Hiveton H5000M — Bridge Mode with Quectel RM551E-GL (iamromulan)

Documented setup of a Hiveton H5000M router running ImmortalWrt 24.10 in bridge mode with a Quectel RM551E-GL 5G module using the custom iamromulan firmware.

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Hardware

Device	Description
Hiveton H5000M	WiFi 6 router, MediaTek MT7992, ARMv8 quad-core
Quectel RM551E-GL	5G SA/NSA module, iamromulan firmware (OpenWrt 23.05.4)

Hiveton H5000M (left) — Quectel RM551E-GL with antenna cables (right)

Inside look

H5000M PCB (left) — RM551E-GL module installed inside the H5000M (right)

Concept

The Quectel RM551E-GL module is connected to the H5000M router via USB. Thanks to the cdc_ether driver, the module is exposed as a standard Ethernet interface (usb0) and bridged together with the physical LAN port (eth1) and the 5GHz WiFi radio (rai0).

The result is a flat network where the 5G module acts as the internet gateway for all WiFi and LAN clients — no double NAT.

Repository structure

├── airpi/
│   └── scripts/
│       ├── bannerwrt.sh        # ASCII tricolor SSH banner
│       ├── info.sh             # Dynamic quick info on login
│       └── profile.d/
│           └── airpi_motd.sh   # MOTD launcher on login
├── romulano/
│   └── scripts/
│       ├── bannerwrt.sh        # ASCII tricolor SSH banner
│       └── info.sh             # Dynamic quick info on login
└── docs/
    ├── architecture.md         # Network diagram and bridge mode explanation
    ├── setup-airpi.md          # H5000M configuration guide
    └── setup-romulano.md       # Quectel RM551E-GL configuration guide

Firmware

• H5000M: immortalwrt-mediatek-filogic-hiveton-h5000m-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin — ImmortalWrt 24.10-SNAPSHOT
• Quectel RM551E-GL: iamromulan firmware — RM551EGL00AAR02A02M8G_2025_12_08_iamromulan_basic_eth

What was configured

• Bridge br-lan = eth1 + usb0 + rai0 (WiFi 6 / 5GHz / HE80)
• H5000M without NAT — direct gateway via Quectel RM551E-GL module
• DHCP with authoritative=1, gateway and DNS pointing to the module
• Full ModemManager cleanup (not needed with cdc_ether)
• Removal of pre-installed bandix from iamromulan firmware on the Quectel RM551E-GL (~330 MB RAM freed)
• irqbalance enabled
• Flow offloading disabled (required for bandix/eBPF monitoring)
• bandix + luci-app-bandix installed for real-time traffic monitoring
• Custom MOTD on both devices (tricolor ASCII banner + quick info)
• ZeroTier for remote access

Compatibility

Although this setup was tested with the Quectel RM551E-GL, it can be reproduced with any module supported by iamromulan's custom firmware. The iamromulan project provides OpenWrt-based firmware for several Quectel modules — check his GitHub for the full list of supported devices.

Full credit for the module firmware goes to iamromulan — without his work this setup would not be possible.

Notes

• Periodic LTE disconnections (~4h) are normal in my case — I use a WindTre SIM and the carrier renegotiates the IP every ~4 hours
• SQM/cake cannot be installed on either device (kmod unavailable for these architectures)