Hacker's ramblings

I had a chance to see what an E5577 is about. I don't own this, so I didn't break it apart. A Huawei E5577 is your run-of-the-mill Android-based 4G/3G/2G to Wi-Fi router. It even looks like a cell phone:

Huawei E5577 Specifications

Threre are some specs:

• LTE Category 4 Mobile Hotspot
• Freqencies supported:
  • LTE: 2600/ 1800/ 800 MHz
  • DC-HSPA+/ HSPA+/ UMTS: 2100/ 900 MHz
  • GSM/ GPRS/ EDGE: 1900/ 1800/ 900/ 850 MHz
• Maximum transfer rates supported (DL = download, UL = upload):
  • 4G LTE:
        DL: 150 Mbit/s
        UL: 50 Mbit/s
  • 3G Dual Carrier:
        DL: 42 Mbit/s
        UL: 5,76 Mbit/s
  • 3G HSDPA:
        DL: 14,4 Mbit/s
        UL: 5,76 Mbit/s
• Standard 6-pin SIM card interface
  • Format: Mini SIM
• Display: 1.45'' TFT LCD
• Startup time: 5s
• Dimensions: 96.8 mm x 58.0 mm x 17.3 mm
• Weight: 110g
• Micro SD Card slot
• Support external antenna: TS9 external antenna
• WiFi IEEE 802.11b/g/n
  • Up to 10 users

IMEI info @ imei.info has:

• Model: E5577CS-321
• Brand: HUAWEI
• IMEI: TAC: 867262 FAC: 02

On the outside

Enough specs, let's look at the thing a bit closer. On the front, there is a small LCD-screen and a power button. On the bottom edge, there are couple of connectors:

Charger is (per Chinese standard) an USB-connector. Micro-a to be specific. Under the flip-cover, there are two TS9-connectors for optional external antennas. Two, as LTE MIMO requires.

On the top side of the router, there is a button:

That button is used with power-button (when power is already on), to navigate the screen menu:

Doing an even remote usable UI with two buttons only is ... stupid? impossible? ... erhm... difficult. But the obvious benefit is, that you can do at least some settings and see some information without logging into the thing. For non-Finnish readers, the menu says: Back (Takaisin), Device information (Laitteen tiedot) and Wi-Fi bandwidth (Wi-Fi kaista).

Normally, the screen has following status information:

In the inside

When back cover is popped, the thing looks like this under the hood:

The battery-pack is taking most of the space there. That's smart to put a 3 Ah Li-po battery for maximal usage time. When the battery is lifted, all the good stuff is visible:

On the top right corner, right next to the 4 battery pins, there is the SD-card slot. On an initial glance, it looks a lot like 2nd SIM-slot, but as you can see, there are 8 pins in a nice row. So, that's for SD-card. Below the empty SD-card slot, there is the 6-pin SIM -slot. It is already populated, as I was studying a router, which as actively used.

Web UI

Admin-interface is a Huawei classic http://192.168.8.1/

Since the WPA-password was clearly visible on the status screen, and this router is very easy to install to your home. Sales clerk had installed the SIM-card in the store, and at home you just kick the power on, and plug in the charger. That's very much a fire-and-forget thing. On my first login, I was greeted by:

Yes, the Huawei admin / admin -pair was in use there. Since, this wasn't mine, I didn't go change the password. Also the admin-console is only accessible from LAN-side, so it isn't that much of a security hole there.

In the main screen, very little surprises to anybody who has seen an E5186:

This unit was customized for TeliaSonera Finland and it has 3 languages to choose from: English, Swedish and Finnish.

Some firmware details:

The network settings were also exactly like an E5186:

At this point I was pretty sure, that an E5577 is just a miniature E5186.

The device details are:

As you can see, there are plenty of options to go change. I just didn't present all of them here. Very little interesting stuff there.

AJAX API

Since E5186 has a very good AJAX interface for the GUI, and this is just a miniature version of it. This had to have the same:

I even ran some queries just to test it:

/api/device/signal:
<pci>96</pci>
<sc></sc>
<cell_id>36657366</cell_id>
<rsrq>-7dB</rsrq>
<rsrp>-108dBm</rsrp>
<rssi>-79dBm</rssi>
<sinr>2dB</sinr>
<rscp></rscp>
<ecio></ecio>
<mode>7</mode>

Everything I threw at it returned exactly similar results, than E5186. Which of course is a very good thing.

Final words

This was a very pleasant exploration to a familiar device. I have really nothing negative to say about this router.

As I just pulled this from my article-queue, I had a chance to do some follow-up with the owner. She said, that it had been performing well and no issues had been encountered.

Earlier last year I was playing around with a ZTE MF910, which is a exact competitor for Huawei E5577. The MF910 isn't a robust box on a long run. Occasionally it loses the 4G-connection and requires some Tender/Love/Care to kick it back on-line. On my tests, it was an ok piece of plastic, but obviously non-computer users don't want to mess aroud with their hardware, they just want it to work when needed. The ZTE's box won't deliver on that.

Given a E5577 and MF910, having exactly the same price and all, my choice would be the Huawei.