By 20021,ASUS, Netgear and Leading Power were still competing in the high-end market segment, but Huawei handed us an unexpected answer sheet and launched a brand-new whole-house WiFi routing product H6, which turned the original most difficult whole-house WiFi solution into plug-and-play and made Huawei H6 the most worry-free AC+AP solution in the whole network, which is good news for ordinary users.
As a senior routing player, I finally experienced Huawei's H6 in depth in the near future. I hope the following sharing will help you. Before the product experience, I would like to solve two questions for you, which are also the two most frequently asked questions.
Obviously, Huawei route H6 belongs to the AC+AP scheme in the whole house WiFi. Then, since it is an AC+AP scheme, why did official website never mention AC+AP in his detailed introduction? It is even called parent-child routing/distributed routing.
Huawei adopts this naming method because "AC+AP" is a relatively professional vocabulary, which some ordinary consumers have not even heard of, and it is difficult to understand, or the education cost is high. In order to make it clear to consumers at a glance, it was named "Huawei H6 Distributed Routing".
For example, Huawei Route H6 was personally rated as "the most worry-free AC+AP solution in the whole network", so is it exaggerated? Let me talk about my personal reasons first.
From the routing knowledge I shared before, I believe you have learned that there are only two mainstream whole-house WiFi schemes on the market: AC+AP and Mesh network. The advantage of AC+AP is good stability. Most hotels use this scheme to roam seamlessly. The disadvantage is that wiring must be done in advance.
However, the common practice of home improvement in China is to reserve an 86-mouth panel in each room, but the existing 86-mouth panels at home are basically transformed when installing the AC+AP scheme on the market. Although this small step stumped many ordinary users, on the one hand, they didn't want to destroy the existing decoration, on the other hand, they lacked corresponding professional knowledge and even corresponding tools.
Huawei's route H6 is relatively simple and rude, and there is no need to transform the existing 86-port panel. Instead, Huawei H6' s sub-route (AP) stands directly on the existing port panel through acrylic glue, without tools and disassembly. In fact, the way of watering is not clever, and it will even be laughed at by some netizens, but is there a better solution besides this one?
In addition to simple installation, H6 also inherits Huawei's Internet product thinking and integrates the original complex AC+AP settings into "one button". Users can complete a set of H6 AC+AP settings only by setting a common route, which brings the simple concept of plug and play to the extreme and becomes the easiest and easy-to-use choice for home installation.
After answering the above two questions, we will enter the formal "unpacking and drying things" process, hoping that this extremely simple style conforms to everyone's aesthetics.
The packaging of Huawei Route H6 is still very "Huawei". There is a product renderings in the center of the front of the pure white packaging box, but because there are many overlapping positions of the products, we can't fully understand H6 products only from the renderings. Above the renderings are the product names and three corresponding functions: whole house WiFi6+, Huawei HarmonyOS system Mesh+, and sub-routing plug and play.
There is an obvious "HarmonyOS System" sign in the lower left corner of the package. Undoubtedly, Huawei Route H6 adopts Huawei HarmonyOS System, which is also the first HarmonyOS system routing product.
There are some product introductions on the back. From the product specification, we can know that the product is divided into parent route, child route Pro and child route, and the detailed specification parameters of each route.
Open the package and you can see four routes: 1 parent route+1 and child route Pro+2 child route standard edition. All the routes are designed in pure white, with no external antenna and square shape, which is quite different from the "grotesque" routing products on the market.
In addition to the above four routes, there are a series of accessories in the package. Paper instructions and three guarantees are naturally not less.
A super-five-category noodle network cable with a length of about 1m, a pair of spare acrylic glue, and a customized round spare network cable with a length of about 15cm are used between the sub-route and the 86-port panel. From the actual experience, the amount of acrylic glue given at will is relatively small. After all, there is no guarantee that it will not be installed twice, especially for users with obsessive-compulsive disorder. After all, it is not a simple matter to align the child route with the 86-port panel.
There is also a huge bus line power adapter, comparable to the power adapter of a laptop. The output standard of the power adapter is 52.5 V/1.75a92w. The normal standby power of the parent route is not large, and the reason why such a large power adapter is adopted is because the child route is powered by POE. Secondly, Huawei's H6 parent route can be delayed by up to six.
Back to the route itself, Huawei H6 bus route is pure white "brick" design with only one word "Huawei" on the front. Because bus routes only assume the function of wired routing, normal bus routes stay in multimedia boxes all their lives.
There are related parameters and IP address settings on the back.
All interfaces are arranged on the back of the fuselage. * * * There are 1 adaptive Gigabit WAN ports, 1 IPTV ports, and 6 adaptive Gigabit LAN ports. All LAN ports support POE power supply, and there are DC power interfaces and restart buttons on the left and right respectively.
The entire Huawei H6 bus route has only one power indicator, which is located in the center of the front of the fuselage, which is convenient for users to judge the running status of the current bus route.
The three sub-routes (2 standard models+1 Pro models) have almost the same appearance and the same size as the 86-panel at home, but are thicker. When installed, it is fixed on the mesh board with adhesive tape, which is beautiful and does not occupy extra space.
The front of the child route only has the words "Huawei" and "WiFi6+", which is extremely concise and consistent with the parent route.
There is a large cooling grille on the back of the secondary route, an acrylic rubber strip on the top and bottom, and a concave design in the middle, which is convenient for hiding the network cable. By default, child routes are connected through customized network cables.
A Gigabit wired network port is also provided at the bottom of the sub-route, which can be used to connect other devices by wire, and it is also a one-to-one design.
At the top of the sub-route, there is also a WiFi quick pairing key, which is also an LED indicator (the lights can be turned off in the settings). Press the button to quickly pair with Huawei's mobile phone, which is what we often call the H key.
Sub-routing standard version and Pro version have the same appearance, and internal differentiation is mainly concentrated in two aspects. In terms of heat dissipation, the standard version is passive heat dissipation and the Pro version is active heat dissipation. A small turbofan can be seen in the depression on the back of the fuselage. Don't underestimate this fan, because its existence almost needs to be redesigned.
On the other hand, in terms of signal, Pro version * * * has four high-power signal amplifiers, which perfectly meet the requirements of 2.4G and 5G Wi-Fi. The standard version only adds two medium power signal amplifiers to two 2.4G antennas.
Huawei Route H6 is a wired route, which plays the role of AC. Therefore, during normal installation, the parent route can be placed in the multimedia box at home and connected to the optical cat.
The sub-route is connected with the network cable and directly pasted on the home 86 network interface panel. The parent route supplies power and transmits signals to the sub-route through the embedded network cable.
In terms of usage suggestions, the Pro version of the sub-route is recommended to be placed in the location of multi-terminal networking such as the living room, and the standard version is placed in other locations (rooms). If the home is more than 3 luxury houses, Huawei official website also provides a separate sub-route. It should be noted that Huawei's H6 parent route supports at most one delay and six delays.
As mentioned above, in addition to simple installation, Huawei Route H6 also pursues simplification in configuration. It only needs to configure the parent route as usual, and it can automatically configure the child route by plugging in the network cable normally. It can be said that the whole distribution process has been fooled to the greatest extent.
Although the distribution network is simple, H6 is an AC+AP system after all, so Huawei has customized some personalized functions in the settings. For example, the smart life APP comes with a network heat map function.
First of all, we only need to manually draw a corresponding floor plan according to the floor plan of our house in the Smart Life APP, and then by adjusting the corresponding positions of the parent route and each child route in the floor plan, the APP will automatically generate a floor plan network heat map, which can more intuitively understand the network situation of each room in our home and judge the signal strength in different areas.
If it is found that the apartment network heat map automatically generated by Smart Life APP is not accurate enough, the APP also provides the function of measuring the apartment location signal, and then generates the apartment network heat map through manual testing by users. From the above picture, we can observe the apartment type of my home and the signal strength corresponding to each position. Huawei H6 basically covers my whole house.
In addition to the function of home network heat map, Huawei Route H6 also has built-in maintenance detection tools, which can check the working state of the router, find problems and repair them.
During the physical examination, Huawei Route H6 will automatically detect many settings and network parameters of the main route and sub-route, and also detect all connected terminals under the route. When problems are found, they will be displayed in the results. Click Troubleshooting to find the current network problems, and directly select networked devices for further investigation.
In addition to the above two customized functions, all functions of Huawei Routing, such as online course acceleration, game acceleration, exclusive channel of Internet of Things, Hilink Zhilian and speed measurement, are retained.
In the experience, we can find that the setting of Huawei's route H6 is in the optimization stage. For example, when drawing a floor plan, the user's operation is still complicated. Moreover, some settings overlap, such as most functions of package management and routing settings overlap. I hope Huawei can optimize quickly in the later period.
As a new way of watching TV, IPTV is increasingly welcomed by broadband users. However, when we use IPTV service, we are often troubled by the unreasonable indoor wiring, mainly focusing on the fact that only one network cable is embedded between the multimedia box and the TV cabinet in the living room. At present, IPTV basically needs an extra network cable. If the network cable between the multimedia box and the TV cabinet is used for IPTV, there is no way to add routing or AP panel.
Although major technical forums have corresponding solutions, it is undeniable that these "advanced gameplay" still have a great threshold for ordinary users.
In order to solve this problem, Huawei Route H6 is specially optimized. An additional IPTV port is added to the parent route, and then the LAN port of any child route can be changed into an IPTV port through relevant settings, which fundamentally solves the problem that a network cable cannot satisfy IPTV and routing at the same time.
From the measured results, it works perfectly, and the LAN of the living room sub-route Pro is set as IPTV gateway. At this time, the AP function of the living room sub-route Pro remains unchanged, and the IPTV of telecom can also be successfully identified.
CPU: lingxiao Hi565 1T quad-core chip.
Memory: 256 megabytes
Read only memory: 256 megabytes
System: Huawei HarmonyOS System.
Network port: Gigabit WAN adapter *6+ Gigabit LAN adapter * 1+IPTV interface * 1.
Network mode: wired
Size: 193*80*28mm
Weight: 289 grams
Power consumption: 12w
CPU: lingxiao Hi565 1L dual-core chip.
Memory: 128MB
ROM: 128MB
Wireless: 2.4GHz 2*2 MIMO with a maximum rate of 574Mbps；; The maximum speed of 5GHz 2*2 MIMO is 2402Mbps.
System: Huawei HarmonyOS System.
Network port: Gigabit WAN adaptive network port * 1+ Gigabit LAN adaptive network port * 1 Networking mode: wired.
Size: 86 * 86 * 86*86*30.9mm
Weight:167g
Power consumption: 13w
It can be clearly seen from the hardware specifications that the parent route of Huawei Route H6 is equipped with Lingxiao Hi565 1T quad-core chips of the same model as Huawei Route AX3 Pro, and the child routes are all equipped with Lingxiao dual-core Hi565 1L dual-core chips of the same model as AX3.
Speaking of Huawei AX3 series, we have to say their calorific value. Since H6 adopts the same design, the calorific value is naturally not small. From the actual experience, whether it is the parents' route or the children's route, at the room temperature of 30, the temperature has reached about 50, which is already very hot. But don't worry too much about the fever of the router. As long as the temperature is not too high, it will not affect the use and life of the product. Remember the whole family bucket of UBNT AC+AP? The temperature is close to 70 degrees and it is still "stable as a dog".
Disclaimer: I didn't disassemble the disassembly diagram myself, but directly quoted the screenshot of the disassembly video on the KS forum. Interested friends can browse it themselves.
Test environment: a house with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, with a building area of 8 1 square meter, and the dark brown in the schematic diagram of the apartment is a load-bearing wall. The three sub-routes are placed in the circle position in the plan (red is the Pro sub-route, green is the standard sub-route, and the green five-pointed star is the parent route position). The test positions are a, b, c, d and e respectively.
Load situation: all smart home terminals are switched to the test route, and 35 terminals remain online (no heavy traffic interaction) to simulate the real environment;
Test equipment: Xiaomi 10 Extreme Edition;
Transmission intensity: through the wall;
Test network: telecom 300M optical fiber;
(2.4G signal strength: the sequence in the figure corresponds to the position of ABCDE)
(5G signal strength: the sequence in the figure corresponds to the position of ABCDE)
According to the signal strength test data of the whole house, the layout of three sub-routes in my house has achieved good WiFi signal coverage in the whole house, and with the movement of the terminal, it will automatically find and switch to the sub-route with better signal.
Although the signal strength at point E is weak, it is good as long as the signal strength is not lower than -75dBm. The main reason for this situation is that there is a load-bearing wall and there is no embedded network cable. In the later stage, we can consider using invisible optical fiber for wired backhaul.
From the 2.4G signal strength and the 5G signal strength, it can be clearly felt that the 5G signal is weaker than 2.4G, which proves once again that 5G is more vulnerable to wireless interference and weak in wall penetration.
(2.4G signal speed test speed measurement: the sequence in the figure corresponds to ABCDEF position)
(5G signal SpeedTest speed measurement: the sequence in the figure corresponds to the position of ABCDEF)
The signal speed of SPeedtest 5G corresponds to the signal strength test one by one. At points A, B, C and D, the uplink and downlink reach full speed, and at point E, the signal strength decays and the speed also decays to 50%. From the previous experience of wireless backhaul Mesh network speed measurement, the stability and advantages of wired backhaul are vividly reflected in Huawei H6.
Note: In fact, as long as the downlink speed exceeds 300Mbps/s and the uplink speed exceeds 30Mbps, it can basically be concluded that the speed has reached full speed. The reason for this decision is that after the downlink speed exceeds 300Mbps, it is difficult to determine whether it is the speed decline caused by the attenuation of the routing signal or the suppression of the telecom optical cat itself.
According to Huawei's official introduction, Huawei H6 has two black technologies for network roaming: Huawei HarmonyOS system Mesh+ super seamless roaming technology and Huawei microsecond smart positioning antenna technology.
The former can effectively combine the Wi-Fi between Huawei routes to form a unified and coordinated whole, and each sub-route has only one Wi-Fi name, so even if you walk around the room and switch sub-route networks, you won't notice it. The latter can quickly and accurately locate your home location, and can also find the best sub-route of network signals according to your location. So what is the specific effect? Let's test it theoretically.
Test environment: a house with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, with a building area of 8 1 square meter, and the dark brown in the schematic diagram of the apartment is a load-bearing wall. Three sub-routes are placed in the circle position in the plan (red is the professional sub-route and green is the standard sub-route). The test positions are a, b, c, d and e respectively.
Load situation: all smart home terminals are switched to the test route, and 35 terminals remain online (no heavy traffic interaction) to simulate the real environment;
Test equipment: Xiaomi 10 Extreme Edition;
Transmission intensity: through the wall;
Dual-frequency signal: dual-frequency integration;
Test network: telecom 300M optical fiber;
Test software: WiFi box;
Travel situation: from D-B (first roaming), B-A (second roaming), A-D (third/fourth roaming) and D-E (fifth/sixth roaming);
First roaming: it takes 510 ms; Switching from the 5G signal of the second sub-route to the 5G signal of the main sub-route;
The second roaming: it takes 942ms to switch from the 5G signal of the main bedroom subpath P to the 5G signal of the living room subpath;
The third roaming: it takes 340ms to switch from the 5G signal routed by the living room to the 5G signal routed by the bookstore;
The fourth roaming: it takes 787ms to switch from the 5G signal routed by the bookstore to the 5G signal routed by the master bedroom;
The third roaming: it takes 271ms to switch from the 5G signal of the master bedroom sub-route to the 2.4G signal of the living room sub-route;
From the roaming test, the performance of Huawei route H6 is superior to the previously tested Mesh route in the switching speed and accuracy of sub-routes, which also subverts my previous impression of Huawei's Mesh performance. It seems that this year has been very hard.
All sub-routes of Huawei Route H6 support 160Mh bandwidth, so the maximum speed of normal protocol can reach 2.4Gbps (WiFi6 network card is required). Put the sub-route and ASUS AX58BT network card at a distance of 2cm, with no obstacles in the middle.
In this environment, the protocol rate can indeed reach 2.4Gbps, but the rate is unstable, ranging from 1.9 Gbps to 2.4 Gbps. This situation is naturally related to wireless attenuation and network environment. After all, my home is not a wireless enclosed space, and 160MHz itself is not strong in anti-interference.
In order to better demonstrate the throughput of Huawei route H6, I also made an incomplete test through IxChariot6.7:
Wireless client: ASUS AX58BT
Wireless server: Intel AX200
System: all are professional versions of Win 10, and all firewalls are closed;
Test software: IxChariot6.7
Test Script: High Performance Throughput.
Throughput data summary, convenient for everyone to check.
Bus route from LAN to LAN (one-way)
Bus routing from LAN to LAN (bidirectional)
Single standard sub-route 5G to Lan (uplink)
Single standard sub-route 5G to Lan (downlink)
Single standard sub-route from 5G to Lan (bidirectional)
Single standard sub-route 5G to 5G (unidirectional)
5G to 5G single standard sub-route (bidirectional)
A single Pro sub-route 5G to Lan (uplink)
A single Pro sub-route 5G to Lan (downlink)
Single Pro Sub-route from 5G to Lan (bidirectional)
Single Pro Subroute 5G to 5G (unidirectional)
Single Pro Subroute 5G to 5G (bidirectional)
Two standard sub-routes wired backhaul LAN to LAN (unidirectional)
Two standard sub-routes wired backhaul LAN to LAN (bidirectional)
Two standard sub-routes are wired backhaul 5G to Lan (uplink).
Two standard sub-routes are wired backhaul 5G to Lan (downlink).
Two standard sub-routes are wired backhaul 5G to Lan (bidirectional).
Two standard sub-routes are wired backhaul 5G to 5G (unidirectional).
Two standard sub-routes are wired backhaul 5G to 5G (bidirectional).
Standard sub-routing and Pro cable backhaul LAN-to-LAN (unidirectional)
Standard version of sub-routing and professional version of wired backhaul LAN to LAN (two-way)
Standard sub-route and Pro cable backhaul 5G to Lan (uplink)
Standard sub-route and Pro cable backhaul 5G to Lan (downlink)
Standard sub-routing and Pro cable backhaul 5G to Lan (bidirectional)
Standard sub-routing and professional cable backhaul 5G to 5G (unidirectional)
Standard sub-routing and professional cable backhaul 5G to 5G (bidirectional)
Wireless client: ASUS AX588T
Wireless server: Intel AX200
Wired client: Gigabit network port
Wired server: Gigabit network port
System: all are professional versions of Win 10, and all firewalls are closed;
File: a single RAR file;
Bus route from LAN to LAN
Single standard sub-route from 5G to LAN
5G to 5G single standard sub-route
A single Pro version sub-route 5G to LAN.
Sub-routes 5G to 5G of a single Pro version
Two standard sub-routes are wired backhaul LAN to LAN.
Two standard sub-routes are wired backhaul 5G to Lan.
Two standard sub-routes are wired backhaul 5G to 5G.
Standard sub-routing and wired backhaul LAN-to-LAN
Standard sub-routing and Pro cable backhaul 5G to Lan
Standard sub-routing and professional cable backhaul 5G to 5G
In the era of WiFi6 routing blowout, not only the three major routing vendors have accelerated the pace of new products, but also the explosions of Wi-Fi 6 routing products of mobile phone manufacturers have emerged one after another. However, we have to admit that in the face of national regulations, it is impossible to achieve full-house WiFi coverage, let alone full-speed state of the whole house. However, routing vendors who are interested in making whole-house WiFi solutions are betting on mesh routing. On the other hand, the oldest and most stable AC+AP scheme was shelved because of the high installation threshold.
The appearance of Huawei Route H6 has directly brought the installation and ease of use of AC+AP scheme to the extreme. It is no exaggeration to say that Huawei H6 is undoubtedly a one-click customs clearance cheat for users who need large-sized whole-house network coverage. Plug and play, simple network distribution, powerful self-checking function, so that ordinary users can also deal with a whole set of AC+AP.
With the addition of Mesh+ super seamless roaming technology of Huawei HarmonyOS system and Huawei microsecond smart positioning antenna technology, the seamless roaming effect of AC+AP has been further improved.
From the hardware point of view, Huawei Route H6 did not blindly pursue top allocation, but made a great attempt with its own advantages, focusing on networking, connection, wireless roaming and so on, which is also a tricky scheme. Finally, talk about price. According to three AX3s and one AX3 Pro, the price should also be around 1.300 yuan. Now the price of 65,438+0,899 is within the acceptable range.
Having said that, it is basically the advantage of Huawei's H6 routing, so there is really no room for improvement in this product? Of course not. Here are a few things that impressed me:
1, the sub-route requires too much network cable, which is embodied in the fact that the finished network cable purchased in the market can hardly be inserted into the WAN port of the sub-route, mainly because the routing volume is limited and there is a slope near the WAN port; The other is that the WAN port of the sub-route has strict requirements on the line sequence of the network cable and the strict 568B connection mode;
2. I believe everyone knows about the heat dissipation performance of Huawei AX3 Pro, so Huawei H6 is smaller in size and has greater natural heat generation. Although, as mentioned above, the impact of such temperature on products is negligible, there are too many consumers who care about the working temperature, so Huawei still needs to optimize it. After all, what consumers pay attention to is worthy of attention.
3. Subroutes only provide one LAN port, and the number can be increased to two. At the same time, consider adding expansion interfaces such as USB to make it more playable.