Verizon 730L and MX64

[tomas209ca]

I have been rolling out MX64 to remote unman sites with Verizon USB730L as failover. I have come across issue where they do populate fine on laptops and work. But recently purchase Meraki MX64 , are have been having issue seeing any these modems. The modems do turn on and with both LED light to green but not seen in dashboard.

I tried different firmware version to include beta, still same issue, i have had verizon assign static ip to these devices.

At one point I thought it was an issuer with the 730L due to the being refurbished, we also purchased and upgraded to newer version 730L with the same issue.

These meraki came from 2 different vendors, but same issue. Is there a current issue and do i need to use different USB modems other then verizon 730L. We have some working in production though.

[SteveGB1]

@tomas209ca i used the device manager and thru hardware id and you see the info of the USB modem

Can you elaborate on this for me? I have many USB730L deployed remotely and I would like to know which card is in each of my MX64w. I need to obtain the SIM, device ID or phone number for each of the USBs. Thank you!

[tomas209ca]

As for SIM, phone number, IMEI, I got the info from the Verizon Business account that our company has.Or if they he other site are close to you, you can go to them and get the info by plugging them into the a computer and http tot he gatewya ip of the USB. Currently have about 33 deployed to sites. As for the Device ID, i had to actually plug it into the computer to get that number. As for IP this will depend if you have static ip to them or not. You have to pay a one time fee to get these public ip allocated to you. This has to be done on the verizon side. The static ip come in hand if you need to do port forwarding.

[ciph3r · Accepted solution]

Enterprise user here - Have 500 of these in the field and ran across the same issue.

Per Verizon -

“The 9030 is end-user mode. And 9031 is lab test mode. 9032 is enterprise mode. Devices should never be in 9031 as that is a PID that is purely for us. Plug the device into a PC, open a web page, navigating to 192.168.1.1/labtestinfo, you should be to able to change back to End-user mode.”

[tomas209ca]

This is what is needed to be done for those that receive 730L that will not work with you MX security appliance.

Also if you don't now what the ID is , you can go to device manager and look for Remote NDIS Compatible device.
From there you can go to event tab and it will give you the info on the PID or you can got to details>hardware Ids.

I think also those that are on 9031 show up as RREMOTE NDIS Compatible device#2, i believe.

[SteveGB1]

@tomas209ca Thanks Tomas. I guess my question is: Is there any way to obtain the USB information from the MX64 or from the meraki dashboard?

[tomas209ca]

as of right now not that i now, unless you can pull it from mx API. Only time i am able to get data from the usb modem is when it fails, and the only thing is either on the uplink info or appliance status. Also maybe in the Event Logs also. I do recall opening a case and i think Meraki tech might be able to, but not 100% sure though.

[SoCalRacer]

One thought would be to use an unlocked usb modem that supports Verizon, possibly it will work. I am not sure this one will work, but it might be worth a try.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M0JY15V/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I do know this works on MX devices with T-Mobile Sim cards.

[nononon]

We had horrible problems with the 730L and our Verizon carrier. We are using Z1 and Z3 merakis and have several sites running cell only connectivity. We have many out there running on old Pantech modems, working great. The 730L is listed as a compatible modem on the Cisco Meraki compatibility page, but that was not our experience. Many network drops, often hours at a time...not good for production law enforcement connection. We have to hunt and peck to find the ancient Pantech modems, and they work fine.

I opened a case with meraki support and went through several techs, and all were stumped. And I think the 730L works ok for some areas and folk, but here they've been so sporadic it just is a no-go modem for us. Hopefully the Z3C comes down in price and be a bit more viable for some site budgets.

[tomas209ca]

I purchased about 7 to 8 new 730L from verizon and they didn't work. Also tried setting them up to end user mode, but that didn't help either. I ended up re purposing UML 290 or 295 modems, they been working without issues. I just been using these modem for MX64 that are in remote area for emergency failover.