Microcell / Femtocell 3G Booster

[Pic0o]

Over the last couple years cell coverage in my area has dropped off to very erratic and poor quality. After a few calls to the cell lords (AT&T in my case), I was able to obtain a Microcell / Femtocell to boost the cellular signal. These devices work by connecting to your internet and using it to boost and connect to 3G service, as a mini cellular tower.

 

Range is probably about 80 ft? My driveway gets spotty coverage while the interior of the house is completely covered, from my testing and memory. The reason the device was requested, is because I'd see SMS be delayed by several hours and a few dead spots in my house. This device has been active at the pad for somewhere over a year.

 

Fast forward to current and I have the issue of this device not playing nicely with my ZyXel USG 20. Even after putting the device on the DMZ, mapping specific then ALL ports access to this device, it still trips out maintaining a connection. When using a Cisco / Linksys Router I had no issues, but there is far less traffic filtering going on with that device.

Just to CYA, I mapped my DMZ LAN to 192.168.0.x, as was the subnet on the Linksys. Still no dice.

Currently, my only confirmed fix appears to be hooking the modem up directly to the Mcell. Obviously I'm not too keen on my firewall needing to push all traffic through the Mcell.

 

Having matched the port mapping requests on the YT page for support, I still look for a resolution without gimping my network configuration.

.

 

I do have yet to confirm my MTU setting, IPSEC Pass-Through is enabled and
Block Fragmented Packets is Disabled. Have to confirm my device calls these the same acronyms.

 

Edited to note, I have pulled this device off my network completely. It was spiking my connection down to 2Mbs / 0.5Mbs levels. Eating about 80% of my bandwidth. Dealing with 1 to 2 bars and occasional dead spots instead.

Especially since your phone provider counts Mcell data as mobile use, despite it all funneling off your personal broadband connection.

Edited August 16, 2013 by Pic0o

[Pic0o]

Thus far, only successful use with a firewall, is for this to be between modem and pass through Computer port to rest of network.

Non-ideal alternate configuration, but dealing for the moment. :smurfy:

[Pic0o]

I removed this device from my LAN this week. I will only hook it back up when able to properly filter it's access by my firewall.

 

This thing was eating the 20Mb/2Mb line down to 2Mb/0.4Mb, with 2 4G enabled phones connected to it. Fuck that noise. Wondered a bit if internet folks were enjoying some tinkering with it being outside my LAN. Oh well, that thing is on network probation.