Sprint Airave Airvana does not work on FiOS
CoMiGa
Enthusiast - Level 2

I have been in contact with Sprint and Verizon about the issues I have with my Sprint Airave since late April or early May. I had the old style black airave for nearly two years without issue. Then suddenly it would have have quality issues on voice. Everything checked out by Sprint tech support so they decided to send me a new style airvana airave. I cannot say if the new style one ever worked or not, however I am now on my second and neither worked long enough for me to notice. Basically what happens is I plug in my Airave to my  FiOS modem/router combo and the airave gets green lights on broadband and gps quickly, then the mobile light blinks green for a very long time then starts to blink amber. I have reset the airave many times. I have tried 3 different modem/router combos from FiOS, two Actiontecs and one Westell. I had the Westell with the original airave and as stated it worked for nearly two years without problem. I have tried bridging a FiOS router as suggested by some sprint support and I could not get the bridge to work enough for me to have internet on my third party router, so I do not know if it resolved the airave problem or not. I am now on the most recent FiOS router the Actiontec MI424WR-GEN3I. Any help is appreciated.

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Re: Sprint Airave Airvana does not work on FiOS
abhi_col
Contributor - Level 3

Maybe airave needs ports opened on the verizon router. Can't tell which ports. Spring would know which ports if any the airave listens to. If you can't figure out what port, try this. The steps below sets up DMZ host in the router for airave so that the router firewall is completely bypassed and thus eliminates any issues of ports being blocked.

Before you start, know that bypassing router firewall is not always secure.

First you will need airave's ip address. You can find this inside the router.

So follow the steps here -> Setting up DMZ host

Things to look out for. Your GEN3I has a router login password on the router label. Use that. Username is still "admin".

You can find the ip address of airave in the "My Network" page once you are in the router.

Re: Sprint Airave Airvana does not work on FiOS
pa28pilot
Enthusiast - Level 3

I just happened upon your message. I have the newer (Airvana) Airave, and it works pretty well. To the extent it doesn't, it looks like any issues are Sprint's and Airvana's. (Those would be things like occasionally not getting inbound calls or delays with SMS messages.) On the whole, though, it does what it's supposed to do.

Speaking as a network engineer, I wouldn't connect it the way that Sprint suggests you do (in front of the router), for myriad reasons. In fact, if your Internet handoff from your ONT box is via coax, rather than an ethernet cable with a modular plug on the end, it's a moot point anyway. 

I have mine connected behind ("inside") the FIOS Actiontec router, and it works. 

I don't have any custom rules on the router for IPsec (which the Airave uses to tunnel your calls and data back to the Sprint network with encryption), and it does ok. 

There is a lively set of discussions about these boxes on the sprintusers.com forum (which isn't sponsored by the company) as well as more than a few on their official forums.

One FYI, if you get it working - the feature that allows you to restrict handsets that can use the Airave has been disabled for over a year, and I have yet to get a straight answer about when they are going to fix it. 

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