[OpenWrt-Devel] Current State of NCM support

[Tristan Collins]

Hi there,

Over the last year or so there has been some communication of issues / improvements to NCM support with Openwrt, e.g.:

https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2015-March/032225.html
https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2015-October/036345.html
https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2015-January/030890.html
https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2016-February/039551.html
https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2016-February/039562.html

Can I check what is the 'correct' way to be using an NCM dongle (specifically a Huawei E3276 in my case) and what behaviour should be expected?

I'll be happy to update the wiki with the output of this.

I have an old CC trunk build (r44497) from last year with some modifications supplied by the contributors above. The packages I ended up installing (after a lot of Googling and trial / error) were:

comgt - 0.32-24
comgt-ncm - 0.32-24
kmod-usb-net-cdc-ether - 3.18.7-1
kmod-usb-net-cdc-ncm - 3.18.7-1
kmod-usb-net-huawei-cdc-ncm - 3.18.7-1
kmod-usb-serial - 3.18.7-1
kmod-usb-serial-option - 3.18.7-1
kmod-usb-serial-wwan - 3.18.7-1
kmod-usb-wdm - 3.18.7-1
luci-proto-3g - git-15.050.70406-47603a3-1
usb-modeswitch - 2014-08-26-993a9a542791953c4804f7ddbb3a07756738e37a
wwan - 2014-07-17-1

With these packages and the configuration below I have the behaviour I would expect (hotplug working _most_ of the time).

config interface 'wan'
       option proto 'ncm'
       option apn 'APNNAME'
       option username 'USRNAME'
       option password 'PASSWD'
       option device '/dev/cdc-wdm0'
       option delay '30'

I've just done a clean build of CC (15.05) with what I _assumed_ were the required packages as above.

My questions are:

1) Are all these packages required and what is the correct config?
2) Are multiple packages providing the same functionality? e.g, comgt-ncm & wwan?
3) Have the patches submitted over the last year made it in to CC 15.05.1 or DD?
4) Are we any closer to having NCM dongles configured and operating info provided via Luci?

With the same configuration on the latest build the dongle connects on boot, but not when hotplugged - ifup wan needs issued. (This behaviour was noted by Thomas Baag on an email to devel on 11/12/2015, with a workaround)

Aleksandr Kolesnik submitted patches to luci-proto-wwan to allow ncm configuration via the wwan package. Has this been incorporated and does it fit with the 'accepted' use of NCM dongles?

It seems as though there was some lost progress when certain contributors left but the code is still out there in a potentially usable form if documented.

Tristan
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