Use Smartphone as a Modem, input source für opnsense

[mobilfunk-maier]

Hello community,
since I have several smartphones (Android and Apple devices) at my disposal, the thought occurred to me that I would like to use one of the smartphones as a modem for the opnsense. How could this work in practice? Activate thethering on the smartphone and connect it to the "Mini PC on which opnsense is running" via a USB cable?

Will the USB interface be recognized as a WAN interface?

[MoonbeamFrame]

My fibre has been down for 18 days now so I am actually connecting via my mobile at the moment.

So the answer is yes. But it was not quite a case of working first time, and may also depend on what hardware you are running your firewall on. I'm using an HP Gen 10 Xeon box.

What worked for me was to put the phone into USB Tethering mode and to use the original USB cable supplied with the phone. Other USB cables did not work.

If recognised you should see a new interface, ue0 here,  which you can then assign and configure.
 

[bartjsmit]

I've used a TP-Link Archer MR200 4G router for that purpose. They're not cheap but with external antenna's they provide excellent stability and throughput.

Bart...