Summary

Modem Troubleshooting

Details

Personnel:

Jacob Morgan, Sally Cariveau(on site)

Douglas Alden (remote)

Summary

Details

This trip was scheduled to investigate and repair/replace the on-site modem, which has not connected to AirVantage or PotterValley since early January.

We first attempted to update the modem firmware, following troubleshooting instructions that Douglas wrote ahead of time. Once complete, we called Douglas and he attempted to connect to it via pottervalley-srv. His connection attempt was unsuccessful.

Upon further investigation, we noticed that the modem IP had changed from it's assigned static IP address of 166.144.33.236 to 10.135.90.107. Douglas attempted to connect remotely via a web browser using the new IP address but was again unsuccessful.

We also noticed that the modem was reporting “APN not found” in the WAN/Cellular tab on AceManager and that the IP address would change every time the modem was rebooted, rather than acquiring the static IP it has been assigned. We tried manually entering the Verizon APN “we01.vzwstatic” in the manual override box. There was no change in behaviour.

Next, Douglas contacted Verizon tech support and they were able to confirm that the modem was showing up in their system with the non-assigned IP address. They confirmed that the modem's signal strength was good, consistent with what we were seeing on-site.

Next we tried swapping out the modem for the alternate one we had brought (Serial #: QR2264005402B118, IMEI: 358643076252696, Carrier: Verizon, SIM ID: 89148000009854547439). The replacement modem displayed the same behaviour: it reported “APN not found” and IP address changed every time it was rebooted. We tried upgrading the firmware update to ALEOS 4.18 and downgrading to ALEOS 4.16 with no change in behaviour.

Finally, we swapped the SIM cards of the two modems and had Verizon tech support reprovision the SIM from the original modem to the replacement modem. There was still no change in behaviour. At this point, we had all run out of ideas (including Verizon tech support) so we removed both modems and SIM cards and took them with us for further troubleshooting off-site. Suspect a device issue with the modem(s!).

2025-04-07 UPDATE:

This issue was resolved by swapping the modem to use radio firmware for a different provider and then swapping back to Verizon. See the notes at the end of these troubleshooting instructions .

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