How to connect using WiFi-WAN in new locations

1085 views 3 05/02/2021 Garry Wootton

WiFi-WAN is a feature found on many Pepwave MAX devices that lets the router connect to an external public or private wifi network for internet access. It is often used when in campsites and office buildings when wifi networks are available to save on cellular costs.

This article looks at how to connect to new WiFi networks.

Making a Shortcut

If you will be moving to new locations and connecting to new WiFi networks a lot, one way to make this quicker and easier to do is to add a browser shortcut to your phone, tablet or laptop, so that you are ready to login to your Peplink and scan for new networks.

To make a shortcut we will walk through the following steps.

  1. Connect to your Peplink router’s wi-fi as normal.
  2. Find your router’s gateway IP.
  3. Log into your device, disable wi-fi wan healthcheck and save a shortcut to your Home Screen or Desktop.
  4. Use the shortcut to easily log into the router to scan for new networks and add new wi-fi access points passwords.

Find your Peplink Device’s gateway IP

Android devices

Navigate to Settings>About Phone>Status , in the below example we see the phone IP is 192.168.200.11 , if we change the last octet (in this case .11) to .1 that is the router’s address, ie 192.168.200.1

Mac OS X devices

  • Click the Apple icon> System Preferences>Click Network.
  • Select your network connection and then click Advanced.
  • Select the TCP/IP tab and find your gateway IP address listed next to Router.

Apple iOS Mobile Devices:

  • Navigate to settings>wi-fi
  • Select your Peplink wi-fi> tap the blue circle
  • Make a note of your mobile device’s IP address.
  • Scroll down to the “IPv4 Address” section. Your router’s gateway IP address will be listed next to “Router.”

Windows Devices :

Click on you Windows Start button, in the search box type “cmd”, you should see a shortcut icon to cmd.exe, run this. If using a network cable : Note the Default gateway IP for Ethernet adapter Ethernet 1. If using wi-fi :Note the Default gateway IP for Wireless LAN adapter Local Area Connection

Now that we have the Peplink’s gateway IP, we can open a browser on any device on the Peplink’s wi-fi (or network LAN port), enter the gateway IP and log in to make changes.

In the browser adress bar , enter : https://<gateway IP>

(eg https://192.168.1.1)

If this does not connect, use http://<gateway IP>

Once you see the router’s web administration page load, be sure to bookmark it, in Android click on the three dots (shown below), then select “Add to Home Screen”, you may also add it to your browser’s favourites (bookmarks).

The Pepwave router’s login screen :

Once logged in, we will see the Dashboard by default. Click on the ‘Details’ tab for the the Wi-Fi WAN:

For accessing public wireless networks, it is recommended to disable the Health Check as below :

Disable the Health Check and Save the change.
Click on “Wireless Networks” then select the new SSID to connect to by clicking ‘Connect’ :

Enter the wi-fi key for the new connection, leave the other settings as shown below, and save :

You can check that you have connected to the new wi-fi network in the Dashboard, if required you can also temporarily disable cellular to save data while in range of this new wi-fi:

The next time that you want add a new wi-fi as WAN, the process will be much quicker as you will already have a bookmark or home screen link.

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