Huawei HG 695

[Chilling_Silence]

Yeah as part of their order of a few thousand of the units, they usually pay a "Customization" fee of a few thousands bucks for Huawei / Technicolor etc to do some of the branding and stuff...
And yeah those routers are worth ~$11 a pop last I heard from a source.

[Alex B]

in gerneral
Those ISP supplied routers are ~pre-hacked~ by the ISP. They have ISP's back door & the ISP's secret admin logon so the ISP can remote in & check things.
Dont be surprised if it wont work with another ISP, it may have been pre-cobbled so it doesnt .

The are not the same as the NON isp supplied model.
The firmware is different. Some things dont allways work with ISP routers: some port forwards wont work & DMZ may not forward all ports (on some models)

Try & flash it with NON ISP firmware at your own risk. Ive Bricked an ISP supplied brand name modem doing just that ( some years back).

The only router I can think of that doesn't work with other ISPs is the old Telecom 2Wire. I've used a Spark HG659 on Spark, 2Degrees, BigPipe, Vodafone & Slingshot with no issues. They are IMO one of the best sub $100 routers you can get your hands on. Find something else with Gigabit LAN/WAN, 5GHz Wifi with AC, VDSL/ADSL Modem and WAN port for UFB/Cable for that kind of money that doesn't suck. The older Vodafone firmware did have some issues, but they have updated theirs to something a bit more stable. The Spark ones have been pretty solid from the get go.

[Chilling_Silence]

Find something else .... for that kind of money that doesn't suck

The HG695 is not that

[Alex B]

If you say so.

[1101]

The HG695 is not that

+1 on that
DMZ just doesnt work 100% , 3 sites . Replaced with Draytek, problem solved .

[Chilling_Silence]

DHCP stops giving out IPs, DNS stops forwarding when under heavy load, the usual issues...

[Alex B]

+1 on that
DMZ just doesnt work 100% , 3 sites . Replaced with Draytek, problem solved .

A feature very few home users need to worry about.

[1101]

A feature very few home users need to worry about.

Which is why the ISP's also send them out to companies I guess.
Home user or not, these things are either buggy or not.

There is a long history of home users having issues with port forwarding on ISP supplied routers.

[Alex B]

We are talking about a router that retails for sub $200 and is often given away here. Would I use one in a business critical situation or if hosting services? Hell no. For most consumers as an all in one device, they are absolutely fine.

Spark sent us a pretty nice Juniper unit at my last job, but we were not expecting the earth at no cost.

[1101]

.... For most consumers as an all in one device, they are absolutely fine.

yeah, I'd have to conceded there must be thousands of these, working away just fine