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(EE) Huawei B525 has started randomly rebooting and won't connect

rik130

Regular Member
Hi.

I use EE unlimited mins/data phone sim for internet in my B525. Never had any issues over the past... very long time. It's wired over ethernet. The SIM is EE. Early hours this morning I started getting random disconnected for a minute or so then came back. Had this before as the local mast keeps breaking and they're forever fixing / "upgrading" it so didn't think much of it. Then, it went down for 30 mins and so I did the usual charade of reboots and resets but no joy.

I checked to see if the internet was down on my phone (also EE, separate SIM but same account) but to my surprise it is working OK there. I've swapped the SIMs over and the router SIM is working fine for internet in my phone, but the phone SIM is not working in the router, which points to it being a router issue.

If I pull the SIM out of the router, the router changes to the flashing red light as you'd expect so it's clearly detecting a SIM presence, but when I put a SIM in I get the green light and connection light, then my signal bars, but they only stay on for about 5 seconds then all go out except the green light. This cycle happens several times, until all of them go out (including the green light) ie. basically router turned off then a second later they all come back on again and this repeats for a few more cycles until it all stops and the green light only stays on and nothing else happens. Occasionally I get a blue light and very dim signal bars, but still no connection.

I'm not sure so maybe someone can advise me, but is the blue the 4G connection and green is 3G? I am wondering if maybe the 4G is down , hence why the Huawei can't connect (?) but the symbol above the signal bar on my phone says 4G+ so don't really know what to make of it.

I'm BD19 6 xx fwiw.
 
Have you tried a factory reset?
Not near my 525, it's in use elsewhere but think it's on the rear panel, a small paperclip should do the job.
 
Have you tried a factory reset?
Not near my 525, it's in use elsewhere but think it's on the rear panel, a small paperclip should do the job.
Yes, as I said in my OP and done mutiple times. Makes no difference. Still the same now. Having to use my phone as a hotspot for now.
 
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Still nothing. Any ideas chaps? The factory reset button doesn't seem to do anything no matter how long I hold the recessed button pressed with a small screwdriver.

EE stattus checker is now saying the problem has been fixed, but only getting a green light on the B525 which means 3G ?? Phone is showing 4G connection so why has the router "forgotten" how to connect to 4G and how to make it see it ?
 
It seems I was wrong about the lights being 3G / 4G. Green means "broadband" connection but blue means mobile internet. I have green not blue, but there are no cables other than the power cable into it. It now refuses to even recognise the ethernet connection which is what it's usually connected via. When I go into my PC control panel it says network cable unplugged, but it's very much connected at both the PC and router port ends. I've tried it in all 4 router ports, but nothing. I refuse to believe that the router is borked as the timing of the big "network upgrades" outage is far too coincidental, and as I've said, it's worked absolutely fine for 4+ years without anything being touched.
 
So, as mentioned in my other brief thread, turns out the ethernet cable is fine! It connects to the router no problem, but only when there's no SIM in it !! I can access the router admin "?" menu and settings no problem, but the menus for the other stuff including SIM Toolkit / mobile settings just default to "no SIM card, insert SIM card" as you would expect. The problem is as soon as I put my SIM card in and it detects it, it disables the ethernet connection, it no longer appears in my available network connections list and I can no longer access the router admin page "this site can't be reached" ! The reverse also happens - as soon as I remove the SIM, the ethernet option reappears.

Can anyone please make some some sense of this! It's like the SIM is suddenly blocked from being read in the router or something? But works fine in a mobile phone! My suspicion is that the router is absolutely fine but EE have changed something in the config at their end, which coincidentally began during their "network upgrades".
 
I think I had a similar thing happen years ago when I was first playing about with a 525 (Three Ireland one - new sealed from eBay) when I first started playing with mobile BB due to BT being useless and an Polish app that was in Polish, no surprise! Used for selecting bands for best performance. Seem to remember that that I had no access to the box when bands that were not there were selected. Google translate was not great for technical terms I remember. It's been a while though. Whatever was displayed on the page worried me, thought I had bricked it.
I also recollect someone maybe on this forum with a 535 or 533 on EE that suddenly lost connection after good/acceptable service. Seems a bit of a coincidences. Cannot remember the fix but they were in touch with EE and were not getting much from them.
Have you tried selecting different bands?
Try taking the 525 to another area served from a different mast.
Try another networks sim? That would prove the router if nothing else.
 
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Hi.

I use EE unlimited mins/data phone sim for internet in my B525. Never had any issues over the past... very long time. It's wired over ethernet. The SIM is EE. Early hours this morning I started getting random disconnected for a minute or so then came back. Had this before as the local mast keeps breaking and they're forever fixing / "upgrading" it so didn't think much of it. Then, it went down for 30 mins and so I did the usual charade of reboots and resets but no joy.

I checked to see if the internet was down on my phone (also EE, separate SIM but same account) but to my surprise it is working OK there. I've swapped the SIMs over and the router SIM is working fine for internet in my phone, but the phone SIM is not working in the router, which points to it being a router issue.

If I pull the SIM out of the router, the router changes to the flashing red light as you'd expect so it's clearly detecting a SIM presence, but when I put a SIM in I get the green light and connection light, then my signal bars, but they only stay on for about 5 seconds then all go out except the green light. This cycle happens several times, until all of them go out (including the green light) ie. basically router turned off then a second later they all come back on again and this repeats for a few more cycles until it all stops and the green light only stays on and nothing else happens. Occasionally I get a blue light and very dim signal bars, but still no connection.

I'm not sure so maybe someone can advise me, but is the blue the 4G connection and green is 3G? I am wondering if maybe the 4G is down , hence why the Huawei can't connect (?) but the symbol above the signal bar on my phone says 4G+ so don't really know what to make of it.

I'm BD19 6 xx fwiw.
Possibly a hardware problem - failing router or PSU? Do you have a spare (12V, I think) PSU you could swap in to rule the PSU out?
 
I've just been on the phone to a nice EE "tier 2" support chap who, to use his own words is "no spring chicken" to SIMs being used in routers, both their own supplied and third party devices.

The summary after an hour trying various things is that he's of the opinion it's a firmware issue that I need to take up with Huawei for why the router is completely inaccessible with an EE SIM in it. This is not just over ethernet, but the router doesn't even show in my phone wifi devices either, whenever there's an EE SIM inserted. As soon as the SIM is removed and the status light changes to red (no SIM inserted), the router appears in the wifi devices.

While he accepts my point about it being rather coincidental that the router connection terminated an hour after the planned "network upgrades" commenced on the mast, the fact that the 4G is working fine on phone devices says to him that the mast is fine. His argument is that the router admin should be accessible regardless of the SIM network.

I'm not at home at the moment but I guess further testing needs to look at whether Huawei have recently pushed out a firmware update which may have borked something, and then experiment by taking the router to different locations and trying my EE SIMs there, also try some SIMs from other networks, Thankfully I can get a usable speed via my phone hotspot over Wifi so I'm not internetless, but this router issue is annoying and is consuming far too much time trying to troubleshoot.
 
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