Huawei today announced a new whole-home Wi-Fi system, the WiFi Q2. Wi-Fi mesh network systems are quickly becoming the standard, with companies like Qualcomm estimating that they now account for 40 percent of new Wi-Fi router sales. Huawei is going a different route, though. In addition to a Wi-Fi mesh, it also uses a Powerline network that routes your traffic over the existing electrical system in your house instead of dedicated Ethernet cables.
The result of this (ideally), is that your various satellite access points all get full-speed internet access without the potential of network degradation as you get further away from the main hub. And when both the mesh and the Powerline network work together at full speed, you could get connections with up to 1867Mbps (if your home internet can handle that, of course). The company also promises that you’ll be able to connect up to 192 devices and that the switching time for the network is about 100ms.
“We are streaming more content than ever before, more music, more movies, and more social media on more connected devices, which makes fast and reliable Wi-Fi an essential need,” said Richard Yu, CEO, Huawei Consumer Business Group in today’s announcement.” ͞The Huawei WiFi Q2 offers today’s families a hybrid whole home Wi-Fi system with a reliable, flexible solution that expands Wi-Fi throughout our homes.”
The company also notes that, in addition to all of the usual Wi-Fi encryption and password protection, it’s also using an “anti-brute force algorithm” to keep hackers from getting into your network.
It’s worth noting that Huawei isn’t the first company to combine Powerline and Wi-Fi mesh networking. TP-Link announced a similar system at CES last year, but it doesn’t look like it ever went on sale.
The Q2 will sell in the U.S., with three-packs selling for $349. What we do know, though, is that the company plans to sell it in two versions: the hybrid solution we described above, as well as one that only relies on Powerline networking with up to 1 Gbps speeds. These will sell in three-packs, though the company will also sell individual base and satellite routers.
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