@hoopla so you want to tell me that there is no DEFAULT huawei software for this router? Only the brands ones?
..
"By the way, if you do flash the firmware to try bridge mode, there seemed to be no way back." wow that is... strange by any means. In a 21th century there is a soft you can't roll(back)over to previous version... or set up a default one. I don't want anything from huawei then.
Did somebody try some kind of dd-wrt/tomato/gargoyle on this? Did you updated version has a BRIDGE mode?
I have no idea whether the original firmware was a branded one. There was no branding visible, so I assume it wasn't, but how could I tell? It was what it was. And although it was advertised as having Bridge Mode, it hadn't.
I downloaded some different firmware and installed it.
No messing with shorting buttons: it had a button that let me select the new local firmware file, and a button to fire up the update. But no way to save the existing firmware or make a backup copy of it.
After the update, there was Bridge Mode in the menu. All fine, apart from the fact that it didn't work.
I could still have installed the original firmware, if I had any way to get a copy, but although I found loads of different versions of the firmware, none were the version I had before, and the only ones that seemed like any improvement refused to load.
So I decided to stick with what I had, until a few days ago, when it decided to update itself in the middle of the night.
I still have a Local Update button, so I could probably revert to the firmware I had, but this one has a nicer UI and it seems to work no worse than the last.
Although I can no longer choose the channels using the router UI, I can use LTEWatch or huaCtrl to do that.
I can't see why you can't just put the other router into a DMZ. That would work much the same as Bridge Mode, wouldn't it? What am I missing?