04 December, 2011

Telmex Nightmare (Huawei Modem)

I spent some time today trying to fix some of the problems the WI-FI modem given by Telmex was having.

Since my 2wire modem was broken (don't know what happened, just stopped working), I got some issues with my wireless internet. The modem that Telmex gave to me as a replacement of the 2wire is a "new" Huawei hg530.

The main and most annoying issue with the Huawei is that from time to time the DNS stop working. When I check the default network configuration of the DHCP, I can see the default GW, route and DNS is 192.168.1.254... in other words, the modem itself. Therefore, if something is broken it must be the modem, and trying to change it is not that easy, given the fact that there's a lot of WAN configuration, it could mean more time configuring than what I want to bear with. So the quick fix is to reconfigure dhcp services.

The first step is to gain access to the modem. This is done easily by googling it. The steps:
- Open a browser with the address http://192.168.1.254
- Type "TELMEX" as user and your WEP key as password.

The second step is to configure the DHCP DNS's
- In the left frame, open Basic->DHCP and type the google DNS's : 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

The changes are applied on the fly, but I couldn't connect properly until I restarted the modem, so I recomend to do so.

The last issue I wanted to solve now that I have access to the modem configuration, is to change the encription algorithm. By default you have a WEP key of 64 bits that is very easy to crack, so I changed it to WPA2-PSK. It's still crackable but it's way more dificult. Need to go to Basico->LAN Inalambrica and change the Encription method and key.

Now I have a bit better expierence... until now... let's see later.

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