[SOLVED] Need Help Setting Up 4G CPE w/ Asus AC1300

[terraform]

Hello!
I am currently in Sri Lanka and here, the most common type of Internet solutions are these 4G CPE indoor / outdoor sets.
I have an ASUS AC1300 (from the US) I was wondering if it is possible to use it with this type of set up?
I would prefer not to use it as a "repeater" but if that is the best solution I would be open to instructions on how to do that as well.

The exact model of my Provider supplied Hardware is this 4G CPE ZLT P11 set（outdoor + indoor ）and I have the ASUS AC1300

I am not going to lie. While I am pretty advanced with most things digital and have been for many many years... Networking has always been a blindspot for me.
I am a bit confused in this particular use case if I can plug directly from the outdoor antenna into the ASUS as the Tozed brand Router seems to be just that a router and not a Modem ( I could be wrong) and in the states I always had a Modem to Router config so this is throwing me a bit of a curveball PLUS it would appear that few people actually use their own gear here as broadband is still a luxury item.

Any tips, instructions, pointers or even advice as to what type of workflow I should be searching for would be helpful.
Thanks!

 

[bill001g]

What is your goal. What does not function the way you need.

Without digging around to find documentation I am not sure if you can just replace the indoor unit with the asus router. The largest issue just from basic information is the indoor unit provides power to the outdoor unit via PoE. This might make it very hard to swap out the indoor unit.

The easist solution is to just pretend the ISP box is a modem and plug it into the wan port of your asus router. You can disable the wifi on the ISP unit if you want. The only issue with this design is double nat having 2 routers but I strongly suspect since this is mobile broadband the ISP is doing carrier NAT also so it doesn't matter. The NAT problem id mostly related to game consoles.

 

[terraform]

What is your goal. What does not function the way you need.

Largely Signal strength... we live in a small house and my PC still has a hard time getting a strong signal. But I also hoped it would help with signal quality and also we have a lot of power outages here and the ISP box seems to have a hard time rebooting without my manually unplugging it.. I had assumed this is largely due to the poor build quality of the ISP device.

The largest issue just from basic information is the indoor unit provides power to the outdoor unit via PoE. This might make it very hard to swap out the indoor unit.

OK so this makes sense and was something I wasn't aware of and wouldn't have thought of looking for, but Yeah I suspect you are right about the ASUS not capable of delivering power to the Antenna would be a huge hurdle.

You can disable the wifi on the ISP unit if you want. The only issue with this design is double nat having 2 routers but I strongly suspect since this is mobile broadband the ISP is doing carrier NAT also so it doesn't matter.

If I am to try this route would I want to set up the ASUS as a "repeater"?
Again Networking is not my strongpoint and much of my issues problem solving in this area is even to know what I am looking for... But I have seen some articles about setting up you ASUS router as a repeater and if that is what you are suggesting I can try that.

Thanks for the quick reply!

 

[bill001g]

Just run it as a router.

A repeater generally means you connect between the ISP router and the asus via a wifi connection and then it sends out a second wifi signal. If you already have issue with wifi quality this will make it even worse.

In effect take it out of the box and hook it up. Other than setting some passwords you have to do nothing else.

The only thing that might be a issue is if the ISP router and the asus router both use the same LAN IP range. You will have to change it on the asus lan setting. The asus router is pretty smart and will give you errors messages if this is happening.