hg658c

eamon121

Hi does anyone know where I might get firmware for the Huawei HG658C modem. Firmware that does not have any features blocked like on the firmware that vodafone has. Have called vodafone, no luck and Huawei themselves can not give out firmware without concent of vodafone

any help much appreciated

regards

Dermot McDonnell

eamon121 wrote: »

Hi does anyone know where I might get firmware for the Huawei HG658C modem. Firmware that does not have any features blocked like on the firmware that vodafone has. Have called vodafone, no luck and Huawei themselves can not give out firmware without concent of vodafone

any help much appreciated

regards

You can download an unlocked firmware for the HG658c from the O2 website. I cannot post a link here, search on "How do I update my Fibre Broadband firmware". Flash that and login using your existing username n password then reset the modem to the default settings from the maintenance menu. That will get rid of the Vodafone settings. The HG658c will reboot. Your username and password will both then be "admin" and all settings will be unlocked.

Regards,

Dermot.

eamon121

Hi Dermott

Thanks for your reply. I have found and downloaded the firmware from the O2 website. However hopefully you can answer me this. One the upgrade has been complete i assume that the details and settings to re-connect to the vodafone fibre will need to be entered.

Is the username and password to connect to the fibre brodband specific to the customer or is there a generic user and password that I can use. Its not the login details for the modem I am thinking of.


Thanks again

Eamon

Dermot McDonnell

Apologies, I should have been clearer. It's a pain I cannot simply post the link.

The firmware is on o2online [dot] ie

Google "Fibre Broadband Firmware Upgrade"

I posted the link on the Kitz [dot] co [dot] uk Broadband Hardware forum under the thread "Boot log - HG658c with BCM63168 SoC"

You can revert to the old firmware by flashing the one on the vodafone [dot] ie website.

NB: Take carefull note of the working WAN settings. You will need these to configure your unlocked HG658c to connect to Vodafone. You can, of course, use any ISP.

nilhg

Link to the firmware is below,

http://www.o2online.ie/o2/uploads/HG658cV100R001C59B012_upgrade_main.bin


What hidden gems does this unlock for me? Any downsides?

Dermot McDonnell

Thank you for posting the link.

The risk is you will do something silly like power off the router during flash and damage the NAND storage. Unlikely though.

Unlocked it reverts to the generic Huawei firmware with all that it provides. I will prepare some screen shots when I get home, perhaps you might post them here as I cannot.

To be honest, I dont know why anyone would want to use the HG658c for broadband. For ADSL, the HG556a is just fine and has an excellent wifi radio, an Atheros AR9223 as opposed to a Broadcom BCM435f. Lots more through put in real life whatever the link status might say.

For VDSL, the unbranded Eircom F1000 gets excellent broadband sync rates, has a later, superior, version of the BCM435f wifi radio and 5x1Gig ethernet ports (the HG658c has 1x1G and 4x100M).

Just my 2c.

Dermot McDonnell

I posted the pics of the Basic and Advanced Menu Screens from the unbranded HG658c on the Kitz forum mentioned above. A kind soul might post the links, please?

Its Only Ray Parlour

nilhg wrote: »

Link to the firmware is below,




What hidden gems does this unlock for me? Any downsides?

Does anyone have the login details after you do this?

Vico1612

OP, which features are you looking for ?
VF might deny you support is you modify their box ...

Its Only Ray Parlour

Its Only Ray Parlour wrote: »

Does anyone have the login details after you do this?

Nevermind.

admin and admin1234 worked.

Dermot McDonnell

Its Only Ray Parlour wrote: »

Nevermind.

admin and admin1234 worked.

As my first post above made clear:

"Flash that and login using your existing username n password then reset the modem to the default settings from the maintenance menu. That will get rid of the Vodafone settings. The HG658c will reboot. Your username and password will both then be "admin" and all settings will be unlocked."

Its Only Ray Parlour

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

As my first post above made clear:

"Flash that and login using your existing username n password then reset the modem to the default settings from the maintenance menu. That will get rid of the Vodafone settings. The HG658c will reboot. Your username and password will both then be "admin" and all settings will be unlocked."

I had to type in "admin1234" for my password. You said they'll both just be "admin".

Dermot McDonnell

Its Only Ray Parlour wrote: »

I had to type in "admin1234" for my password. You said they'll both just be "admin".

Anyone else have this happen? I suspect Its Only Ray Parlour. Luckily you managed to guess the right password, well done

The password admin is built into the O2 firmware, once you reset the defaults the username and password will be admin and not anything else. I've only done it a dozen or so times.

Paul Thomas Rowland

Nice one Dermott. First you unbrand the Eircom F1000 and now this. What are you going to do for an encore? I thought you might have managed to unlock the Huawei bootloader but I see on Kitz that its still work in progress.

I have thanked you for your post.

Paul Thomas Rowland

The Vodafone default username is vodafone, password admin1234. If you have not changed it, or if you reset the router while running the Vodafone firmware, these settings apply.

When you flash the O2 firmware, the username and passowrd will not change. The router will simply reboot after the flash, the old setting are still in place.

When you reset the router to default settings, after flashing the O2 firmware, the username and password change to admin.

AlanS181824

I had no idea this was even possible.

I recently finished flashing a SamKnows WhiteBox my friend gave me so I'm feeling confident I can handle a firmware upgrade :pac:

Does it add any new features?

I might do it tomorrow when I've time.

Kind Regards

AlanS181824

AlanS181824 wrote: »

I had no idea this was even possible.

I recently finished flashing a SamKnows WhiteBox my friend gave me so I'm feeling confident I can handle a firmware upgrade :pac:

Does it add any new features?

I might do it tomorrow when I've time.

Kind Regards

Alright so I upgraded it and thankfully it went well.

I understand why they don't show all this stuff, very indepth and probably confusing to the average consumer.

Some interesting things I noticed:

It's still Vodafone branded, look almost the exact same bar the login which looks a bit different.

Huawei have their software copyrighted for 2014-2015.... :rolleyes:

At Advanced > CWMP > TR069 there is an intreresting link (here) which brings you to a page asking for a login which I don't have.

I believe this is a forum of sorts.

Really wish Huawei showed what device was on the WiFi!

Fed up of everything being listed as a Computer! :pac:

ED E

The router doesn't know what devices are, it could only wver guess based on manufacturer of the MAC (using OUI), not very useful.

TR069 is the remote management system, its how vodafone push firmware updates and run diagnostics.

AlanS181824

ED E wrote: »

The router doesn't know what devices are, it could only wver guess based on manufacturer of the MAC (using OUI), not very useful.

TR069 is the remote management system, its how vodafone push firmware updates and run diagnostics.

When I had Sky it would say Android_xxxxx, xxxPC, Sky HD etc.

Huawei/Vodafone think everything is a computer! :pac:

Ah I see, that's interesting.

ED E

AlanS181824 wrote: »

When I had Sky it would say Android_xxxxx, xxxPC, Sky HD etc.

Huawei/Vodafone think everything is a computer! :pac:

Ah I see, that's interesting.

Oh, its not reporting their Netbios/SMB names? Thats a bit silly. Even eircoms offering does that.

AlanS181824

ED E wrote: »

Oh, its not reporting their Netbios/SMB names? Thats a bit silly. Even eircoms offering does that.

Nope! Weird right?

There's about 30 computers on my WiFi according to it. :pac:

Dermot McDonnell

AlanS181824 wrote: »

I had no idea this was even possible.

I recently finished flashing a SamKnows WhiteBox my friend gave me so I'm feeling confident I can handle a firmware upgrade :pac:

Does it add any new features?

I might do it tomorrow when I've time.

Kind Regards

Alan,

The process is straightforward. I have posted screen shots of the unlocked menu options on Kitz as I cannot do so here. The unlocked features are listed. Simply compare the screen shots to your existing options.

Regards,

Dermot

AlanS181824

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

Alan,

The process is straightforward. I have posted screen shots of the unlocked menu options on Kitz as I cannot do so here. The unlocked features are listed. Simply compare the screen shots to your existing options.

Regards,

Dermot

Read up a few posts.

I already flashed it, didn't like it as it's a bit overcomplicated so I just went back to stock Vodafone.

Dermot McDonnell

AlanS181824 wrote: »

...It's still Vodafone branded...

Did you Reset to Default Settings after flashing the O2 firmware? No trace of Vodafone in the pics I posted on Kitz.

ED E wrote: »

...TR069 is the remote management system, its how vodafone push firmware updates and run diagnostics....

Correct. Anyone, hacker or state security apparatus, whos "owns" Vodafones servers can push a firmware upgrade remotely that utterly compromises your router and data security. You would not even be aware that it happened. Switch off TR069.

AlanS181824 wrote: »

...I already flashed it, didn't like it as it's a bit overcomplicated so I just went back to stock Vodafone.

Unlocked is not for everyone. Nice that you can try it and revert painlessly to your original ISP.

dazdrog

right question here for you, ive two of these routers, one that i use located in the hall and one spare thats collecting dust. from the router in the hall to a bedroom and the sitting room ive cat6a cable ran.

in the sitting room ive ran into a problem and i need more wired connections then one cable can provide, so i was thinking of using the second router in the sitting room with wireless disabled with the cat6a cable from the hall connected to the wan interface of the router, that would give me 4 more ports

ive flashed the spare to the o2 firmware and then wiped to default settings (vodafone branding vanishes after a cache wipe) now can anyone point me in the right direction of how i would achieve this?

Dermot McDonnell

dazdrog wrote: »

right question here for you, ive two of these routers...

You can certainly do this. I have done it myself. My problem is I no longer have an HG658c - it's not my idea of a decent router - so you will forgive me if I cannot give you step by step instructions.

One the second HG658c, you need to set it up to get WAN over Ethernet (the Red WAN port), get an IP address from the primary router (DHCP client). You can enable a wifi access point too on the second router if you want. If I recall correctly, you must setup DHCP on the secondary with a different sub-net, e.g. 192.168.12.1, to the primary. The secondary cares not whence the Internet comes.

Ideally, you would configure the RED WAN port on the Primary as an extra ethernet port because the RED port is 1Gig, the others are 100M. Cable RED to RED for a 1Gig link. I believe you can configure the 5th port as Ethernet on the unlocked HG658c.

Regards,

Dermot.

dazdrog

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

You can certainly do this. I have done it myself. My problem is I no longer have an HG658c - it's not my idea of a decent router - so you will forgive me if I cannot give you step by step instructions.

One the second HG658c, you need to set it up to get WAN over Ethernet (the Red WAN port), get an IP address from the primary router (DHCP client). You can enable a wifi access point too on the second router if you want. If I recall correctly, you must setup DHCP on the secondary with a different sub-net, e.g. 192.168.12.1, to the primary. The secondary cares not whence the Internet comes.

Ideally, you would configure the RED WAN port on the Primary as an extra ethernet port because the RED port is 1Gig, the others are 100M. Cable RED to RED for a 1Gig link. I believe you can configure the 5th port as Ethernet on the unlocked HG658c.

Regards,

Dermot.

Cheers ill get a look at the set up tonite and see what i can come up with

AlanS181824

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

Did you Reset to Default Settings after flashing the O2 firmware? No trace of Vodafone in the pics I posted on Kitz.

No I did not, this is probably the reason then.

Everything looked the same bar a Huawei login.

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

Unlocked is not for everyone. Nice that you can try it and revert painlessly to your original ISP.

Yeah, it's good to know that there are people like yourself actively tinkering with it!:pac:

Dermot McDonnell

AlanS181824 wrote: »

No I did not, this is probably the reason then.

Everything looked the same bar a Huawei login.

You get no benefit unless you do Reset to Defaults. The Vodafone config survives the firmware flash so the device remains locked.

Dermot McDonnell

dazdrog wrote: »

Cheers ill get a look at the set up tonite and see what i can come up with

How did you get on I wonder? I seem to have taken a copy of the relevant config for this if you'd like to try it. How do I get my HG658c_Config_EtherWan.conf to you?

jt72

Preparing to do this myself. When you export the config with stock, it's encrypted. Is that still the case with the Huawei/O2 firmware?

kingtiger

Can you change the DDNS settings to whatever provider you want with this firmware?

are you stuck with DynDNS & TZ0?

Scruff

what 3g/4g dongles does this support if u use the O2 firmware?

Sam Russell

How do you use the USB port on the Vodafone HG658c? According to the manual, it should work but I cannot get it to see the printer through the modem.

peking97

http://192.168.1.1/html/content.asp

Login as admin and goto>advanced>usb port>printer server.
That should explain it and it worked for me.

peking97

kingtiger wrote: »

Can you change the DDNS settings to whatever provider you want with this firmware?

are you stuck with DynDNS & TZ0?

I tried that O2 firmware and I was still stuck with those two.
I've since reverted to VF F/W Ver B214.
HTH.

Sam Russell

peking97 wrote: »

http://192.168.1.1/html/content.asp

Login as admin and goto>advanced>usb port>printer server.
That should explain it and it worked for me.

I tried following that but the printer fails to be found.

I think I need a dummy set of instructions.

Is the printer just connected or does it need some changes on the printer or on the modem?

Do I need to specify the address for the printer? It suggests "http://192.168.1.1:631/printers/hp3845"
Which does not appear to work.

jt72

I've flashed the Huawei firmware, thanks for sharing the info.

Looking at the managment pages, there is now a Link Settings page with several tabs:
ATM / PTM / Ethernet / UMTS

Do you need these values after restoring to default settings?

Additionally, the WAN page lists 4 WAN connections, of which I believe only the PTM_TR069 values matter.

There's a password field that's hidden - do we need that as well?

Dermot McDonnell

It is ESSENTIAL that your RESET to DEFAULT settings after you flash the O2 firmware, otherwise the Vodafone settings are still in place. So many folk simply ignore this step and then wonder why they are getting nowhere.

jt72

I know you have to reset to factory - I'm just making sure I have the info I need to apply to get a connection afterwards.

I've taken some screenshots of the pages I think might be relevant. I was asking if the username (XXX@vfiefttc.ie) and password (masked) are required - or perhaps other values are required?

AlanS181824

Would there be anything useful to the average consumer that this ads?

More options, more features etc.

swoofer

a good question

Dermot McDonnell

AlanS181824 wrote: »

Would there be anything useful to the average consumer that this ads?

More options, more features etc.

VOIP for starters.

My reason to unlock it was to use it with Eircom when we moved from Vodafone. We had ADSL2. When fibre arrived, Eircom provided an F1000 and my HG658c went to an OpenWRT hacker in Romania. Unlocked you can use it with any ISP, but it needs to be configured for that ISP. Most ISPs provide a howto or faq on how to do that.

AlanS181824

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

VOIP for starters.

My reason to unlock it was to use it with Eircom when we moved from Vodafone. We had ADSL2. When fibre arrived, Eircom provided an F1000 and my HG658c went to an OpenWRT hacker in Romania. Unlocked you can use it with any ISP, but it needs to be configured for that ISP. Most ISPs provide a howto or faq on how to do that.

Are you able to install OpenWRT/DDWRT on this? Now that I'd be interested in!

VoIP wouldn't be useful personally as I have a landline number already.

So basically it just ads features you can tinker with but no real use for the average consumer?

Dermot McDonnell

AlanS181824 wrote: »

Are you able to install OpenWRT/DDWRT on this? ..

Openwrt wont ever happen on this box with xDSL, imo. Well established patent rights will prevail.

Adding VOIP is of great interest to many customers, esp folk with long distance voice requiremenost ISPs have a direct commercial interest in eliminating it.

A minor plus for some users, is that with an unlocked hg658c, you can prevent Vodafone from removing, at will, any security you have on your router via TR-069.

peking97

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

A minor plus for some users, is that with an unlocked hg658c, you can prevent Vodafone from removing, at will, any security you have on your router via TR-069.

Can that not be done already on the standard VF F/W by unticking the TR069 boxes under BASIC>WAN tabs?

AlanS181824

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

Openwrt wont ever happen on this box with xDSL, imo. Well established patent rights will prevail.

Adding VOIP is of great interest to many customers, esp folk with long distance voice requiremenost ISPs have a direct commercial interest in eliminating it.

A minor plus for some users, is that with an unlocked hg658c, you can prevent Vodafone from removing, at will, any security you have on your router via TR-069.

Oh that's a shame, would love to have that on the router.

Cheers for clearing that up Dermot!

jt72

One thing I did notice was that I cannot assign a static lease / fixed DHCP address.

It is interesting that there was an ACL there in the old version for HTTPS traffic from 213.233.159.69 (owned by Vodafone) which permitted HTTPS traffic into your device from WAN direction. I could not remove that with the old firmware.

Disabling TR069 is of interest as well for certain. I purchased this device from Vodafone when I signed up, I didn't give them the authority to administer it.

For the average user, particularly those not interested in SIP or not interested in kicking Vodafone out of their router, there is not much else I could see.

For those who try, you'll have to delete the default WAN connection and create a new one. It would not let me change the type of the PTM WAN connection.

You'll also need your modem's serialnumber@vfiefttc.ie username, and the password (broadband) to connect via PPPoE. The rest of the settings at default are fine IIRC.

Its Only Ray Parlour

I noticed vectoring has been enabled on my cabinet but my attainables remained the same. I figured this was due to me flashing my router with O2 firmware and missed out on the vectoring upgrade. I restored default setting and couldn't connect to the Internet for 2 days. I had a technician out from Eircom this morning and he there's nothing wrong with the line so it must be the router. I rang Vodafone and told them I flashed it with O2 firmware and they told said I'll need a new router, which will cost me around €50.

I ordered a new router from Vodafone, then I realised I could use another internet connection to access the Vodafone forum and see if I can download the latest firmware there. Got it anyway, went home and flashed the router this evening. Finally got the internet working and upgraded to a higher profile.

I told Vodafone to cancel the new router but it's sent out in the post already, so I just have to sent the router back (via freepost) when I recieve it and they won't charge the €50.

All in all, I'm never flashing that router again.

AlanS181824

Its Only Ray Parlour wrote: »

I noticed vectoring has been enabled on my cabinet but my attainables remained the same. I figured this was due to me flashing my router with O2 firmware and missed out on the vectoring upgrade. I restored default setting and couldn't connect to the Internet for 2 days. I had a technician out from Eircom this morning and he there's nothing wrong with the line so it must be the router. I rang Vodafone and told them I flashed it with O2 firmware and they told said I'll need a new router, which will cost me around €50.

I ordered a new router from Vodafone, then I realised I could use another internet connection to access the Vodafone forum and see if I can download the latest firmware there. Got it anyway, went home and flashed the router this evening. Finally got the internet working and upgraded to a higher profile.

I told Vodafone to cancel the new router but it's sent out in the post already, so I just have to sent the router back (via freepost) when I recieve it and they won't charge the €50.

All in all, I'm never flashing that router again.

You shouldn't have said to them you flashed it, should have just said it just stopped working and they would have gave you one for free!

Dermot McDonnell

AlanS181824 wrote: »

You shouldn't have said to them you flashed it, should have just said it just stopped working and they would have gave you one for free!

If you unlock by flashing the O2 firmware, you can always return to "normal" by flashing the vodafone firmware - available free of charge on their website. You won't even lose the settings you put in place while using the O2 firmware - unless you Reset to Defaults. Providing an ISP a gratuitous opportunity to rip you off is just foolish, they will avail of every opportunity.