight value must be set up proportionally to the bandwidth that a link may sustain. If for example you were using two cellular connections and a fixed ADSL line you would most likely want to assign the ADSL line a higher weight than the cellular connections as the ADSL line has a higher bandwidth. Traffic Rules The assignment of a certain type of traffic may be manually overridden, based on proper criteria (source IP, destination IP, destination URL, TCP/UDP ports e.t.c.). The example below shows that all HTTPS traffic will be assigned to DONGLE0 and all HTTP requests specifically to www.whatismyip.com will be assigned to DONGLE1. When operating the router in load balance and failover mode it can be useful to ensure that traffic such as HTTPS, IPSEC VPN e.tc is assigned to a single interface to avoid the secure protocols being used, thinking security has been breached due to a subsequent request coming from a different WAN IP address.
Health Monitor Health Check is performed by sending ICMP echo requests. The number of failed pings before a link is marked at fault, and the number of successful pings before a link is marked as recovered are configurable; the reply timeout value is also configurable. The reliability of the failover management performed by this component is highly influenced by the level of congestion of the data lines and, consequently, by their respective response times. If the Health Monitor is not accurately configured, it may erroneously place a line at fault when it is only congested. Worse yet, it may quickly switch its status from Active to Fault and vice-versa, causing the shutdown of connections to the Internet. If you notice anomalies of this nature, even after having properly calibrated the parameters described below, you should set the Health Monitor Interval to Disabled. Health Monitor Interval This is the time in seconds between each ICMP request (ping) being sent. Health Monitor ICMP Host(s) This specifies the IP address outside of your local network that will be used to check internet connectivity. By default it is set to the DNS servers(s) specified at the bottom of each interfaces Multi-WAN configuration. The DNS servers for 3G interfaces are set to Open DNS by default for your convenience. Health Monitor ICMP Timeout This represents the maximum wait time for an ICMP response. In case links are congested, increasing this value may help. Attempts Before WAN Failover - This represents the number of failed pings before a link is switched to Fault. Attempts Before WAN Recovery This represents the number of consecutive successful pings needed to return a disabled link to active operation. Multiple attempts may be necessary in order for the failover system to reach optimal configuration. In general, it is a matter of striking the right balance between quickly intervening to isolate a malfunctioning Internet connection and avoiding faulting connections that are simply congested. System Watchdog When enabled this feature will reboot the router if no internet connection is available (all connections are marked as down). Please ensure that the check interval and number of attempts are set sufficiently high so that 3G connections have time to be connected from a cold boot. Only Connect 3G on WAN Failure When enabled the system will only connect the USB Modems when the WAN connection is down. If the WAN connection recovers USB modems will be
disconnected. Please Note: At first the USB modems will connect but then be disconnected once the device detects an active wired WAN connection. After you have completed all Multi-WAN configurations we recommend that you restart the router for changes to take effect. After the router has restarted and all interfaces are connected you will see the Multi-WAN status at the bottom of the Status page.
FAQ`s Q: I have three USB modems connected but still get the same speed test results? A: As the software is load balancing not bonding you will not see an increased download upload speed for a single TCP session. In other words, if at a given point in time there is only one LAN user making only one TCP connection (e.g. he executes only one download from the web), his traffic will flow from a single gateway, thus it would not benefit from balanced connections. Instead, if the LAN is crowded with users, each executing multiple requests at the same time, as a whole, their connections will have access to a higher bandwidth, equal to the sum of the single-access bandwidths. We then conclude that a single connection may never have more bandwidth than what offered by a single link, while multiple simultaneous connections will, on average, altogether have access to a greater bandwidth, which will stretch to the sum of the bandwidths of all the Internet links being balanced. You will however see an increased download/upload rate for a single file if you are using a multithreaded protocol/application such as Bitorrent our IntraTec Upload Tools. Q: Should I use more than one USB modem from the same provider? A: Yes you can however using multiple cellular providers will provide you with added redundancy. Q: Do I have to type in the USB modems IMEI number? A: Yes this is used by the software to identify the dongle and send the correct PIN/APN settings to the modem. Q: Do you supply a case for the router? A: Yes we supply a custom splash proof carry case that includes an external power kit allowing the router to be powered from a V-Lock battery. Q: How long will the router run from a v-lock battery? A: This depends on the batteries capacity but you can expect approximately 16 hours from a standard capacity battery. Q: Why does the power LED on my router does not illuminate? A: This is normal behaviour for revision 1 hardware running firmware revisions above 1.4, the SYS led should be used as the power indicator.