Notes from bench-testing the Quectel RM500U-EA on tower, bought to
eventually replace stream's Virgin Media WAN. Like the switches and
APs, the module is configured out-of-band and is not referenced by
the flake.
Records what it takes to connect at all: the module must be switched
from its stock NCM composition to MBIM, since under NCM the PDP
context activates but the cdc_ncm link never raises carrier; and the
connect only succeeds with the network-expanded APN read off the
default-attach bearer, as IPv4.
Also flags the two consequences for stream: the SIM is CGNAT so it
cannot carry the public lease stream's WAN currently publishes, and
the bearer reports a /8 that would cover Tailscale's 100.64.0.0/10
if configured literally.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
jim, dave and the vibe AP are pure L2, but RouterOS ships ip-forward and
IPv6 forward on, and with IPv6 forwarding enabled it also advertises
itself as a default router. After the 7.18 -> 7.23 upgrade clients began
picking up the switches as IPv6 default routers alongside river.
Replace the earlier advertise-dns framing (which only strips RA options,
not the router lifetime) with the actual requirement: ip-forward=no,
IPv6 forward=no, accept-router-advertisements=no, ra-lifetime=0, and a
re-check after every RouterOS upgrade.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Generate forward and reverse record tables from authoritative AXFRs
while preserving handwritten Markdown outside per-zone markers. Run the
generator in CI and link the reference from the relevant docs.
Place physical hardware inventories and VPS resource allocations near
the top of each box page, while leaving broader platform details in
their topical sections.
jackos1998