Hi there i’m new here and need some guidance, I’ve been experimenting with a pfsense CE2.7.2 QEMU VM hosted on my Arch Linux system. I’m trying to get my cellular modem (SIM7600G-H 4G LTE) to become the stand alone gateway interface to essentially have pfsense be the gateway for my Host Arch system. By necessity i have attached the modem via USB/IP and have successfully created the ppp0 interface. The interface is UP and has received an IP address from the cell provider along with DNS and Gateway settings as well. However the interface is offline as it has 100% packet loss. I have created pass rule for the interface and a NAT rule as well. Unfortunately that has not resolved the issue. I’m thinking it must be related to some pfsense firewall setting blocking incoming packets as the interface clearly sent and received credentials to the provider to be registered on their network. I’m hoping someone can point out where i have gone wrong with this setup.
Anytime someone mentions USB and pfSense they seem to have problems, perhaps find an alternative method to use your SIM.
It cant be that bad, I’m determined to make it work. I really want to learn the ins and outs of pfsense.
I’m afraid USB NIC’s or any USB interfaces network device does not go over well in pfsense. I personally wouldn’t set this up in production or even at my house. Too much of a headache.
Not to mention setting this up as a VM introduces another layer of issues. They do have a list of modems that do work with pfsense. Good luck!
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/cellular/hardware.html
Honestly that has not been my experience up until now. I’ve passed through a rndis 4g usb stick prior to this ppp setup and I had zero problems. Its only because I wish to experiment with passing this usb device to two VM’s via USB/IP protocol (the other being a freepbx) so i can use the serial interfaces for both data and a gsm trunk for voice calls. The other rndis device did not support voice calling. I just know its possible and I’m determined to give it a go, I can see great potential use cases for such a setup. As they say " The man who doesn’t try is twice defeated" It must be possible with pfSense.
I’m not saying don’t do this. I’m saying that you are going to be fighting an uphill battle with the issues I mentioned before.
I absolutely think you’ll learn a lot by tinkering with this and might produce solutions.