Tag Archives: romtelecom

HUAWEI HG655b, the cheap all-rounder!

A couple of years ago, one of Romania’s main ISP’s (Romtelecom) started having this router as an option for their customers for a small fee or for “free”, depending on their contract. Nowadays, those who switched to the competition (RDS) even in the rural areas, find these DSL routers obsolete and sell them for 10-15€ or less, which is rather cheap considering the advantages listed below.

I’ve got both of mine for free from friends that didn’t need them anymore 🙂 Some pictures:

Pros: (with default hardware and firmware: V100R001C02B018)

    • DSL (one input) for ADSL or VDSL connections
    • VOIP with two phone outputs (never tried them)
    • 4 LAN outputs (well, that’s a standard for most routers)
    • 1 USB port for flashdrives and hard drives but connecting a USB hub for multiple ‘drives is also possible!
    • 4 SSID’s, so you can have multiple access points showing up, like 4 different WiFi connections with their own names, encryption, permissions and settings!
    • Router on/off button (sadly, not all routers have this anymore)
    • WLAN on/off button!
    • WDS button

Cons: (with default hardware and firmware: V100R001C02B018)

    • USB port has only FAT32 support! (latest firmware fixes this)
    • No WAN port, only DSL (latest firmware fixes this)
    • print server not working (latest firmware fixes this)

Pros: (after updating to the latest firmware: V100R001C02B025)

    • option to turn the first LAN port into a WAN port – other ISP’s work now! (e.g. RDS)
    • print server (e.g. using one of the routers in another room, where the usb printer is)
    • NTFS support for flashdrives and hard drives!
    • DLNA (tip: UPNP has to be activated too)

Cons: (after updating to the latest firmware: V100R001C02B025)

    • by turning the first LAN port into a WAN port, you have only 3 LAN ports left.
      Other than this, I can’t think of other disadvantages right now.

Some were able to install DD-WRT and OpenWRT on this model. I didn’t try it yet but having DD-WRT on my main (TP-Link) router got me tons of extra functionalities which would go hand in hand with the Huawei routers. And connecting all of them together, in a better way than right now, would be a nice upcoming project – for which this blog is more intended.

Until then, please check out Claudiu’s posts regarding the HUAWEI HG655b.

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