Nighthawk M1 Ethernet Port

Question

Is the internet port on this thing ONLY for data offloading? Or can I hook this to my WAN port on my firewall and use it as my internet connection? So far it doesn’t appear so. &nbsp;My WAN port gets an IP address from the Nighthawk and it will pass traffic (from the firewall through the Nighthawk) for a few seconds and then the connection goes down. If I restart the Nighthawk then it will start passing traffic for a few seconds and then stop again. Is this expected behavior?

argondick · Answer

I'm currently using the ethernet jack to connect to my laptop and VPN into work. I get an IP address from the M1, a 1GBPS throughput, and can stay reliably connected all day. The only issue I've encountered so far is power-cycling when the battery is removed and the M1 is connected to the included power adapter and connected to a device using the ethernet jack.

The M1 will power-cycle occassionally with a Win7 PC (maybe 1-2 every 8 hours) and frequently (every 1-2 minutes) when connected to a Mac running High Sierra. Having the battery in, using the ethernet jack, and being unplugged from power (so far) has provided good results.

I've also attached the M1, via ethernet, to an Apple Airport Extreme and was able to play around with the IP Passthrough and DHCP settings. Using Bridge mode on the Extreme provided the best results so far.

Blubyu · Answer

I guess I will play around with it more. So far I have had terrible luck getting it to work in my scenerio. I have put it in passthrough mode and turned off DHCP. My WAN connection on my firewall does get an IP number. It just won't pass traffic after a few seconds.

If anybody else has any suggestions then please feel free to let me know :)

MicW · Answer

Have you checked you have the latest firmware installed. The M1 was known to put the ethernet port to sleep with the previous firmware pretty quickly. Which sounds like what is happening to you. I have mine plugged into a switch via ethernet and it provides data to my devices via that for 16 hours aday and does not miss a beat

Blubyu · Answer

Thanks for the advice. It’s helpful that others are using it the way I want to. I do have the latest firmware. I will say that my firewall supports a secondary WAN connection for redundancy and that’s what I’m using it for. My main connection is Comcast and I wanted this to be a backup for when/if it goes down (I’ve had great service with my Comcast connection btw). I have it weighted so that 98% of my date goes out WAN 1 (Comcast) and the other 2% goes out WAN 2 (Nighthawk). There is an SD-WAN check for each connection to make sure they are up and the WAN2 check works for about 30 seconds and then drops.&nbsp;&nbsp;I had a Tmobile hotspot connected via USB that worked great for this but I went with the Nighthawk because I get unlimited data for the same price as the Tmobile hotspot (2G data).&nbsp;&nbsp;Ill keep playing with it and see if I can get it to work better for me.&nbsp;

Blubyu · Answer

I just wanted to give an update to my problem. &nbsp;&nbsp;I disconnected my main ISP (comcast) from my firewall (fortigate 60D). &nbsp;I then connected my nighthawk and used it for my main WAN connection. &nbsp;Everything worked fine. &nbsp;i went ahead and removed all the policies and routes from my firewall and started over. &nbsp;Connected comcast to WAN1 and the nightwawk to WAN2. &nbsp;I created the SD-WAN link and then made that my default route. &nbsp;I setup the SD-WAN check to ping google and everything worked just fine.&nbsp;&nbsp;I re-create my policies on my firewall and now everything is working great. &nbsp;I unplugged the comcast connection and all the traffic automatically routed to the nighthawk on WAN2. &nbsp;Plugged the comcast connection back in and unplugged the nighthawk and all the traffic was routed out the comcast connection. &nbsp;I now have both of them plugged in with the comcast connection weighted to accept 75% of the traffic with the nighthawk taking up the other 25%. &nbsp;Everything is working great. &nbsp;Damn nice little hotspot :)

Forum Discussion

Nighthawk M1 Ethernet Port

7 Replies