Setting up a Huawei E3276-150 4G/LTE USB modem on Ubuntu Server/Desktop

I just received an unlocked Huawei E3276s-150 4G/LTE USB modem/surfstick I bought on eBay the other day. I went for the E3276s-150 because the 150 seemed to be the most compatible option for European 4G mobile networks. There are even cheaper Huawei E3276 models like the E3276-920 which you can buy for less than 20 bucks. However, the 920 seems to be frequency-optimized for Asian mobile networks and may not perform as well as a E3276s-150 in Western Europe.

To my great surprise, setting up the Huawei E3276 on Ubuntu 15.04 Desktop was literally plug & play. After a few seconds after plugging it in, I was greeted with a “Connection Established” message. Nicely done, Canonical!

On Ubuntu Server, like most Huawei modems, the stick is recognised as a memory card reader. It has to be switched to a USB modem device first using the usb_modeswitch command in order to establish a mobile network connection. If it’s not already installed, usb_modeswitch can be installed using apt-get -y install usb-modeswitch.

Memory card reader mode:

drfalken@wopr:~# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 12d1:1f01 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

To turn the E3276 into a modem:

drfalken@wopr:~# usb_modeswitch -v 12d1 -p 1f01 -M '55534243123456780000000000000011062000000101000100000000000000'

If the change was successful, lsusb shows a different USB product id now:

drfalken@wopr:~# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 12d1:14db Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

At the same time, dmesg should output something like this:

drfalken@wopr:~# dmesg -T
[Fri May 29 20:55:41 2015] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=12d1, idProduct=14db
[Fri May 29 20:55:41 2015] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=1, SerialNumber=0
[Fri May 29 20:55:41 2015] usb 1-1: Product: HUAWEI Mobile
[Fri May 29 20:55:41 2015] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: HUAWEI Technology
[Fri May 29 20:55:41 2015] cdc_ether 1-1:1.0 eth1: register 'cdc_ether' at usb-0000:00:14.0-1, CDC Ethernet Device, 57:2d:70:33:22:10

Since the modem registered itself on eth1 (the name depends on the number of network devices, it doesn’t HAVE to be on eth1), we now simply fetch an IP address from the modem using:

drfalken@wopr:~# dhclient -v eth1
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.2.4
Copyright 2004-2012 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/

Listening on LPF/eth1/57:2d:70:33:22:10
Sending on   LPF/eth1/57:2d:70:33:22:10
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3 (xid=0x3b73326b)
DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.1.100 on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 (xid=0x3b73326b)
DHCPOFFER of 192.168.1.100 from 192.168.1.1
DHCPACK of 192.168.1.100 from 192.168.1.1
bound to 192.168.1.100 -- renewal in 36557 seconds.

Yay, the modem has made itself available on 192.168.1.100 (it even has a web interface on port 80) with a /24 prefix and a gateway at 192.168.1.1.
By the way, make sure none of your local networks use 192.168.1.0/24 or it will collide with the Huawei’s local network.

Depending on a few factors dhclient may or may not have changed the default gateway. If the default gateway points to the modem, it will be at 192.168.1.1 on eth1:

drfalken@wopr:~# ip route show | grep default
default via 192.168.1.1 dev eth1

If this is not the case, you may have to remove the existing default gateway and replace it using:

drfalken@wopr:~# ip route del default ; ip route add default via 192.168.1.1

And… connected!

drfalken@wopr:~# ping 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=22.7 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=34.9 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=39.7 ms

Make sure /etc/resolv.conf contains a valid nameserver if you can’t resolve domain names.

To switch the Huawei E3276 into a modem at boot time, create /etc/udev/rules.d/70-usb-modeswitch.rules and insert this line:

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="12d1", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1f01", RUN+="/usr/sbin/usb_modeswitch -v 12d1 -p 1f01 -M '55534243123456780000000000000011062000000101000100000000000000'"

To automatically add a valid nameserver in /etc/resolv.conf when eth1 comes up, add these lines to /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf:

interface "eth1" {
  prepend domain-name-servers 8.8.8.8;
  request subnet-mask, broadcast-address, time-offset, routers,
          domain-name, domain-name-servers, domain-search, host-name,
          dhcp6.name-servers, dhcp6.domain-search,
          netbios-name-servers, netbios-scope, interface-mtu,
          rfc3442-classless-static-routes, ntp-servers,
          dhcp6.fqdn, dhcp6.sntp-servers;
  require routers, domain-name-servers;
}

If you don’t want to run dhclient manually, you can either add an eth1 dhcp section in /etc/network/interfaces or add the dhclient eth1 command to /etc/rc.local.

Just FYI: I’ve been using Vivid Vervet’s (Ubuntu 15.04) 3.19 kernel in Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS. Vivid’s newer kernel can be installed using apt-get install linux-image-generic-lts-vivid. Not sure if it makes a difference compared to 14.04’s default kernel though.