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Huawei B535-232 4g/LTE Router Issue

So I’m back. Turns out the router isn’t at fault.
3 in Hull seems to be abysmal currently across the entire city if I’m lucky will get 15-20mbps after midnight or early morning but other times it’s clearly lacking capacity to cope with the demand.
 
I think that's pretty much the case everywhere with Three. Hopefully when they roll out 5g they will increase bandwidth availability to those remaining on 4g too.
 
So I’m back. Turns out the router isn’t at fault.
3 in Hull seems to be abysmal currently across the entire city if I’m lucky will get 15-20mbps after midnight or early morning but other times it’s clearly lacking capacity to cope with the demand.
Where abouts in Hull? The cellmapper map suggests that there are at least 8 masts across the wider Hull area (admittedly only 2 in the city center itself) that have B1 enabled which should help improve capacity/speeds.
 

It appears three has issues across the country currently. Notice the red splodge in Hull?

Confirmed - spoke to them on webchat, there appears to be problems today, which they're working to resolve.
 
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The 3 status page has showed an ‘issue’ in Hull for the past few months. I’ve asked a few times and get a different date.
Signal and speed across the city and outer villages is atrocious this past week. Not limited to any particular area. Even with full signal the speeds are awful.
Hopefully it’s related to a much needed capacity increase but I somehow doubt that.
 
I am down from 70mb to 20mb, local mast is dead so having to connect to masts further away on band 20, luckily planned in advance for this and have a Dual Wan router and have another antenna and sim card pointed at a Voda mast giving an additional 25mb which is load balanced with the Three connection. Pity as a bit of tweaking on the Three antenna on monday got me the 70mb, then the SNIR went crazy on wednesday for couple of hours before latching onto a band 3 signal much further away, That got me 3mb so switched to band 20 and got 25mb.
 
My router is really struggling again today. As I only have one mast to connect too, I'm seeing complete drop outs where my internet just vanishes completely, its like using a 56k modem all over again currently.

I think Three is doing something nationally currently to the entire infrastructure. (Wonder if its anything to do with the governments recent Huawei announcement?)

I reboot the router for the hundredth time and it returns to 20mb for all of 30 minutes and then goes the same way, drifting off to oblivion.
 
Three network check is showing local mast is down still, I know its shared with EE and they report its just been fixed and so it has, 90mb is here again ;) ,

I use Huawei Monitor on a PC to control my B525 router, so I can pick and choose the bands to connect with. It also txts me when the mast changes so then I know there are problems to look at, it also can be set to reapply my preferred band settings 'when needed' and or 'every 6 hours'. Without this program my router keeps dropping on to band 20.


The help page on the internet is in french but google translate does a very good job, program is also settable in english.

It works on my B525 but I believe the B535 cannot be logged into, never had a B535 to know 100%, . I do have to use 'advanced options' on login setting and use API to login successfully on the B525.
 
Has anyone got experience with replacing the firmware on these routers? I've got the B535 from 3 - it's not branded firmware but I believe they're removed a number of advanced options for the sake of simplicity.

If anyone has the non-network version I'd like to know what your firmware version code is so I can try and download and install the generic version.
 
Has anyone got experience with replacing the firmware on these routers? I've got the B535 from 3 - it's not branded firmware but I believe they're removed a number of advanced options for the sake of simplicity.

If anyone has the non-network version I'd like to know what your firmware version code is so I can try and download and install the generic version.
I'm hoping someone comes up with something. But far as I'm aware I thought only Three seemed to be selling them?
 
Amazon sell them, presumably 'unbranded'. What settings do you think are missing?
I'm pretty sure there's things like bridge mode and some other more advanced settings Three removed from the firmware to ensure that some users don't make accidental changes that would be difficult (for them) to reverse.

I could be wrong though.
 
Bridge mode on my B311 was only just added in a firmware update back in Oct/Nov: Link. I don't know when the router was first released/available, but there are unboxing videos on Youtube for Three HomeFi product with the B311 dating from mid-2017. Maybe Huawei are just really slow to include features they deem to be less of a priority.

While the router was supplied by 3 I believe it's unbranded/non-network specific - there is no '3' logo on it, the model number is B311-S220 and references to that can be found listed on google for other countries/providers, and the model is available from aliexpress too - while I know none of this confirms its unbranded I think if it was Three specific then it'd more than likely have an individual model number that wasn't really available elsewhere in the world.

FYI: I have an unbranded H112-370 5G router (think it was released similar time to the B535?) and that doesn't have bridge mode (yet) either.
 
I've got the B535 from 3 - it's not branded firmware but I believe they're removed a number of advanced options for the sake of simplicity.

My B535-232 was also supplied by Three. You can purchase them from Livewire (modem.co.uk) who are the UK Huawei distributor, but I can't say whether the B535 they re-sell supports Bridge Mode (contact Rob Earle in their sales dept to enquire).

The only 'hidden' option in the B535 I am aware of is for setting custom DNS servers. You can unhide the local DNS servers by entering $(‘#dhcp_dns’).show(); in a console window allowing you to edit & save your own DNS servers (eg. 1.1.1.1)

The firmware on my Three supplied B535 is:
B535-232 Current version: 10.0.1.1(H191SP4C983)
it was updated to that shortly after I got it in Dec-2019 but has not received any subsequent updates from Huawei (and there probably will never be one).

If Three capacity in the Hull area is rubbish, then I suggest you a) complain b) use the Thinkbroadband map I mentioned before to work out who would provide a better service in your exact location. Please post back here your findings.
 
Smith, Interesting that they'd hide the ability to change DNS in the router settings. How do you connect to a B535 with console? I've tried putty with both telnet and ssh but root@192.xxx.xxx.xxx don't let me in.
 
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Smith, Interesting that they'd hide the ability to change DNS in the router settings. How do you connect to a B535 with console? I've tried putty with both telnet and ssh but root@192.xxx.xxx.xxx don't let me in.
By console, smithbill means the browser (e.g. Chrome) developer options (F12 key) and by 'executing' the $(‘#dhcp_dns’).show(); command in the Console window which will modify the web page you see by unhiding (altering the html) to reveal some the hidden settings/options.

Note that some hidden options don't function/save - e.g. I can unhide the 'Enable Firewall' option and untick it but Saving that setting results in a 'Failed' error.

I think Huawei have developed a common/single UI/interface but then rely on the router configuration to determine what features are then visible/user modifiable.
 
yeah, thanks for that Gavin. It looks like it works by modifying the object, but I can't see anything new appear on the router settings when it does it.
 
I checked this on my router and it looks like you're right - that command doesn't work for me - however you can manually disable the html element (display: none) that is hiding the setting from the page.

Annotation 2020-02-14 122120.jpg
 
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