The questions our sales desk and support engineers answer most often — selection, certification, lead time and branding on one side; SIM, APN, VPN, PoE and firmware on the other. If your question is not here, ask us directly and we will answer it properly.
Search by symptom or by topic — "no internet", "APN", "PoE", "MOQ", "certification". If nothing comes up, the downloads centre usually has the document that does answer it.
For buyers, product managers and system integrators — the questions that come up before an order exists.
4G LTE still covers the large majority of industrial deployments — telemetry, remote monitoring, retail backup links — and costs less per unit. Choose 5G when you need high uplink throughput or low latency: video backhaul, vehicle and AGV connectivity, or a dense site where many devices share one link.
5G RedCap sits between the two: 5G-grade latency and reliability with a 4G-class cost profile, where your operator supports it. If you are unsure, tell us the application and the country and we will say which family fits rather than leaving you to compare spec sheets.
Routers are DIN-rail devices built for cabinets, poles and vehicles: wide operating temperature, cellular-first design, DC input. Gateways are rack or desktop units for an equipment room or office edge — AC powered, more Ethernet ports, and designed for indoor conditions rather than a cabinet in the field.
In short: pick a router when the link is cellular and the environment is hostile, and a gateway when you are putting the edge of the network into a room.
Certification is held per product family, not across everything we make — so the honest answer is to name the coverage:
The downloads centre states the exact model coverage on each file. If you need a document for a specific market or model, tell us the model and the market and we will tell you precisely what exists — and what we can support you to obtain.
It depends on whether you are buying a standard catalogue model or a customized OEM build — a customized unit carries tooling, branding, packaging and firmware work that a catalogue unit does not, so the floor is different.
Rather than publish a number that would not apply to your case, send us the model, the quantity and the market and we will give you firm terms.
There are two paths, and which one applies to you depends on quantity:
Custom branding, packaging or firmware work is additional to that. The schedule is confirmed with your quotation, so you are not planning against a generic figure.
Yes. Logo, label, packaging, printed manual, boot screen and factory default configuration can all carry your brand, and we can lock the radio to your region's bands or pre-load your settings during production. Configuration, branding and final inspection stay with our own team.
Type approval remains the responsibility of the brand owner — the certification cost is not included in the quoted price, and we will tell you what the platform already holds so you know what the certification effort involves.
Yes — sample units are available so you can evaluate before committing to a volume order, both for catalogue models and for OEM projects that need a proof of concept.
Tell us the model, what you plan to test, and the environment it will run in; that lets us send the right variant rather than a generic unit.
We quote per model rather than publishing list prices, because configuration, annual volume and destination all move the number. Send us the model, the quantity and the destination country.
Quotes are issued in USD, either FCA Shenzhen or delivered to your address if you would rather we handled the freight.
Both sides can be adapted, though they are different kinds of work:
Bring us the requirement and we will tell you honestly whether it is a configuration change or a development task — and what that means for lead time.
Our bridges and outdoor access points are built for pole and mast mounting and come with the mounting hardware; those are designed to be outdoors. Routers and switches are meant for cabinets and enclosures — if your installation is exposed, house them in a suitable IP-rated box.
Describe the environment (exposure, temperature, how the link runs) and we will recommend a combination rather than a single box.
We quote FCA Shenzhen by default, and can quote delivered to your address if you prefer us to handle the freight. Payment terms are agreed with the quotation and depend on order size and whether this is a first or repeat order.
Send us the model, the market and what you are trying to achieve. Pre-sales questions go to the same engineers who support the products in the field.
For engineers commissioning a unit or bringing a site back up. Answers describe the general procedure; the manual for your model carries the exact parameters, and the downloads centre has both.
Power the router down, insert the SIM with the contact orientation shown on the label or in the manual for your model, then power it up. Open the router's web interface and go to the cellular / WAN settings, where you enter the APN your operator supplied — the APN name, plus a username and password if the operator requires them.
Apply the settings and confirm the WAN status shows an IP address. If the SIM carries a PIN, or is a data-only or IoT tariff, check the operator's requirements first — those are the two things that catch people out most often.
The router can hold a tunnel so a device in the field reaches your central network. You configure it in the web interface: choose the tunnel type your server uses, enter the server address and the credentials or keys, and name the local subnets you want reachable from the other end.
Bring the tunnel up and check the status page shows it established before you rely on it — a tunnel that is configured but not connected looks fine until the first packet fails. The manual for your model lists the tunnel types it supports; if your server runs something unusual, ask us and we will confirm before you build around it.
Work outwards from the router:
Send us the model, the operator and the status readouts and we will narrow it down with you.
That comes down to the bands the model supports against the bands your operator runs. Our regional versions lock different band sets, and the model code usually shows which region a unit was built for.
Tell us the operator and the country, and we will confirm whether the band set matches — and which regional version to order, so you do not discover the mismatch on site.
Download the release for your exact model and hardware revision from the downloads centre, verify the published MD5, then upload it through the web interface. Some models also accept TFTP. Do not cut power while it writes, and keep the previous image so you can go back.
If an upgrade is interrupted the unit may need recovery through the serial or debug port. Contact us with the model and the versions you were moving between, and we will walk you through the recovery rather than leave you guessing.
Check the standard, not just the voltage. A switch supplying 802.3af/at will correctly power any device that expects standard PoE. Several of our bridges and access points are instead fed by a non-standard 24 V passive injector — connecting one of those to a standard PoE port can damage it.
The datasheet and the unit's label state which method the device expects. When in doubt, power it with the injector supplied with the unit.
First confirm what the device expects — standard PoE or passive — against what the port supplies. That mismatch explains most cases, and it is the one that can do damage.
Then check the switch side: is PoE enabled on that particular port, and if it is a managed switch with a power budget, is there headroom left once the other ports are counted? The port's PoE status usually tells you whether the switch sees a valid powered device at all.
It differs by family and in some cases by hardware revision, so we do not publish a single answer that would be wrong for half the range. The address and login are printed in the manual for your model, and on the label of some units.
Send us the model and, if you have it, the serial number, and we will give you the exact factory defaults for that unit.
Switches are DIN-rail mounted, and a number of models can also be rack-mounted with the bracket supplied. Access points use the mounting kit that comes with the unit — ceiling, wall or pole depending on the model — and our outdoor units are built for mast mounting.
Whatever the model, leave the clearances the manual specifies; heat is the usual reason a device behaves oddly after a few months of service.
Every model has a reset button or a reset option in the web interface, and the sequence and hold time are model-specific — some models deliberately distinguish a short press from a long one.
Check the manual for your model before you press anything: a factory reset clears your configuration, including the settings you spent this morning getting right. If you are unsure of the sequence, ask us with the model number and we will describe it exactly.
Configure one unit as the access side and the other as the client on the same SSID and channel, then mount them with clear line of sight and align them roughly before you fine-tune.
Use the signal-strength readout as your alignment tool: adjust one end at a time and watch the number move, rather than moving both and losing track of which change helped. For longer links, check that the path clears the fresnel zone, not just the straight line.
Only if the port is configured to supply passive power at the voltage that device expects. A standard 802.3af/at port is not the same thing, and connecting a passive device to a standard port can damage it.
Where a device needs 24 V passive, power it with the injector supplied with it, or use a switch whose PoE specification matches. Send us both model numbers and we will confirm the pairing before you wire it.
The serial port carries the console and the AT command interface. Our AT command reference lists the commands, and the GPIO pin sheet gives pin names, direction and default state — both are in the downloads centre.
If you are designing a carrier board around an embedded module, the integration manual covers supply sequencing and interface levels, which are the two things that decide whether a first prototype comes up.
LED behaviour is model-specific, but the broad pattern is usually readable:
Tell us the model and describe what the LEDs do, and we will tell you what that means for your model specifically.
Four things turn a three-email thread into a one-email answer:
Self-service fails at the same points every time — a mismatch nobody documented, a unit from an older batch, a site with an unusual constraint. That is exactly when it is worth asking.
One message per release — version, what changed, download link. No newsletters, and you can stop it from any message.