Re: Sierra Wireless MC7750 / MM 0.7.990 / NM 0.9.8

[Dana Albrecht <dwa virtue org>]

Hi Aleksander,

It took me a little while, but I put together recent builds with the 'aleksander/current-capabilities' branch 
merged back into trunk.  I now have launchpad set up to do daily builds.

If anyone else is on debian/ubuntu/mint, you can pull the builds from:

https://code.launchpad.net/~dwa/+archive/network-manager-snapshots

As for results, this is much better than what I had before.  I am NOT getting the error I used to get 
("Error: Connection activation failed: The connection was not a 3GPP2 connection.").  So the 
'aleksander/current-capabilities' branch seems to have fixed this.

For a little while this afternoon, I thought everything was working perfectly --- complete with the ability 
to connect/disconnect through the GUI.  Recall, however, that geographically, I am within the "Verizon 
Extended Coverage Area" in which Verizon states "certain conditions may cause your service to connect to 3G 
in this Area."

I suspect that whenever I get a 3G EVDO connection, everything is fine, but that I'm unable to get a 4G LTE 
connection.  The error is as follows:

> Apr  9 16:45:40 bree ModemManager[1001]: <info>  verbose call end reason (6,51): [3gpp] ipv6-only-allowed

I take it to mean that Verizon only wants to give me an IPV6 connection over 4G LTE?  That's what this 
article seems to imply:

> LTE devices must support IPv6, says Verizon
> IPv4 support for Verizon 4G devices is optional
> By Brad Reed, Network World
> June 10, 2009 01:37 PM ET 
> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/061009-verizon-lte-ipv6.html

I'm reposting my command-line modem manager script:

#!/bin/sh
date ; echo "\nCurrent Modem Configuration:"
mmcli -m /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Modem/0
mmcli -m /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Modem/0 --set-allowed-modes=ANY --set-preferred-mode=3G
mmcli -m /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Modem/0 -e
date ; echo "\nCurrent Modem Configuration:"
mmcli -m /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Modem/0
mmcli -m 0 --simple-connect="apn=vzwims"
date ; echo "\nObtaining DHCP lease"
dhclient -d -4 wwan0

Some questions:

(1) How can I modify the "mmcli -m 0 --simple-connect="apn=vzwims" line for IPv6 support?  Do I need to ditch 
--simple-connect syntax and deal directly with bearers, etc.?  If so, how?
(2) It is possible to force 3G EVDO even though the device is 4G LTE capable?  Particularly given the branch.
(3) In a nutshell, what's the overall state of IPv6 support in the codebase 
(modemmanager/networkmanager/gui)?  I note that there's an IPv6 tab in the network manager GUI for wired and 
wifi connections, but not for broadband.  Networkmanager itself and the gui are 0.9.8 built against current 
modemmanager, rather that the actual latest from git.

Thanks so much!
-Dana

On Tue, Apr 02, 2013 at 11:49:52AM +0200, Aleksander Morgado wrote:
> > Tue Apr  2 03:55:04 EDT 2013
> >
> > Current Modem Configuration:
> >
> > /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Modem/0 (device id '65e196f1e7266d71f89ea3c49bc19c899c5bd641')
> >   -------------------------
> >   Hardware |   manufacturer: 'Sierra Wireless, Incorporated'
> >            |          model: 'MC7750'
> >            |       revision: 'SWI9600M_03.05.10.06ap r5595 carmd-en-10527 2012/11/12 15:07:45'
> >            |   capabilities: 'cdma-evdo, gsm-umts, lte'
> >            |        current: 'cdma-evdo'
>
>
> So this is not good, and it is one of the things I've been looking at in
> the past weeks. For QMI modems, we gather current capabilities from
> various sources, which end up being the same sources we used for loading
> allowed modes, and that causes problems. In this case, your modem is no
> longer reported as being LTE to NM, and therefore NM assumes it needs a
> 3GPP2 ('cdma') connection settings, while the settings you created are
> really for 3GPP ('gsm'). One of the things that could be fixed here is
> that in a LTE-capable modem, we should never lose 'lte' as current
> capability. This thing is handled in the following commit:
>
> http://cgit.freedesktop.org/ModemManager/ModemManager/commit/?h=aleksander/current-capabilities&id=b88e85380254aecc709de7e65dfc678143517896
>
> Which is in the 'aleksander/current-capabilities' branch.
>
> If you're able to test the NM connection attempt using that branch, it
> would be great.