Huawei HG659, can't have "special characters in WiFi SSID"?

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › Huawei HG659, can't have "special characters in WiFi SSID"?

AidanS

458 posts

Ultimate Geek

#214556 17-May-2017 16:43

Just received my new Huawei HG659 in preparation for new Fibre install in the coming month and I was stumped to find out I couldn't use my old WiFi network's SSID in this new modem.

Apparently you can't have spaces or other "special characters"? This wouldn't normally bother me, except I was wanting to replicate the old SSID exactly, so that all my existing devices as well as friends/family's devices would auto reconnect without a hitch.

In the end, I was able to hijack the CSRF token from the web portal and submit a POST request to circumvent the client side validation. The result being, my new network now is now running completely fine with this supposedly "invalid" SSID, I just wasn't able to use their portal to get to this point.

Did this bother anyone else? Am I really not supposed to put spaces or other characters in my SSID's, or this just a silly unnecessary rule this modem seems to enforce?

ech3lon

369 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#1783800 17-May-2017 17:33

Yes it IS annoying, the firmware coder is too lazy to do proper SSID string sanitisation and settle with very restricted character set, not even "space" char!
Good thing I have another router as a wireless AP :-)

firefuze

510 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1783961 18-May-2017 01:08

It can be done reasonably easily, just not via the Huawei Web GUI.

See the post from @solutionz at the bottom of the page on this thread;

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=40&topicid=195795

You can simply edit the xml file with the SSID you desire - including spaces, save and upload to your HG659 and Bob's your uncle. Works on mine.

richms

28187 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1783968 18-May-2017 06:56

A long time ago a friend bricked a router putting emoji into the ssid of it. I guess things like this are in response to the poor string handling that crappy little embedded devices have.

Richard rich.ms

openmedia

3332 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1784239 18-May-2017 14:06

Yeah I hit the space issue last week with this modem.

Need to tweak the XML and upload.

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.