pfSense Dual WAN Failover & iPhone USB Tethering

[@StephenPinn]

Excellent Video! Wonderfully concise

[@rpsmith]

Thanks!!! I was hoping I could find a way to do this.

[@ShiggitayMediaProductions]

I've not watched the video yet but would this work on iOS 15.5 and the iPhone 8 Plus on OPNsense? I'd want to set this up as a plug-in solution for when my main WAN goes offline for w/e reason... i.e. plug in my iPhone in USB tether mode, and then have OPNsense see it, and take over the connection with my phone running it all. EDIT I finally watched the video and I'll try this out a bit later after I sleep some.

[@rjy8960]

Thanks! I've tried this but when I go to system/routing/gateways I don't see the iPhone interface in the list of gateways. When I configure the interface, select DHCP, save then confirm, it takes a long time for something in the background to happen and I can't seem to get a gateway address. I suspect DHCP and have tried sysrc ifconfig_ue0="SYNCHDHCP" at the CLI but still to no avail. Any thoughts?

[@hz777]

I did not have the issue. And all I did were in the video already. Sorry I have no idea what was wrong in your case.

[@rjy8960]

@@hz777 Thanks! Just resolved it! I needed to switch the hotspot off and on after usbconfig and it works. Brilliant video and a huge thank you!!!!!!!

[@JasonLeaman]

Good video !

[@unapologetic7900]

Good Video, but can you explain why making this permanent is not advised?

[@hz777]

In my own testing, I got troubles to reboot pfSense if without having iPhone connected.

[@unapologetic7900]

@@hz777 Not sure I understand. Are you saying that you had trouble rebooting if the iPhone was NOT connected. Why would you have it disconnected, if it's purpose is to provide failover? It should be always connected.

[@hz777]

@@unapologetic7900 because it’s my phone:)

[@unapologetic7900]

@@hz777 ok, that would explain it. Thanks for the video, and stay safe

[@h82fail]

Researching the android version of this with extra phone always connected. Read that if the phone gets rebooted, USB tether is not turned back on by default. Not sure if iPhones have same issue. For android the workaround is using an app like Automate to turn it back on when bootup or cable plugged in for you, not sure if pfsense still freaks out and requires manual intervention to fix because it was temporarily removed. I actually just read about usb-c to ethernet adapter and using usb ethernet on android 11+. Think that will solve allot of issues. My use is portable job site wifi, going to use two LTE connections, pf, and a few good APs (large jobsite). Would rather use phones, two brand new cheaper 5G phones are 700 vs two 5G nighthawks for 1600. But if phones are not going to be reliable on their own I guess its worth the extra for the modems. Phones have another advantage I wont get into here that make them even more ideal.

[@jeremyacton6378]

You genius!

[@EmmanuelNatera]

Does the same process apply to android phones?

[@hz777]

In the video, in the freebsd document part, you should be able to find Android related information.

[@1TenaciousT]

what's the solution when the computer/router reboots and it sees it cannot of find UE0. It would be neat if you could keep this configured so upon and outage could just plug in phone for internet using Usb tether. but the problem is if you leave the interface enabled the router will fail to boot with an error that it cannot find the interface UE0 when a phone is not plugged in. Does anyone reading this and knows Linux well know how to prevent the OS from halting when it cannot find the interface upon boot

[@hz777]

Yes it would be neat, but requires integration between pfSense and os. Apparently it’s not something pfSense itself will implement.

[@marksharonjanda4743]

@@hz777 What if one used a Lighting Ethernet adapter for the iPhone instead of the USB cable? Would that allow setting up the Failover WAN on a spare RJ45 Ethernet port on the router that could be configured and saved. Then just plug in when needed?

[@hz777]

Sounds promising, but I don’t have such an adapter so cannot validate. If you connect the adapter’s rj45 with a regular computer, how can the computer uses iPhone to get on internet?

[@davidwalker1942]

@@marksharonjanda4743 Ah so configure an OTP LaN interface to be failover, then Lightning Ethernet to Iphone then a cross over network cable. Hmm but I am not sure that the Iphone will know how to use that Lightning Ethernet interface to provide an IP to the OTP port of the PFsense router. The other issue is that it won't work with Android. The USB teather option works awesome, its as simple as having a end user grab any phone with a data connection and a USB cable, then enable USB tether and plug it into the PFsense USB prot. But to have that as an option the UE0 port needs to be enabled on the Pfsense ahead of time, but with the UE0 interface enabled for this backup internet capability the router upon reboot halts because the UE0 is enabled but the USB tether/phone is not plugged in at all times. We need a Linux specialist to figure out how to modify the PFsense config to not complain or halt, and the solution will work 100%. Imagine how nice it would be if a clients router goes down and they can simply plug in a Cellphone on the fly for backup internet.

[@1TenaciousT]

I believe I found the solution to In the file /etc/inc/util.inc Find the function is_interface_mismatch a few lines below this you will find preg_match("/^enc|^cua|^tun|^tap|^l2tp|^pptp|^ppp|^ovpn|^ipsec|^gif|^gre|^lagg|^bridge|vlan|_wlan|_\d{0,4}_\d{0,4}$/i", $ifcfg['if'])) { // Do not check these interfaces. These are the interfaces it will not check on boot. So adding in |^ue right after |^bridge should prevent it from checking that UE interface and halting the router from booting if the UE interface is left enabled. I have not had a local router to try it yet with, and not sure if that file survives a reboot, but you can see in this bug report Steve Wheeler mentions it redmine.pfsense.org/issues/7468 and the other interesting thing is at github.com/pfsense/pfsense/blob/master/src/etc/inc/util.inc looking at line 2386 it includes ^ue like this, preg_match("/^enc|^cua|^tun|^tap|^l2tp|^pptp|^ppp|^ovpn|^ipsec|^gif|^gre|^lagg|^bridge|^ue|vlan|_wlan|_\d{0,4}_\d{0,4}$/i", $ifcfg['if'])) { // Do not check these interfaces. However I am running Pfsense 2.6 and do not see ^ue in that area on the util.inc file. So some testing is needed when I have a local router I can get to the console incase I crash it.