Particle Boron Ethernet featherwing doctor tool flag issue?

Connectivity
1

So a year ago I used a particle ethernet featherwing and everything worked as expected, provisioned with the mobile app ethernet option on but today I can't get it to work properly.

I used the doctor tool to set the ethernet flag. Then once connected to the cloud, I disconnect the antenna. Shouldn't this failback to the ethernet?

I read in the documentation that ethernet is primary, meaning it should work regardless if it has an antenna or not, but it doesn't... could it be the doctor tool didn't set the flag properly?

2

The feature flag is persistent, so if it was set before it would still be set, even if you changed firmware or upgraded Device OS.

I believe the problem you are seeing is that there isn't actually fallback in Device OS. It's true that if there's Ethernet (link, DHCP, and a gateway), it will always be used even if there is no available route to the Internet.

However, that does not mean if you remove cellular it will switch to Ethernet. Once it starts using cellular, it will stick with it until the connection comes back.

You need to use the library solution in the Ethernet docs in order to stop using cellular automatically. You'll want to use that anyway because you have to change the keepAlive setting when switching between cellular and Ethernet.

3

So if I boot the boron without a antenna should it use ethernet?

4

If you boot the device with Ethernet (link, DHCP, and gateway), Ethernet will be used regardless of whether you have cellular or not.

If you boot the device without Ethernet, and it starts connecting to cellular, I think it will continue to use cellular regardless of whether you connect Ethernet later. I'm not 100% sure about this, but it matches the behavior you are seeing.

But in any case, you shouldn't rely on the built-in behavior because it doesn't operate in a way that is reasonable in most cases. You don't have to use the library, but if you don't, you need to implement everything the library does in order to make fallback work in a reasonable fashion.

5

That's the thing, even with the antenna removed on bootup, no ethernet.

6

Then run the Web Device Doctor tool and capture a log. Maybe the Ethernet feature flag didn't get enabled. After selecting the device, make sure you click on Advanced Settings and Use Ethernet for Connectivity.

7

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