Huawei B525 - firmware guide to enable bridge mode and more.

HUKD persuaded me to go with the 3 MBB, and this place persuaded me to get the B525 - so here's my go at giving something back... This doesn't depend on you using 3 - but I guess it's the current favourite given the price point.

Finally got around to "packing" something together to enable bridge mode + a lot more extra firmware options (such as selectively choosing what bands to use - I've actively disabled band 20 due to the speed decrease if it swaps to it).
My current setup uses this, teamed with a Virgin 350Mb connection. There's a slight overall speed increase, but it's the failover aspect which I was interested in and it works brilliantly.

This is only for the B525-23a. This model can be had cheaper and gives you all the bands in use in Europe.
Honestly, now that 5G is in full swing there is no benefit to the -65a in the UK/Europe as no new 4G bands are going to be certified. This firmware gives an awful lot more to the interface too, not just Bridge mode.

The big thing if you're doing this is you will need a USB-A to USB-A cable. This is a completely non-standard cable and doesn't conform to USB specifications. Fortunately, these cables are available from China or you can make one yourself. It's just how you access the firmware mode of the Huawei kit.

Firmware pack is here: mega.nz
All the info is in the readme file. Make sure you extract the full archive before running the commands.

Came across your post as I'm looking in to ways to lock mine to a band. If it switches I get a stronger signal but much lower speeds due to the network not having carrier aggregation on the band. My method up to now has just been rebooting it everyday as it seems to go on to the band I want most times after a reboot! Bit of a PITA. Is the cable really necessary as there is a local update option on the admin page? See http://192.168.8.1/html/update_local.html

Thank you.

PS just been testing HManager and this seems to work for hopping between band 3 and 20. I don't know if it keeps it on 3 or if I'll have to use it every day or so when it hops on to band 20. Band 20 lucky if I get 10Mbps down, band 3 is 70+!

http://www.bez-kabli.pl/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=51231

Edited by mathew2 (Sat 11-May-19 17:53:52)

Was looking at buying the B525 - in the hope it would simply do carrier aggregation where possible or choose fastest band by default. Is this not the case then ? Or possible to setup without using a 3rd party app?

After using HManager to put mine on band 3 it has stayed there all weekend so suspect it will stay on that band until rebooted. Good enough for me though it would be better if this was doable in the router's web interface without opening the casing and voiding the warranty!

The router doesn't know which is fastest I don't think so can hop onto a stronger signal that's slower. For me it's over 50% success for it dwelling on the faster band after a reboot; don't know why it does this.

To fix this it'd have to connect to and run a speedtest on all available bands in sequence before dwelling on a band (the CA band could be slower if congested I suppose so default looking for CA might not fix it).

I thought three did CA across all bands so therefore by default it would be fastest if it could do CA ?

The B525 and 3 does support CA. However, 3 haven't rolled it out to all areas yet.

To flash this firmware, you will need that USB cable as the firmware will not be accepted by the router built-in upgrade feature.

Oh so by default the b525 wont do CA in three without a firmware upgade?

Sorry, I might have explained that poorly.

The B525 will do CA with 3 out of the box - as long as it's talking to 3 masts that also support CA.

The firmware lets you lock to specific bands - in my case I don't get CA from my masts and it has a tenancy to drift to B20. This lets me lock it to B3.