ZTE MC801A B12 update : Bridge mode broken

[Gagandeep]

Hi there,

Community / Three moderators, I am hoping you can help me.

I have a ZTE MC801A which I have been very happy with for about a month. I run the router in bridge mode, meaning that another device can take the internet connection and distribute it via my own TP Link router.

A forced update to firmware B12 has broken this functionality, and my entire home network and hardware setup is now left completely non-functional. The ZTE MC801a has become completely unable to handoff a WAN DHCP address and as such I am forced into using the ZTE router, meaning my heating/lights/raspberry pi and VOIP phone are all offline as they are wired to my TP Link Router - the ZTE router doesn't have enough RJ45 ports

Is there a firmware update on the horizon to fix this? This is an absolutely basic function (and offered by all the major ISPS like virgin/BT etc) I am considering making a formal complaint to have the router replaced with the NR5103E as this can actually bridge its connection. In lieu of this, does anyone have any ideas as to what could have happened? All of these problems have coincided with the update on the 14th of October 😞

[speacock]

Hi, that is correct, there is no connection to internet when the ZTE is in bridge mode, it only works when set to its ‘Wireless broadband’ mode. In bridge mode it just issues the wrong address on its LAN interface and the bridge mode function stops working because the router that is on that interface is now trying to use a non-routable address. I haven’t tried it, but I suspect that if I manually configured the WAN interface on my firewall with the IP address of the WAN interface on the ZTE, it would probably work, but this would only work temporarily until the next time the IP address changed.

[Tdichello]

Did you ever find a fix for this as I am having the exact same issue?

Many Thanks 

[Willow2492]

I'm also experiencing this issue, are there any updates?

[pyro1son]

Any update on when there will be a fix for this as not being able to use Bridge mode is causing problems on my home network

[speacock]

I've heard nothing since my last post, but the B15 firmware update seems to have caused the issue to become more widespread. There's a comment from @JonathanB on another thread that suggests there may be a fix - https://community.three.co.uk/t5/Broadband/Bridge-and-Public-WAN-failure-MC801A-B15/m-p/10186#M1494

[JonathanB]

Hi @speacock,

Sorry for the considerable delay in updating on this one. I think we may have made some progress recently.

Can you, and any others running into this issue check your APN settings and let me know which Three APN you're connecting on?

It should be set to "3internet", but if you have "three.co.uk" saved instead, this could cause the IP error described on this thread. The three.co.uk APN should only be triggered when using a phone plan SIM (or if manually entered), but I'm wondering if the firmware update may have reset the APN.

You ought to be able to check/edit this in the router admin pages, there'll be a section for "My router", then APN can be set to Manual from there.

Please let me know if this seems to be relevant to this issue.

Thanks,
Jonathan

[speacock]

Hi Jonathan, mine is set to 3internet already:

I'll try changing it from Automatic to Manual though and see if that makes any difference

[speacock]

@JonathanB As mentioned before, my APN was set to 3internet but was set to Auto, I've just changed it to manual and then manually set the APN to 3internet (so ostensibly no difference in the actual setting) and sure enough, when I switched it back to bridge mode it is now working again. So it seems like, even though it says it is using the correct APN when set to Auto mode, it actually isn't. Either that or manually setting that particular setting causes another one to be reset.

Whatever the cause, it resolves the issue and I now have my own firewall working properly, no double NAT and performance back up to 930/135 where it had been 500/100 without bridge mode.

[JonathanB]

That's great to hear @speacock, I'm sorry it's taken so long to make progress with this. Hopefully some other users can confirm if this is a consistent fix for them too. Please let me know how it's performing after a few days with this set up.

Thanks,
Jonathan

[pyro1son]

Will try changing these setting tonight. Thanks for your support