Vodafone sucks
September 5th, 2009 by ZapekAbout a month ago, I switched from Telefonica to Vodafone because the former was starting to get expensive, 75€ / month for a 10 mbit/s link, and their uplink was only 300 kbit/s which is really annoying as I also upload stuff to my servers from time to time.
Anyway, so Vodafone sent me the following piece of hardware.
It’s an Huawei EchoLife HG553
At first, vodafone offer you to connect through their 3G network for free until the ADSL link is working. So far so good. Once the ADSL link was up, I switched to that.
But I experienced frequent problems with DNS queries, that is, from time to time I would get the famous “host not found” error, and from all my computers. I first thought that there was a problem with Vodafone’s DNSes so I changed them in my computers, but it didn’t work any better.
Strange! At the end I started to suspect that Vodafone might be filtering DNS requests on their network but I didn’t see why, as hosts like ‘mail.google.com’ or ‘mail.live.com’ failed all the time.
I called their (useless) hotline. They made me change the DNSes on my local machine, without results of course, then changed the DNSes in my router and rebooted it. Hum.. So they’re accessing the router eh? ‘mail.google.com’ resolved once after that.. Then it failed again. They seemed clueless about the problem. They also said something that got my attention: “when I’m pinging mail.google.com from your router, it works fine”.
All right.. How are they accessing the router? And most importantly how can they ping from it as the default web interface doesn’t allow you to do so.
I remembered I was once able to access the router through SSH using admin/admin. So I did that and to my surprise, it didn’t work! So they must have been tampering with my router since I got online?
So, after hacking around, this is how to solve the problem.
First, you need to reset your router to default settings. Turn it off, insert a pen into the ‘reset’ hole, turn it on, wait 10 seconds, turn it off, remove the pen.
Disconnect the ADSL link, you don’t want your modem to reconfigure itself and remove the admin account again. I’ll shortly explain how they do that.
Turn on the modem. Its IP is 192.168.0.1, the admin account’s login is ‘admin’ and its password is ‘admin’.
Go to the web interface using admin/admin then reconfigure what you need to. You’ll see that you have much more options available than with the vodafone/vodafone login. Don’t touch the ADSL stuff, it is preconfigured properly.
Here’s a list of a few stuff you might want to do:
- Advanced Setup/NAT: Enable UPnP. This is useful for Peer 2 Peer applications or stuff like MSN Messenger, Skype, VOIP or file transfert in chat programs
- Advanced Setup/DNS/Dynamic DNS. If you want to use services like dyndns.org to have your router available anywhere
- Important: if you don’t want vodafone to reconfigure your router and remove your admin access as soon as you go online, go to Management/SNMP Agent and Disable it
- Management/Access Control: Here you can disable vodafone’s ability to access your router from the WAN interface. Just turn off everything except ICMP on the WAN side, and enable everything for you on the LAN side
- Management/User Management: Change the password of your admin account. support is used by vodafone and the password is ’support’ as well. Their access only works for telnet and ssh, not the web interface
Now do a SSH to the modem (with the admin account). If you need an SSH client for Windows, I can recommend PenguiNet.
Type the following:
iptables -t nat -D PREROUTING_IN 1
And that’s it! The DNS screw up is gone. Now make sure you configure your computers to use some other DNS than your routers because it is bugged and doesn’t work properly. You can use the vodafone DNSes:
89.6.239.4 212.145.4.98
You can now plug your phone line into the router’s ADSL port. If you disabled the SNMP services, the router won’t be reconfigured and rebooted by vodafone.
There’s still a caveheat, though. You’ll have to type the iptables command everytime you reboot your router. I’m trying to find a way to change it permanently.
I wonder if the vodafone support people realize how silly it is to tell users to change their DNSes when the router will intercept the queries anyway… Oh well.. Big corporations…
Posted in Computers | 16 Comments »
September 22nd, 2009 at 03:48
DNS problems came arrived 2 weeks ago. your investigation was very usefull for me ( I got the same router).
Just for the reseting part, I had to do a bit different, just unplug the DSL line, press the reset button until lights changed (around 15sec), switch off, switch on)
Now it looks like a pretty cool router (with full options and no “big brother” remote access)
thank’s a lot!!!!
September 22nd, 2009 at 07:51
Hi again,
I have a bypass that perhaps can help you. I made a script using “expect” commands that check DNS every X sec.
Expect allows you to send commands through ssh on machine we cannot configure rsa keys (like our router), it’s resolves the ssh password step .
I put it as a daemon on my server, it’s working fine.
if you are interested, send me a mail, and I will be happy to send you the script.
Regards.
October 7th, 2009 at 13:18
I have the same router, and the same problem with DNS.
Remove the firewall rule works perfect!
But I managed to find out where the configuration of iptables, any progress on this?
November 5th, 2009 at 11:58
I also have the same router and the same DNS problem. I have followed the instructions above to enable admin access but with no luck. I can’t login to the web interface as admin/admin nor telnet and ssh responds “ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host”.
Any ideas anyone?
November 5th, 2009 at 13:15
I have found something that seems to help me. The following 2 links have info on HG553 including what I was looking for:-
http://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#sent/124c3dc6583063eb
http://bandaancha.eu/foro/adsl-adsl2-vdsl/modem-routers/huawei-hg553
November 5th, 2009 at 13:17
Sorry first link should be:
http://wiki.bandaancha.st/Acceder_a_la_web_de_administraci%C3%B3n_del_router_ADSL_Huawei_HG553_de_Vodafone_con_el_password_de_admin
January 7th, 2010 at 15:37
Hi, thanks for the informations.
I have one question, if i will have admin access to the router i will have the ability to connect my printer in the router?
Thanks in advance.
January 12th, 2010 at 17:05
I have just got the Vodafone Huawei EchoLife HG553, the software in the router is:
G553V100R001C03B
and hardware:
HG55MAGS
I have tried everything but i still the same Vodafone screen and have to put in “vodafone” as username & password, can someone please tell me how i get the vodafone rubbish out and re-set it to default
Thanks
Steve
January 17th, 2010 at 12:52
The last 3 digit of the router software is 021 or 019? For example my router software is EchoLife_HG553V100R001C03B021
January 26th, 2010 at 14:06
I too have “Vers. soft.: EchoLife_HG553V100R001C02B036″.
Tried all the above suggestions, to no avail. Reset did reset, but i cannot access. I do not have the chance to enter ID/pwd, I go staright to the index.
I can neither telnet nor SSH. Vodafone goes live in a few days & would like to fix it B4 I learn to hate it. I managed to have them ship 2 of these to me, any suggestion at all would be greatly appreciated, tks, Wm./
February 5th, 2010 at 15:24
This is user manual published for Hg556 in ireland almost identical
http://forum.vodafone.ie/index.php?/topic/2235-huawei-hg556a-user-manual/
Hope this helps a little
February 22nd, 2010 at 13:05
It’s true, this method to reset Vodafone routers no longer works. Which makes this post completely invalid and should be updated or removed.
Although, as it is surrounded by Ads, I suppose the hits are quite beneficial
March 31st, 2010 at 13:49
I don’t know about the router issues, but WOW do i LOVE the title to this blog
Vodafone do suck. They are so uncustomer focussed it is incredible.
Awful customer service from an awful company
April 3rd, 2010 at 20:09
I switched from Eircom to Vodfone, and now find that I cannot use the wireless option. I have to go into the hall and plug directly into the router. How come I can only access the internet by plugging in directly but my wireless card can pick all the neighbours EIRCOM internet networks, and NOT my Vodafone router 5 feet away in the hall. !!!!
June 11th, 2010 at 14:56
Hi, have done everything mentioned on here except the iptables (it kept coming back with an error) and i’ve found that as soon as the adsl is up and running i can no longer access the admin pages using the new password i set or the old one that i got in with originally
to set the adsl i have to enter http://adsl.vf in the browser and enter vodafone as the user then my password, have tried admin as the user but it comes back with a blank page, and when i was in the admin pages i could not find any link to enter the adsl user & password. Any ideas? software is spanish ver 021
July 14th, 2010 at 23:55
hi,dos hg553’s dyndns working?
always can’t renew ip