AR168F

AR168F is an enterprise Huawei router: 4 copper pair G.SHDSL WAN,1GigabitEthernet COMB WAN,4GigabitEthernet LAN,1 USB.

What it presents. 1 Gigabit Ethernet port.

It terminates G.SHDSL directly, which saves a separate modem. The thing to check is the line: copper broadband is being switched off progressively across the UK and Europe, so for a new installation it is worth confirming the circuit will outlive the equipment.

Three questions worth answering before any router purchase, whatever the model. What the throughput requirement actually is with your feature set enabled, rather than the datasheet figure measured without it. Whether the features you need are licensed as well as present, since on most platforms security and performance are separate entitlements. And how many slots or ports you will need in three years, because adding capacity is cheap and replacing a chassis is not.

On Huawei lifecycle dates, we are going to tell you what we actually know, which is less than you might expect. Huawei publishes end-of-service dates only behind a Uniportal support login, and its lifecycle query redirects straight to it. So anyone quoting you a hard Huawei support date without an account is guessing, and third-party databases that publish dates cite no Huawei source. What can be checked from outside is whether a platform is still in Huawei’s current catalogue.

Tell us what the router has to do, the circuits it has to terminate, the throughput you are designing to and whether you need the security features licensed. We would rather size it from the requirement than from a part number, because the two commonest mistakes on a router purchase are buying throughput that turns out to need a licence and buying a chassis with no slots left.

Green Code Technologies is a supplier of Huawei, and we supply Cisco and Juniper networking alongside HPE, Dell, Samsung, Netgear, Ubiquiti and Asus. We would rather tell you a part is no longer supported, or that we need to check it, than take an order for something that will not do what you need.