Netgear Nighthawk M1

I needed a new 4G router for Elysium. I was using a MikroTik Chateau Router Access Point Class 12 LTE but it was horribly unreliable, more than you’d expect from poor 3G/4G coverage.

I purchased the Nighthawk router from Amazon’s ‘Used-Like new’ offer. This was a mistake that I wont be repeating. the router did not recognise the SIM when inserted, nor any other SIM I tried. I really should have just sent it back to Amazon, but I am terrible at doing returns.

A year later I found the modem again and decided to investigate the problem. Dismantling the modem was interesting. There are a number of very small torx screws under the battery compartment to be removed. Here are some photos :

The underside of the display :

The PCB has screened boxes on both sides. The interesting bit for me was the SIM socket. I was hoping for a poorly soldered socket, but the soldering looked fine. Further investigation showed 3 of the 6 pins missing. The below photo shows the SIM socket with the upper metal body removed

The internal antenna was interesting, being strips of metallised coating on the inside of the plastic box

The next steps are to find a replacement SIM socket, or to solder the SIM directly in.

The Nighthawk M1 supports 4 antennas for MIMO and CAT 12 Multiband operation. Only two of these connectors are available to the user, however the PCB contains connectors for the other two and can be used given the correct leads.

Windows default route and Metrics

I have a windows laptop that I am using for remote debugging. The scenario is that an Engineer takes this laptop to a remote site and starts up the 3G connection and teamviewer. I get remote control of the PC via 3G/Teamviewer and then the remote Engineer plugs the laptop into the equipment so that I can debug.configure it.

The problem is that the default windows settings will prefer the ethernet connection to the 3G connection despite the fact that the ethernet connection does not lead to the internet. Therefore when the ethernet cable is plugged in, we lose the connection.

It is possible to overide the Windows default metrics as follows :
[Windows 7]

1) Open Network and Sharing Centre
2) Change adaptor settings
3) Right Click on Local Area Connection settings
4) Open properties of Internet Protocol Version 4 ( TCP/IPv4 )
5) Select ‘Advanced’
6) At the bottom of the dialog box untick ‘Automatic Metric’ and enter a higher metric manually ( 50 )

To confirm the metric numbers for each interface, open a DOS box ( command box ) and type route PRINT. Metric is the last column. Adjust the metrics up or down relative to each other to change the dynamic routing.