I recently purchased an SRP 527W router. The final decision was based upon this router having a 3G Dongle Failover. After buying the router, I then needed to purchase a compatible dongle here in the UK, not an easy task especially when you don't want to setup a new mobile contract. Eventually I got my hands on a ZTE MF636.
This dongle is specifically mentioned as supported in the CISCO document titled "3G USB Modem support for Services Ready Platform SRP 500 Series" On page 2 at the bottom of the table.
After swapping SIM cards from my old dongle to the new one I plugged it into my PC installed the drivers, and hey presto it worked. I then plugged it into the CISCO router, and could not get it to be recognised, although USB light comes on and flashes. I tried turning on and off (a lot!) , manual setup, automatic setup, updating firmware plugging in when on, when off, leaving an hour etc ad nauseum. Always the same message "Unable to Detect USB Mobile Modem".
At this point I gave up and contacted support. My first response told me I couldn't have any support on this item, would you like to buy a service contract... After breaking some things and snapping at my nearest and dearest I sent a response pointing out I am an end user, just bought this thing and it doesn't do what it says on the tin. The next response told me to send it back if it was DOA, not exactly useful.
After not throwing the thing straight in the bin I decided to do some digging, I decided it was more likely that the router was not identifying the device, rather than not seeing it at all.
The USB ID of my dongle is 19d2:0033
This does not change in mobile or zerocd mode (I know this as I've had it running under linux).
After much digging I downloaded the debug info from the router and in the file dump_nvram_cmd.txt I found the line "card_model=19d2:0031"
Yes this modem is available with the same model number but 2 different USB IDs.
To fix this I see there are three options, here is the list in my order of preference.
- Release a quicky firmware update that also points this USB ID towards the correct device driver.
- Give me the SSH Uname and Pword, and I'll modify the HAL myself.
- Change the online documentation so the last line of the supported dongles reads Some ZTE MF636 dongles, but we don't know which ones.
Many Thanks
A.Pearce
