Experience with Optus 4G wireless broadband

Some background, where I try not to gripe about NBN...

O NBN!, wherefore art thou NBN!
That pretty much sums up my experience over the last year, having relocated from Sydney with a decent NBN connection, to an ADSL1 connection in the Gold Coast. I was then left waiting for either an ADSL2 port to free up (not likely to happen) or NBN to finally arrive. NBN was expected here in Dec-18 and is now due in Dec-19....

So with NBN delayed another year, I was well and truly over my current connection. For the record I had 6 Mbps download and 0.3 Mbps upload. So uploading a picture to facebook would kill my internet. It's hard to believe this can be sold in Australia as an adequate service.... right not griping, moving on.

Thankfully this is all behind me with the introduction of Optus's 4G wireless broadband plans, which were released in November 2018 replacing the Vividwireless service.
Based on our usage of around 380 GB per month, I selected the the $80 500 GB plan. The $60 option was for 200 GB.

Optus Plan and Hardware

Checking the Optus wireless broadband coverage I was happy to see the expected coverage was indicated as "Good" indoors and "Great" outdoors, I wasn't sure exactly what this meant but I expected it would be better than what I had. I did do some tests with my mobile which uses the Optus network as well to see what I could expect which seemed promising.

I did look at antenna's, in-case the connection wasn't as good as I hoped, the Router has two connectors for an external antenna, if I do get one I'll likely try the one recommended here for $79.

I ordered the Optus $80 plan online, the hardware arrived promptly, with the router and standard LAN and telephone cables, the activation was expected to be automatic within 4 hours of delivery, but I ended up needing to call to get this done.

Huawei 4G Router B525 (model B525s-65a)

This is a 4G LTE router which seems to review fairly well. However I was disappointed in the lack of security/family features which I discuss below.
The full specs can be found here.

I have the router upstairs in our 2 story house, I had a fair idea of the best spots having tested speeds on my mobile which uses the Optus network (using Speedtest.net).
Here's the speed as this morning. As you can see this is a vast improvement on my previous ADSL1 speeds of 6 Mbps down and 0.3 Mbps up.

Due to the location of the 4G router I don't use the WAN connection, I've used my existing Asus AC68U router in repeater mode which most devices were connected to either physically or via wireless. This meant fairly simple integration with the existing home network.

Router Configuration

Blocking Inappropriate Content

For the family I implement some standard security. Normally from the router I'd set the DNS settings to use my own DNS server which uses OpenDNS to help block inappropriate content, plus some additional settings to force Google and Bing to always do safe searches.

Setting up DNS

Running through the settings there wasn't a screen to change the 4G routers DNS settings. This seems likely a pretty glaring omission. Digging a bit further I found the capability is there, it's just hidden in the Web UI. I'm not sure on the rational of why.

Below is the standard DHCP settings screen.

Using the developer features in Chrome you can re-enable the DNS setting options.
While on the DHCP settings screen:
1. press F12 to bring up the developer screens
2. Then enter the following in the interactive Console
$('#dhcp_dns_statistic').show();
$('#dhcp_primary_dns').show();
$('#dhcp_secondary_dns').show();
The DNS settings should now appear.

Here's a screenshot of the entering the javascript commands into the console.

This will then enable the DNS settings, so you can enter values and save.
Below I've set my DNS to a local server (192.168.8.11), and left the secondary as the Router address.

Time Scheduling

There appears to be no concept of time scheduling on the router, again a must have for the kids.

The router does have an XML based API that the Web UI uses. As there is blocking of MAC addresses I'm currently tinkering with this with an aim to setup time scheduling from a Raspberry Pi blocking an unblocking devices as required.

Once I have some progress I'll add a post.

Update 24-Jan-19: I've now implemented a Python API in this post.

Port Forwarding (Virtual Server)

There is no Web UI to allow port forwarding. From looking at a non hobbled B525 it looks like these settings should be under Security, likely linking to a virtualserver.html page.

I couldn't find an obscured page, nor any hidden settings, but all was not lost the underlying API still allows setting this, you can login to the router Web UI then change the address to http://192.168.8.1/api/security/virtual-servers. I've now implemented setting this in the Python API mentioned in this post.

I now have a local IPSEC VPN server running on a Raspberry Pi and the B525 forwards UDP ports 500 and 4500 to this server.

Update 2-Feb-19: I've added a separate post on setting up port forwarding. Either using the python API or manually.

Monitoring Usage

You will get charged $10 per 10 GB if you go over your data usage cap, we can use 10 GB in a day so monitoring is pretty important.

The My Optus web page will provide the usage information, with some delay, but it's manual.

I expect I may get SMS and email alerts from Optus, so I'll wait and see. I haven't yet got the mobile application working for the phone so I'm not sure if it has some alerting features.

In the meantime I'm also looking into the router API to see what I can do. I'm aiming to setup monitoring and send an alert to my phone. It may also be possible to limit the connection speeds if the limit is getting close.

Summary

Overall I'm pretty happy, $80 per month was a bit more than my previous plan, but I now have decent internet service (for Australia), and we have fewer family member witch hunts when the internet crawls to a halt.

The router home security features are a bit disappointing, but as above I've got the inappropriate content blocking working, and I should be able to set time scheduling via the router API, a Raspberry Pi and some python code.

I'll likely look at an Antenna to see what I can push the service to, and it may be credible to stick with wireless broadband even when NBN finally arrives. Although having a cap of 500 GB on my service is probably the biggest issue. Especially once we start to get some 4k content streaming into the house.