A Firmware Update For Bell’s HH4000 Seems To Have Broken Advanced DMZ Functionality
Those who have followed my journey with Bell Fibe will know that there are two ways to use your own router with Bell’s hardware, in my case an Home Hub 4000. There’s the PPPoE method and the Advanced DMZ method. The latter has worked for me more or less flawlessly for months. And that was despite an ASUS XT8 firmware update that caused some issues with Advanced DMZ for a bit. But that changed last week when Bell dropped this firmware update that seems to have made the Advanced DMZ functionality unusable:
This firmware appeared on my HH4000 sometime last week, and yesterday Bell forced a reboot on my HH4000 which took down my network. Despite my best efforts, I could not get Advanced DMZ to work. Thus I had to resort to going to a double NAT setup which is not ideal. But it works for me so far.
My theory is that a combination of the most recent ASUS firmware that I have on my XT8 router and this new Bell firmware is responsible for Advanced DMZ not working properly. There’s no way for me to test this from the Bell side of the fence as there’s no way to roll back firmware updates with Bell hardware. What I may do is roll back the firmware on the XT8 and test again. But that isn’t a today problem for me as I have other priorities at the moment, and things are working at the moment. When I do get around to doing this, I will post an update. But if you suddenly have issues with your Bell setup, you now know where to look in terms of where to start your troubleshooting.
August 31, 2023 at 8:51 am
[…] this week a firmware update that was pushed to my HH4000 modem that powers my Bell Fibe Internet broke the ability for it to use the Advanced DMZ functionality […]
January 31, 2025 at 6:24 am
I just found the same thing after two attempts that bricked the router each time. Each Factory Reset resulted in another 8-10 hours of rebuilding the DHCP table for about 30 static IP reservations.
Bell, level 3 support, basically admitted they don’t want the complexity of another router on their system as they cannot support users (or even their own equipment, for that matter). One tech swore there was no static IP option on the HH4K routers.
February 13, 2025 at 10:33 am
So any update on the double NAT? I did this for years with Verizon. I would set my router to a fixed address within the DHCP table of the verizon router, i.e. 192.168.1.100 and then make that the gateway for my devices. Then on my Netgear router I would set up the address as 192.168.2.1, with a DHCP starting at 192.168.2.101. I would use .5 – .95 for my fixed devices and keep that on a separate spreadsheet so I didn’t create a duplicate if a device was offline when I ran my scanner tool.
February 13, 2025 at 11:37 am
I have moved off Bell for Distributel so I don’t have direct visibility into this. But the word on Reddit is that Bell might be removing this functionality outright as they don’t want to support this. I have not confirmed this myself
March 20, 2025 at 1:05 pm
7 days later and I had HORRIBLE latency issues this morning. I’m talking up to 12000 ms TO my HH4000 – talking to it directly, and talking to it from behind my Asus which itself is doing PPPoE too.
Seem to have tracked it down to 100% CPU and massive load averages on the HH4000, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.
Googling for that brought me to your page.
What Reddit sub is it you’re referring to where they’re discussing advanced functionality like this? I imagine most of the users in /r/bell are about as smart as the front line support staff and wouldn’t be able to spell PPPoE, let along know what it is.
For now I’ve tried to minimize the traffic hitting the HH4000 directly and limit it to just just coming through my Asus, as while testing it seemed like if I’d get some traffic going by something directly connected (I like to keep our work devices on that side of the fence and away from our LAN traffic) the latency would spike instantly. Sadly, short of walking around and unplugging everyone’s TV box, I can’t stop ALL the traffic on that side of the fence.
I’m still seeing weird latency spikes, even with my adjustments … it’ll jump from 1ms to like 350ms and then over the next 40-50 seconds, slowly but steadily reduce back down to 1ms. Then a little while latter (sometimes seconds, sometimes a minute), wham, another huge increase in latency and the slow reduction again.
I can live and work with 400ms spikes though – the ones I was seeing earlier were making it completely unusable.
March 20, 2025 at 1:14 pm
Any information that I am getting about Bell comes from the Bell Sub Reddit. The latency issues that you speak of sound horrific. Any suggestions that I have would require getting help from a competent person at Bell. Which at best is hit or miss. I can see them swapping you HH4000 for a Gigahub. Maybe you might get a truck roll if that doesn’t work. But I suspect that they will decline to assist as you’ve bypassed their hardware. I have experienced that. Let us know if this gets resolved.
March 20, 2025 at 2:41 pm
Oddly, and sadly, while I’m still getting some wild jitter with just a single device connected straight to the HH4000 – that’s all I’m getting … it does work, and it doesn’t get this ‘feedback loop’ type latency escalation right into a completely unreachable device and crash :-/
The problem only seems to happen when I fire up the PPPoE client _behind_ it :'(
I’ll watch the Bell sub for any intelligent humans that seem to have the same issue, ty.
I wonder if I can convince them to upgrade me to a GigaHub somehow … “I want faster WiFi” will just have them trying to sell me the damn pods.
I wish I could switch back to TekSavvy, but my townhouse/condo board has a deal with Bell so I get TV + 3x boxes, 1.5 Gbps internet, home phone (not connected), premium channels, yada yada yada for like $75 a month. It would make absolutely no sense to go to slower internet for twice the money and just be throwing away the ‘perk’ that is furnished by my condo fees 🙁
March 20, 2025 at 3:32 pm
Bell had an ‘upgrade to GigaHub’ option in myBell for ~$7 a month – or – I could pay like $8 LESS a month to go from 1.5 Gbps -> 3.0 Gbps and the GigaHub seems to be included …
Sadly they insist on sending a tech for that, not sure why, when I had initially just opted to upgrade to the GigaHub they were just going to ship it.
Either way, smaller bill, faster connection, and new, hopefully more powerful and competent hardware… seemingly can’t go wrong! They’ll be here Saturday morning. Until then I’ll have to put up with the wild latency swings, and maybe even continued modem lockups :-/
March 20, 2025 at 3:43 pm
Sounds like you got Fibe before 2022 or so. If so They likely need to switch your connection from GPON to XGSGPON to support the higher speed. That requires a tech to be sent out.
Go into the weeds here: https://www.fs.com/blog/gpon-vs-xg-pon-vs-xgs-pon-which-pon-technology-is-right-for-your-network-2963.html
March 20, 2025 at 4:03 pm
In my past life I was tier 3 GPON build/support for a telco not named Bell, so yes, the weeds is where I like to be … ty!! 🙂