Setup VLANS on Nova eNB

Products Nova
1

Many have asked if they can setup VLANs on Baicells eNB. For a long time for a lack of understanding the answer was No. We had some issues to determine which way the S1 traffic would flow. (This will be addressed with a drop down in the near future, effectively making this post useless).

So here is a quick step-by-step guide to accomplish this mystery.

So I created two vlans on my test router. For this I used a Mikrotik RB-2011 and used Ether 5 as my port. Here is the export from the VLAN config:

/interface vlan
add interface=ether5 loop-protect-disable-time=0s loop-protect-send-interval=0s
mtu=1536 name=baicells-vlan10-mgmt vlan-id=10
add interface=ether5 loop-protect-disable-time=0s loop-protect-send-interval=0s
mtu=1536 name=baicells-vlan20-data vlan-id=20

Then I created two networks: 10.1.1.1/24 on VLAN 10 and 10.1.2.1/24 on VLAN 20. Here is that export:

/ip address
add address=10.1.1.1/24 interface=baicells-vlan10-mgmt network=10.1.1.0
add address=10.1.2.1/24 interface=baicells-vlan20-data network=10.1.2.0

From there I made sure the Data VLAN was nat’d to the internet with a simple masquerade rule:

ip firewall filter/
add action=masquerade chain=srcnat src-address=10.1.2.0/24

Now, onto the eNB.

Upon login navigate to the VLAN section.

Once there click to add a VLAN. Now you need to add the mgmt VLAN first. In this case VLAN 10. Save those settings.

Once the page refreshed. Add you Data VLAN in this case VLAN 20.

Note: That when in LGW bridge mode that the interface must always be “WAN”.

The trick is this. The IPsec tunnel will travel over whatever the last VLAN created was. It’s really that simple. So the last VLAN should always be the network that can reach the Net.

A full power cycle is necessary to bring VLAN operation online successfully.

As a side note, this is only tested with the cloud EPC and has not yet been tested with with third party or local EPC.

Good luck and happy routing.

-Cameron

2

Hi Cameron,

Thanks for posting this up.
We’re using a local EPC and were bit by this bug twice.

The first time, I had to flatten the ENB to factory and reprogram.

The most recent, we had the ENB drop while the port stayed up on the switch. (Both IP addresses were unresponsive).
This was annoyingly resolved by power cycling the ENB. (At least it was that simple, and we didn’t need to flatten again)

3

My question on this topic is can we put each CPE on a different VLAN to separate traffic? I have an unorthodox setup but this is currently how my (failing) Ubiquiti network is running. Pretty much each Nanostation has a different VLAN Untagged so all client traffic stays on that VLAN.

thanks!

4

No exactly. This will require multiple APN support which is in development. With multiple APN you can have data and management traffic separated and you can associate that with a PDN which can be assigned to a VLAN of your choosing. However typically with TR0-69 management a single APN is sufficient because the device reports it’s status and such to the management server and all parameters can be configured from that point.

Hope that is helpful.

5

Has this been addressed with the “S1 Connection” setting under “Quick Settings”? We see a “One” and and “All” in teh dropdown box.