Huawei E3372 USB LTE modem - 15Mbps to 0.3Mbps after reboot

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misGnomer

Huawei E3372 USB LTE modem - 15Mbps to 0.3Mbps after reboot

Post by misGnomer »

Few days ago I ended up buying a Huawei E3372 USB LTE modem after a quick search seemed to show it to be well supported and it was available locally too.

Turns out there are several different variations of the E3372, besides the more obvious Hijinks/Stick versions, using totally different protocols (CDC, NCM ...) and mine turned out to be E3372h-153 (TS-9 connectors for external antenna instead of CRC-9 I'd seen mentioned as well) with Hilink (hijinks) and:

Hardware version: CL2E3372HM
Software version: 22.200.05.00.1080
Web UI version: 17.100.11.00.1080.

LSUSB identified it as:

Bus 003 Device 008: ID 12d1:14dc Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.


I plugged it in a system running Mint 17.3 and Ubuntu mainline kernel 4.4 and to my pleasant surprise it showed up as "Huawei Mobile" in Network Manager and after setting up the profile in 192.168.8.1 I was getting great connection for my location with some 15Mbps up and down and pings were in the 20ms region. Awesome.

Day or two later I upgraded the kernel to 4.4.1, rebooted and instead of the expected earlier trouble-free connection I was only getting some 0.3Mbps up and maybe 1-2Mbps up with horrible 200-300ms pings.

The E3372 also started blasting its supposed autorun folder on the desktop.

I came across usb-modeswitch and after trying different strings the modem would start showing up as 12d1:1f01 (storage mode?) after reboot or insertation. No connection and nothing shown in Network Manager, but for some reason pings were great in the 20ms region.

Eventually some variation of "usb_modeswitch -v 0x12d1 -p 0x1f01 -V 0x12d1 -P 0x14dc" would restore ethernet (Eth1 with cdc-ether IIRC) but the connection was that dismal 0.3Mbps up, 1-2Mbps up with horrible 200-300ms pings and massive 20-50% packet loss. Dmesg showed ominous "kevent 12 may have been dropped" errors.

I even grabbed the latest (Xerus) usb-modeswitch + data packages which installed fine and provided some new -J and -H switches for Huawei modems, but I was still just blindly trying out strings and supposedly generic Huawei Message lines and when it would connect it'd still be dismally slow.


So what to do?

I tried plugging the E3372 to another computer (similar software configuration) and it was recognized and configured without (Hilink storage folder etc.) issues, but the connection was still dismally slow. After disconnecting, unplugging and reinserting the Huawei wasn't recognized as modem any longer and would now show up as 0x1f01.

Are there specific usb-modeswitch strings with certain Message strings that might configure the modem to healthier state?
When in 0x14dc mode I tried using the basic web interface to reset the modem to default configuration, but that made no obvious difference.

Web search also came up with seemingly complicated "Convert Huawei E3372h-153 from HiLink/router-mode to Stick/modem-mode" advice which right now sounds awfully attractive, except I have no windows PCs around and I'm definitely not going out to buy one just to fix or configure firmware of a darn android/linux-running Huawei modem! :-)


PS. I'd really prefer advice on nursing the existing E3372h-153 and my setup to its "first contact" health, but I'd also welcome suggestions for other USB LTE modem models that work out of the box (well the E3372 did that too, briefly!) or can be reliably configured and perhaps use other more recommended protocols too (NCM, MBIM?).

TIA
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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supertuxkart
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Re: Huawei E3372 USB LTE modem - 15Mbps to 0.3Mbps after reb

Post by supertuxkart »

It sounds more as an hardware issue, if you have problems with other machines, if you're sure is not a provider concerning..

Anyway, uou can do this to check about :
in a Mint Cinnamon ( your Version ) persistent mode pendrive, you can install all the upgrades and the working kernel 4.4, as it was in original, when all went well.

The next time do not change kernel, if every device is well supported or try the kernel in live, before upgrade.
misGnomer

Re: Huawei E3372 USB LTE modem - 15Mbps to 0.3Mbps after reb

Post by misGnomer »

Thanks for the advice, Kart.

Trying the LTE stick in a clean live system should be helpful. I should have made notes about the configuration when I first used it and it worked so well, but I didn't imagine a simple minor kernel update (4.4 -> 4.4.1) and reboot would screw up something.

I probably got the poor stick just more confused when I tried nursing it back to full-speed health.

Along the way I've learnt that instead of an "E3372" there are a number of hardware identity variants, multiplied with the Hilink/No-Hilink option and minor issues like different antenna connectors (TS9 or CRC9). Different variants default to different connection protocols like ECM, NCM and MBIM and of course under Linux there are different projects and end-user tools for dealing with each of them. Finding a fix that addresses my particular problem can be challenging when it's hard to even figure out what pieces of the puzzle are involved, and some more detailed solutions like the firmware conversion method to stick/modem mode involves using Windows.

The thing is the E3372h-153 Hilink did work initially and after a reboot it would start staying in storage mode (0x1f01) and blasting it's autorun folder on the desktop. Why the change? Was my E3372 variant initially seen in modem mode somehow or in Hilink/router mode by the older usb-modeswitch packaga+data combo used by Mint? After reboot Mint had tagged the E3372 as something else that what would show up and my efforts trying out different modeswitch strings never overcame that identity crisis and instead may have complicated things further?

I can switch the stick manually from 1f01 (storage) to 14dc (Hilink cdc-ether) mode and created file "/etc/usb_modeswitch.d/12d1:1f01" to handle that at boot so it shows up as 14dc automatically. The MessageContent I simply borrowed from here:

Code: Select all

# switch to 12d1:14dc (default HiLink CDC-Ether mode)
MessageContent="55534243123456780000000000000a11062000000000000100000000000000"
HuaweiNewMode=1
I actually grabbed the latest usb-modeswitch packages for Ubuntu Xerus which support the -J switch for HuaweiNewMode.

(The linked page referring to different device (which also has the 1f01/14dc dual identity) mentioned about 12d1:1001 "modem mode" but the poster hadn't managed to get connection through it. I don't even know if my version of E3372 has such modem interface.)

After booting or upon insertion the stick shows up in NetworkManager as Huawei Mobile (IIRC), gets eth1 and works at flipping bits up and down, but at low speeds, slow pings, ~10-20% packet loss and those "kevent 12 may have been drop" errors in dmesg.

My uneducated guess is that the stick has gotten misconfigured by me issuing it usb-modeswitch commands and Message (initialization) strings during my experimentation that may have neutered some of the stick's capabilities and maybe finding the right init incantation (MessageContent) would bring it back. I just haven't come across those strings for the 1f01->14dc E3372H-153 variant.


Anybody know any Linux-centric hardware guides for USB LTE modems that are known to work reliably with quirks already figured out. Bonus if they also work with routers running Tomato. One reason I settled on the E3372 (before I learned about the myriad of variants) was that support for it was recently added to Shibby's Tomato firmware and I was hoping to have a stick that could be use both on a router and on the road.
JeremyB
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Re: Huawei E3372 USB LTE modem - 15Mbps to 0.3Mbps after reb

Post by JeremyB »

What happens if you get connected using the dongle and put 192.168.8.1 in a browser window?

This may be of interest http://www.gnuton.org/blog/2015/07/huawei-e3372/
misGnomer

Re: Huawei E3372 USB LTE modem - 15Mbps to 0.3Mbps after reb

Post by misGnomer »

JeremyB wrote:What happens if you get connected using the dongle and put 192.168.8.1 in a browser window?
I get the simple Hilink webui. The stick has been modeswitched from 1f01 to 14dc and given the Message string (quoted above) and it's using the cdc-ether driver.

It works, but poorly with long pings, lost packets and fraction of the speeds (0.3 down / 1-2 up) I was getting during that epic first session (15/15).
It looks like one of the few Linux-oriented pages I've come across that seems to refer to an E3372 model similar to mine (1f01 -> 14dc), but Gnuton's hardware version is CL1E3372SM Ver.A and mine's CL2E3372HM. According to a poster on an Austrian LTE site the "CL1E3372SM Ver.A" version is in fact E3372S-153 (aka MTC 827F).

According to versions "mapped" in DD-WRT's modem charts no 12d1:14dc device is listed to have serial interfaces (there it's ecm, or cdc-ether) nor labelled as E3372S-153.

Code: Select all

E3372				LTE CAT4 	12d1:15cd 	12d1:15cd 			2 		mbim 		wip
E3372				LTE CAT4 	12d1:15cd 	12d1:1506 									wip
E3372				LTE CAT4 	12d1:1f01 	12d1:14dc 			2 		ecm 			wip
E3372				LTE CAT4 	12d1:157d 	12d1:157d 						mbim 		wip
E3372				LTE CAT4 	12d1:157d 	12d1:14dc 			2 		ecm 			wip
E3372s-153		LTE CAT4 	12d1:14fe 	12d1:1506 	0  1  4 & 5 -	serial & ncm 	wip
E3372s-153		LTE CAT4 	12d1:15cd 	12d1:15cd 			2 			mbim 		wip
E3372s-153		LTE CAT4 	12d1:15cd 	12d1:1506 	0  1  3&4 	-	serial & ncm 	wip
The persons or committee in charge of naming conventions at Huawei would do well to push the resident Communist Party cadre accidentally out of the window and then seriously ponder following suit! :lol:
There's a lot of confusion and misleading information among laymen what comes to "E3372".

In previous message I linked to a post where Florian details how another model (Huawei E3531s-2) with 1f01:14dc identity can be switched into serial/modem mode, HiLink CDC-Ether mode or Debug mode 1442.
it is possible to switch the stick into a "modem mode" where it presents 3 serial devices. Connecting via those modem devices doesn't currently work, however. In any case, here's the magic incantation - put the following into a file "/etc/usb_modeswitch.d/12d1:1f01":

# Huawei E3531s-2 - switch to modem mode instead of HiLink CDC-Ether mode
TargetVendor=0x12d1
TargetProduct=0x1f01

# switch to 12d1:1001 (modem mode, 3 virtual serial ports)
MessageContent="55534243123456780000000000000011062000000100000000000000000000"

# switch to 12d1:14dc (default HiLink CDC-Ether mode)
# MessageContent="55534243123456780000000000000a11062000000000000100000000000000"

# switch to 12d1:1442 (debug mode with 2 virtual serial ports)
# MessageContent="55534243000000000000000000000011060000000000000000000000000000"

Found at and adapted from: http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswit ... f=3&t=1897
The DD-WRT chart lists the E3531s-2 as follows (ncm instead of cdc-ether as detailed above):

Code: Select all

E3531s-2 	tre IT	HSPA+ 21.6/5.76	12d1:14fe 	12d1:1506 	ncm 	wip
Now that we've established that it's a jungle out there, I tried the 192.168.8.1 switchProjectMode trick and... nothing appeared to have happened performance-wise. I opened new tab from the main webui page and after two seconds the sPM page just closed.

I decided to perform a warm reboot with the stick in USB port afterwards and interestingly enough the stick wasn't available, no eth(1) interface or modem driver (cdc-ether) registered for the device until I unplugged and reinserted the stick. This time speedtest-cli gave quite typical 0.5Mbps down but only similar 0.5Mbps up (down from 1-2) and 30% packet loss.

Next I did shutdown and cold restart with the stick in port and got slightly improved 0.8 down / 2.1 up from another local server and 8% packet loss with 200ms pings, slightly improved from recent averages but far from the 20ms 15/15Mbps from first session.

Interestingly, if I disconnect the connection via the stick's WebUI I get those 20ms pings back but web pages get redirected to the WebUI at 192.168.8.1.
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