One of the things on our list has been to setup a proper dedicated cellular backup system setup here at the office. This was harder than it seemed due to the fact that T-Mobile here uses the 700 Mhz band for LTE. This is really an odd frequency and 700 Mhz is not supported by any 3rd party hotspot device we could find. T-Mobile offers no USB thumbsticks or devices which supported ethernet, either.
This meant we were limited to their only offering: The ZTE Falcon Z-917 WiFi hotspot. Our initial plan was to use another dedicated WiFi-to-ethernet device to connect to the hotspot and then patch that into our pfSense box via Ethernet.
Much to our surprise the T-Mobile ZTE Falcon Z-917 Hotspot comes up as a USB Ethernet device under pfSense and FreeBSD when it is attached to the system via USB directly!
ugen0.3: <ZTE,Incorporated> at usbus0 cdce0: <CDC Ethernet Control Model ECM> on usbus0 ue0: <USB Ethernet> on cdce0 ue0: Ethernet address: 36:4b:xx:xx:xx:xx
Running DHCPd on the interface gets an address and it JustWorks™. I’m writing this post so others in the same situation know that the Z-971 will work great under FreeBSD and pfSense, spread the word!
I’d be interested to hear if you are still pleased with this device + PFSense after a few weeks into using it…
Hey Bob,
We are, though I haven’t had cause to use it extensively.
It does seem to need to be periodically reset as it becomes unresponsive after a week or two of just sitting there. However this might be my fault too, I just fixed a few issues and will monitor it.
If it persists I am likely going to work on a way to automate rebooting it and if I do I’ll post it here. There appear to be no ports open other than DNS and the web port/UI which is extremely locked down.
Appreciate the info, I was wondering about this too. Please let us know how it goes. Thanks!
hi, did you happen to use/setup the firewall for the falcon? i’ve been looking for a tutorial or example but haven’t had any luck. thanks and nice to know about the usb, seems like a fine back up plan.
I was able to map pfSense to it just as if it was a DSL or cable modem using DHCP.