This topic

Hawuei 4 port ONT

TobyOneKenobi — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 08:51:29 GMT

Hi,

don't come across many of these but I recently visited a property that was having issues with no BB and they had one of these ONT's. They had a EE Hub Plus 7 that was connected to the ONT via port 1 and via the wan port on the EE hub, according to the customer they had been getting BB ok but then it just stopped and the Hub went solid orange. They had several engineer visits and their opinion was that it was a serial number mismatch. On the 2 port ONT's it's usual to use port 1 to connect to the wan port on the hub but the 4 port hubs do not have an accessible wan socket as it's internal to the ONT. I did manage to resolve the issue by using port 2 to connect to the EE Hub so looks like it was a failed port not serial number mismatch. But thinking about it should the EE Hub be using the lan ports to connect to the ONT lan ports? It works this way and the speed was fine but there are differences between lan and wan?

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

WSH — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 09:26:08 GMT

Not really something I know a lot about but more likely ONT LAN to router W AN I would have thought. The ONT WAN port would be the connection to the service provider surely?

Edit: In fact, the ONT WAN port will be the optical port. I'm not sure I understand your question here?

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

gg30340 — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 09:50:57 GMT

The Lan port 4 on the hub can be used as a WAN port in order to connect to the ONT but it needs to be turned on inthe hubs management settings.

https://ee.co.uk/help/broadband/fix-problem/check-your-full-fibre-wiring-and-set-up#:~:text=Check

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

WSH — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 10:09:03 GMT

@gg30340 I believe the EE Hub Plus 7 has a dedicated WAN port.

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

TobyOneKenobi — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 10:20:13 GMT

Correct, 4 LAN and a dedicated WAN

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

TobyOneKenobi — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 10:36:09 GMT

@WSH The point is that there is no WAN port on these ONT's just LAN ports as they seem to have a 4 port switch built in so when connecting to the EE Hub is there going to be any issues if one of the ONT's LAN ports is connect to the WAN port on the EE Hub? Or perhaps the WAN port on these Hubs has some sort of auto sensing because afaik you should put the Hub into bridging mode if you are not using the the WAN for internet connection?

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

WSH — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 11:35:26 GMT

The optical port on the ONT will be the WAN port.

If the WAN port on the hub is used, (or if it is configured as WAN when it is a dual-purpose port), then it will already be configured for input from the ONT.

It’s not really bridging mode in that sense. Bridging is more configuring the Hub so it only acts as a modem and passes its output to a separate router, so that’s not the issue in this case. If anything, the ONT is acting as a bridge. I don’t think the EE routers offer a bridging mode.

Edit: Actually, you might be better posting this on the EE forum here: https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Broadband-Landline/bd-p/broadband

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

licquorice — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 12:32:06 GMT

The ONT doesn't strictly have either a WAN or a LAN port, it is a modem. As @WSH has said, if anything the optical port can be considered a WAN port in as much as it is the connection to the outside world.

The 4 ports are to provide 4 discrete services and are not any form of Ethernet switch.

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

iniltous — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 13:22:45 GMT

Probably a Huawei HG 8240 Echolife , very early generation FTTP equipment, no longer used as it’s Huawei , and that particular model hadn’t been used for years even when Huawei were not a banned vendor, OR using single port ONTs and on the rare occasions where multiple services were needed , providing two or more single port ONT’s , one for each service.

These 4 port ONTs were typically used in a Small Office /Home Office (SoHo) situation rather than single ordinary residential dwelling….4 port in that it can handle up-to 4 separate services ( from 4 different ISP if that was what was required) instead of 4 separate lead in fibres , 4 separate ONTs with 4 power units etc …. if only one service was provided , it’s was usually allocated on port 1 , if the customer had 2 services (for example) the business ISP configured on port 1 , residential ISP on port 2 , that would be two individual routers but both served from the same 4 port ONT .

As far as the OP’s observation, it makes no sense, if the EE service were provided on port 1 (the LAN/WAN designation on the ONT pretty irrelevant, basically the ONT has 4 ‘addresses’ one for each port ) moving the router to port 2 should not just work without the administrator also reassigning the EE service to the the ‘address’ for the second port .

Openreach have recently introduced a new 4 port ONT ,

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/01/a-look-at-openreachs-future-4-port-ont-for-fttp-broadband.html#google_vignette

If this customer was having issues and Openreach visited , it’s incredible they didn’t simply remove the 4 port if it were considered the problem , and replace it with a modern single port ONT from an allowed manufacturer, and just authenticate the new single port ONT to the headend .

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

TobyOneKenobi — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 21:06:28 GMT

@iniltous Yes I believe it is

I drew a blank on line trying to find information about these 4 port ONT's, the majority of ONT's have one port, seen a few with 2 ports and usually the 2nd port is marked as for future expansion. As for making no sense, possibly, but in this case and with this particular ONT port 2 does work if connected to the WAN port on the Hub whereas port 1 did not. As far as I know the customer had not had a visit from an Openreach engineer(BT/EE are very reluctant to escalate to Openreach and quite often internal engineers keep being sent back for the same fault) so I suspect that if they had they would have changed the ONT. As this ONT only has 1 Fibre input how could it be configured to run different services from different ISP's? I deal with predominately residential customers only so I don't have any experience of commercial fibre.

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

licquorice — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 21:52:26 GMT

I'm afraid you misunderstand how GPON works.

Every ONT has access to all 32 services of the PON multiplexed on the incoming fibre. The individual service is then extracted to the Ethernet port. Therefore in the case of a 4 port ONT, 4 discrete services can be extracted to the 4 ports

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

iniltous — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 22:01:07 GMT

I’m not sure you appreciate what a 4 port ONT is , but it’s basically 4 x single port ONT’s inside 1 box , saving on space , power supply units etc , plus the way PON ( passive optical networks ) actually work , you don’t need 4 input fibres to run 4 separate services , because every fibre on the output side of a PON splitter are identical, the same data appears on every output fibre simultaneously , so it’s not necessary to use 4 input fibres to the 4 port ONT as 3 of them would serve no purpose being duplicates , therefore having multiple inputs fibres is unnecessary ( if they are all carrying the same data , 1 fibre will do you don’t need 4 inputs on a 4 port ONT ) that’s why there is only 1 input fibre but the ability to run up-to 4 separate services .

As stated your explanation makes no sense, you can’t simply move the Ethernet cable to the router from port 1 to port 2 on the ONT and expect service to work , if you did that and the service started to work the only logical explanation is that the service was already configured on port 2 but for some reason the customers router was incorrectly connected to port 1, that’s why the service wasn’t working , and you shifting the cable to port 2 rectified the fact that the cable was in the wrong place (port) , once you put the cable in the correct port , the service started working .

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

TobyOneKenobi — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 23:03:29 GMT

@iniltous well this is why I'm asking questions, as I've said I've not come across a 4 port ONT before and as I had got the BB up and and running by swapping from P1 to P2 I'd assumed that the 4 ports were a LAN switch, I'd no idea that you could have different ISP's on the same Fibre connection @licquorice yes I was aware that each ONT receives upto 32 services but hadn't really occurred to me that they could be from different ISP's , something now with hindsight seems blindingly obvious. So now being a little more enlightened, it is indeed very odd that swapping from P1 to P2 would resolve the fault and does suggest that it should have been P2 and the port connection was changed by someone, but I have to say that the customer did not seem to be very technical aware enough to have fiddled with it and if that is the case it seems odd that the service was set to use P2 instead of P1. Thanks for all the explanations.

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

TobyOneKenobi — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 08:20:46 GMT

Just a thought but is it possible, for whatever reason, that the ISP had changed what port their service is allocated to?

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

licquorice — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 08:54:09 GMT

Yes, that would be possible.

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

iniltous — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 09:08:50 GMT

We can only speculate, in the OP you stated that the customer had several engineer visits (although you later said you didn’t think they had ) ….a possible scenario is the Openreach techs had the service moved from port 1 to port 2 but never moved the Ethernet cable (or the customer moved it back ) .

I would have said the EE service was always on port 2 , and for whatever reason the Ethernet cable was in port 1 , but that doesn’t align with the customer saying service was working and then stopped , unless of course the reason it was working briefly was port 2 was allocated by EE , perhaps because port 1 still had an active service from the previous occupants ISP , the new occupant orders service with EE , who can only allocate port 2 ( because port 1 still has an active service, the previous occupant hadn’t ceased it correctly yet ) , the new customer incorrectly plugs in their EE router to port 1 , and unknowingly is using the previous occupants service , without appreciating that port 2 was also ‘live’ and was the correct port for them ….eventually the previous occupant service ceases on port 1 , and the current occupant loses service assuming it was their service that has stopped so must be faulty , when in fact it was the previous occupants service they were using , the new customer reports it , causing much confusion…..

you come along , connect the EE router to port 2 (as was always intended) and it’s working.

As I said , idle speculation on my part , it’s unimportant really if their service is working.

Re: Hawuei 4 port ONT

TobyOneKenobi — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 09:33:01 GMT

@iniltous "We can only speculate, in the OP you stated that the customer had several engineer visits (although you later said you didn’t think they had )". No, I said they had several visits from internal engineers these are not Openreach engineers however I may not have made this clear. Most ISP's will send internal engineers first regardless of what the reported fault is, sometimes you'll get several visits for the same fault because support staff book the wrong engineers or that the internal engineer did not close the job correctly or did not directly escalate the call to OR.

Unfortunately now we can only speculate. Quite often customers "forget" or overlook certain things especially if they think they might be charged if it was something they did, but just got the feeling that this guy was being honest. I forgot to mention that this customer was recently moved from BT to EE so this could add more weight to the argument that the port was reassigned . Yes I suppose it's unimportant as the fault is resolved but you don't learn anything if you don't know and don't ask. I now know more than I did, if I hadn't asked I would have continued to think that those ports were part of a switch and that you could only have one service per property! So thank you.