Currently, many companies that provide Internet service or ISPs work with a Huawei ONT or GPON terminal, a white piece of equipment that is nothing more than a modem/router combo to provide Internet service to all the equipment in your home. One of the most widespread models for this job is the Huawei Echolife EG8145V5 ONT . or the Huawei HG8545M. In addition to being a fiber optic modem, this equipment also has router functionality, something that allows you to turn this equipment into a WiFi access point or AP, so that you can extend your home’s WiFi signal over a greater distance. If for some reason you have one of these Huawei devices to spare, you can connect it to the current equipment that provides an Internet connection in your home, to expand the WiFi wireless signal coverage and go further, as well as take RJ45 ethernet ports to another area of your home.
Step 1 . First of all, you will need to reset the equipment to the factory settings. You will find a hole that is usually on the side of the equipment and at the bottom there is a reset button. You will have to put a toothpick or skewer inside and keep that bottom button pressed for about 10 or 20 seconds for the equipment to reset.
Step 2 . Now connect the Huawei ONT to the current and from a laptop (NOT a cell phone, it will not work for us) try to connect to the WiFi network that it will generate. You can find the network name and password on the label on the bottom of the device, as seen above. If you don’t have a laptop or the wireless connection doesn’t work, you can connect by network cable to the ONT.
Step 3 . Once connected to the device, open the web browser and in the address bar enter the IP address of the device, in this case 192.168.100.1.
Step 4 . On the page that will open, enter the username and password. Although these data are on the mentioned label, they will not be useful in this case. The access data to be used are telecomadmin and admintelecom as username and password respectively. That is the root access we need to make the required changes.
Configure the HUAWEI terminal as an access point
Once inside the settings of this Huawei box, we will do the following:
The configuration of the ONT HG8545M is identical to that of the Huawei EG8145V5.
- Tap on the WAN tab.
- Tap on the Internet connection (in the image above INTERNET_B_VID_51) to expand it.
- Within the operating mode, you must leave the WAN Mode option at “Bridge WAN”. If the warning The current service type is not supported in bridge WAN modeappears , it is because the “INTERNET” option is not selected in the “Service Type” option. It is grayed out and disabled. To enable changing this option you have to right-click on it and select the Chrome option “Inspect”. In the box that will open, in the search box that says “Filter” write Service Type and in the highlighted “paragraph” you have to remove the word disabled . This is explained in this video . After changing the Service Type to INTERNET you will be able to select Bridge WAN and save the changes.
- Now click on the LAN tab, find DHCP Configuration and disable this and all DHCP related features.
- Go to WLAN and configure the WIFI network at your convenience, that is, the network name and SSID.
Finally you must connect this ethernet cable modem to one of the LAN ports (not the WAN, if you have one) of your Internet equipment.
The best WiFi repeater
This type of extension is the most optimal way to extend the signal of your WiFi network. It is connected by ethernet cable from the router to this AP because it is the most optimal way to carry the signal. There are WiFi repeaters that can be connected wirelessly to your router, but due to its nature, it is the least recommended due to signal loss and instability.
The disadvantage is that this repeater will have its own WiFi network, that is, it will be a second WiFi at home, in addition to the WiFi of the main router. That is, there will be no WiFi roaming .
This can not only be done with Huawei ONTs, but with any router in general. In this case this ONT requires to be put in bridge mode first of all, but in a pure router this is not necessary. It will suffice to disable the DHCP server so that when connected to the source or main computer as indicated, it can function as an extension.