Struggling to get Huawai dongle and tp link router to work.

I've got a decent 3g signal in our loft (this is in Italy by the way) but I'm struggling to share the signal. I've bought a router, a TP Link MR3220 and the dongle is a Huawei E3131 and is on the 3 network on a 100hr a month option. I followed the set up and the router is picked up fine around the house and the router recognises the dongle with a decent signal but I cannot get the dongle to connect to the internet.

Looking at the router info once it has identified the dongle it is always in the process of 'connecting........' but never actually makes the connection.

Admittedly the dongle is not on the list of approved dongles for the router but I found an Italian forum where someone said this combo worked straight out of the box.

I've also made a firmware update just in case.

Any idea how I can get the dongle to connect?

In reply to a post by italiarsenal:

Admittedly the dongle is not on the list of approved dongles for the router but I found an Italian forum where someone said this combo worked straight out of the box.

either ask the person on the Italian forum

or buy a dongle on the approved list.

Ok, guess that sums it up. The guy who set it up on the Italian forum said it just worked straight out of the box so that wasn't any help. Clearly I can just buy a supported dongle but since I had this one from three and someone else had it working it seemed worth my while at least trying to get it to work.

Seems like it was worth persevering with, seems the problem is using a USB extension lead on the dongle. Without it the Huawai dongle is connecting ok. Have also had the chance to try it with an approved dongle and the same thing happens, connects ok without the extension but not with an extension USB cable. Is this a usual problem?

Sounds like the USB extension may not be up to spec if it either not supplying enough power or the voltage loss along the run is such that the data signals (D+/-) are marginal.

But yes I would consider that unusual for a short extension (up to 1m).

The wiki explains that although the standards allow for extension cables up to 5m in length depending on the quality of the cable they can be out of spec rather shorter than that.

For longer distances you have to use an active cable which is basically a powered single-port hub on the end within 5m such that you can daisy chain these together, or other methods involving conversion (e.g. USB over CAT 5), but they are more expensive.