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Huawei Enterprise Routers vs Steelhead comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.5
Huawei Enterprise Routers provide reliable performance, excellent security, reduced maintenance costs, and enhanced connectivity, leading to improved productivity.
Sentiment score
4.8
Steelhead optimized WAN usage, saving £50,000 in costs, improving bandwidth efficiency, and enhancing user experience without extra investments.
Without Steelhead, we would have spent much more on bandwidth costs.
Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
4.0
Huawei Enterprise Routers support is efficient and 24/7, with local intermediaries aiding despite regional language barriers and connectivity issues.
Sentiment score
7.0
Steelhead's customer service is efficient and knowledgeable, but local support and handling complex issues need improvement.
I have no issues with technical support from Riverbed.
Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Steelhead's support is generally good for typical issues yet can be time-consuming during complex problem-solving across teams, particularly for Active Directory integration.
Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA
Riverbed's customer service and technical support would be rated an eight.
Commercial Manager at IT-Experience
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
Huawei Enterprise Routers offer effective scalability but may require additional equipment and face challenges during large-scale expansions.
Sentiment score
6.9
Feedback on Steelhead scaling varies, with easy deployment praised, but licensing and bandwidth limitations noted by some users.
If a customer has 1 GB traffic, they will only be able to utilize 600 MB of traffic with Steelhead.
Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
It allows us to maximize use from our MPLS providers by handling traffic efficiently across phased deployments.
Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Huawei Enterprise Routers are generally stable and reliable, receiving high ratings, though occasional stability issues and patching concerns exist.
Sentiment score
8.6
Steelhead offers reliable network optimization with stability, smooth upgrades, and effective technical support for seamless traffic flow and high availability.
If the power is unplugged from Riverbed, it goes into fail-to-wire mode.
Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
It's quite stable and provides all necessary alerts if something is wrong.
Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA
Steelhead helps significantly with large data transfers.
Commercial Manager at IT-Experience
 

Room For Improvement

Huawei Enterprise Routers require enhanced security, stability, support, integration, affordability, and flexibility compared to competitors like Cisco.
Steelhead users desire improved traffic handling, integration, scalability, security features, intuitive setup, and comprehensive monitoring amid cost concerns.
Steelhead is very expensive, and the vendor should work on handling Oracle type of traffic better.
Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
It would help if Riverbed could prevent such drastic impacts during updates.
Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA
It could still be useful in places with satellite communications, such as the south of Chile, or in the mining industry.
Commercial Manager at IT-Experience
 

Setup Cost

Huawei Enterprise Routers offer cost-effective solutions with competitive pricing, though some services and support incur additional charges.
Steelhead is costly but valued for performance and support, with complex licensing and varied pricing by usage.
Buying the hardware initially is costly, but yearly maintenance and licenses are not as expensive.
Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA
Steelhead is considered an expensive solution in our country.
Commercial Manager at IT-Experience
 

Valuable Features

Huawei Enterprise Routers provide cost-effective, easy setup, platform compatibility, and advanced connectivity with efficient GUI and strong support.
Steelhead enhances WAN efficiency with data compression, TCP optimization, and caching, benefiting performance, bandwidth, and cloud migration cost savings.
Steelhead provides real-time optimization with graphs and tables on real-time optimization, informing us packet by packet including port, source IP, destination IP, and destination port number.
Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Functions like acting as an NTP server, DNS, DHCP, and auto-optimization mode enhance efficiency.
Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA
Steelhead's most valuable feature is its ability to hash and send only the important parts of the information, avoiding the resending of data.
Commercial Manager at IT-Experience
 

Categories and Ranking

Huawei Enterprise Routers
Ranking in WAN Edge
15th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Routers (4th)
Steelhead
Ranking in WAN Edge
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the WAN Edge category, the mindshare of Huawei Enterprise Routers is 2.3%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Steelhead is 1.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
WAN Edge Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Steelhead1.6%
Huawei Enterprise Routers2.3%
Other96.1%
WAN Edge
 

Featured Reviews

EP
Network Engineer at Technical University of Crete
Reliable border connectivity with responsive support but there's room for more intuitive documentation
The documentation is somewhat lacking and not easy to navigate. There are some errors and misleading information. The general appearance of the company site is also not user-friendly for downloading firmware. Firmware updates should be more straightforward. More security features would be appreciated, however, they should be easy to understand and implement.
Chaudhary Muhammad Moez Manzar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Reduces operational costs through bandwidth optimization but struggles with high traffic licensing and complex deployments
The logs in Steelhead are fantastic. There is a deep level of logs such as top 10 docker and top 50 docker. I can check from the top 50 docker which type of application is optimizing well and which type of traffic is not optimized. Steelhead provides logs and percentage levels, which is good. I can see any type of log report, report security, different types of report availability, but it is not customizable. Overall, this is a good feature. Steelhead provides real-time optimization with graphs and tables on real-time optimization, informing us packet by packet including port, source IP, destination IP, and destination port number. This reporting and real-time monitoring is fantastic, although I faced a problem in Oracle. Steelhead mainly saves the money that needs to be paid to ISPs. My actual traffic is around 2 GB, but I purchased a link from the ISP for only around 700 to 800 MB. All the prices that need to be paid monthly to the ISP are saved, which is a significant saving for my company after using Riverbed.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Huawei Enterprise Routers?
The solution provides support for 5G connectivity.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Huawei Enterprise Routers?
The product is very cheap and offers a huge discount as they are trying to enter the market. However, you have to pay extra for some services and support.
What needs improvement with Huawei Enterprise Routers?
The documentation is somewhat lacking and not easy to navigate. There are some errors and misleading information. The general appearance of the company site is also not user-friendly for downloadin...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We just did an assessment for our 47 datacenters around North America. The top two enterprise-level network monitoring solutions were ExtraHop first, Riverbed SteelCenter second. Their negotiated c...
What do you like most about Riverbed Steelhead?
One of our most valuable features is Steelhead's cloud migration optimization. Moving to the cloud helped optimize our workflow, improving performance for end-users.
What is your primary use case for Riverbed Steelhead?
I am currently working with Riverbed for replication between PR to DR for synchronization purposes, and for WAN optimization between replication from one data center to another data center. The mai...
 

Also Known As

No data available
RIverbed Steelhead
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bus Online, VisionChina Media Inc. (VisionChina), China Network Television (CNTV), Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport, ABC, BovenIJ hospital
ElAraby, SFK Leblanc, Bobst Group, Northwest Pipe Company, Halkbank, Tradebridge, EFG Hermes
Find out what your peers are saying about Huawei Enterprise Routers vs. Steelhead and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.