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For those not already familiar, Peplink, a manufacturer of routers and other networking equipment, offers a cloud solution for managing their hardware. The service, called InControl 2, is free while the device is under warranty. It’s recommended that you give it a try even if you don’t think it will be beneficial to you or your team. You might find a reason to keep using it!
At the very least, it’s a helpful tool for monitoring the status of your devices while you are away. For more advanced users, it allows you to configure settings and run reports on the health of your network connections. It’s also a very helpful troubleshooting tool for any user.
Peplink works a lot with cellular Internet connections as several of their routers come with a built-in cellular modem for either primary or secondary Internet access. No matter if your cellular connection is the primary connection, or the backup, it’s important to test the service once it has established a connection in the router.
Cellular connections can be quite finicky though. At times, you may find the cellular is unable to read the SIM card, or it gets stuck trying to establish a connection. In other cases, it might indicate it has a connection established, but when you try to access a webpage, it times out and fails to load.
This last issue is rare, but has affected some users from time to time. We want to share details on how to best go about troubleshooting this issue and how you might resolve the issue.
Peplink Troubleshooting Tips
First, verify if you have another Internet/ WAN service to test with aside from the cellular connection. If you only have a cellular connection, it is best to test while you are on site with the router.
If you have another connection that you know is working properly and you have access to InControl 2, you may troubleshoot remotely using the “Remote Web Admin” setting within InControl 2.
Once you have a local or remote connection to the Peplink web admin page, you’ll want to ensure that your Cellular connection is under the Priority 1 heading at the Dashboard. If you’re using another WAN connection, this means having both connections under Priority 1. This configuration allows you to test either connection for Internet connectivity, which will be done via the Ping tool under the System tab of the web admin.
Using the Ping Tool
To start the ping test, select the WAN connection you want to confirm connectivity with. Next, type in the following into the Destination field: 8.8.8.8 – this is one of Google’s DNS servers, which is one of the most reliable addresses to test against. You may leave the Packet Size at 56 and number of packets at 5 for this purpose. When you’re ready, click Start. You should then slowly see data updated within the Results section below. If you see a response like the one directly below, your connection has failed to access the Internet. If you see a response like the one below that, your connection is working successfully.
Using Outbound Policy Rules
Additionally, you can set outbound policy rules to allow for a connection to InControl 2, while all other traffic on the local network is sent over the WAN that you’re testing (see under Advanced -> Outbound Policy in the local web admin, or Network Settings in IC2). This maintains the connection to IC2 through one WAN so that you can connect and disconnect the WAN you need to verify connectivity with. On that note, this type of setup can be thought of as an out of band management solution where one WAN is used solely for maintaining a connection with InControl 2.
Regular Network Testing
For regular monitoring of your WAN and/or LAN connections, users can incorporate a 5Gstore IP Switch. This device sends out periodic ping tests to multiple website/ IP addresses to check the connectivity on your Internet connection or a local network device. When the IP switch senses the pings have stopped receiving responses, it will automatically reboot power to your modem and/ or router to try and resolve the issue. Check out our YouTube channel for a demo of how the IP Switch works!
