Single service comparison

Service boundary differs: Cloud Router is a control-plane BGP entity attached to Cloud VPN/Interconnect gateways and VPC peering, while Huawei Enterprise Router (ER) is a centralized, regional router appliance you attach VPCs, Direct Connect virtual gateways, VPN gateways, peering connections, and Cloud Firewall instances to as discrete 'attachments'. ER owns its own route tables, associations, and propagations, so it has broader in-cloud transit scope but fewer per-gateway advertisement knobs than Cloud Router's BGP custom advertisement and priority model. Architects must remap gateway-attached clouds to attachment-centric topology rather than a one-to-one router replacement.

Data model and policy models diverge. Cloud Router exposes BGP sessions per tunnel/interconnect attachment with custom route advertisement, route priority, MED, and ASN; route propagation into the VPC is automatic or controlled via custom advertisements. ER organizes routing around route tables with explicit associations and propagations per attachment, plus route policies that can filter and modify route attributes on virtual gateway, peering, VPN, and global DC gateway attachments. VPC route propagation into ER attachments is automatic, but ER route policies are limited to specific attachment types and do not mirror Cloud Router's advertisement-set granularity.

Scaling, HA, and operational responsibility differ. ER is a regional service with a default 100 Gbit/s forwarding cap (adjustable via ticket), one ER per account default quota (adjustable), per-attachment BGP propagation caps (1,000 routes), and AZ/resiliency handled by the managed router; HA relies on multi-link active/standby or load-balancing across Direct Connect and VPN. Cloud Router HA is per-gateway (two BGP sessions) with software-defined MED/priority. Operationally, ER adds route table, association/propagation, flow log, and RAM cross-account sharing constructs that have no exact Cloud Router equivalent, while ER cannot mirror several Cloud Router behaviors for service VPCs co-used with ELB, NAT, VPC Endpoint, or DCS without dedicated transit VPC design.

Start with a topology and dependency assessment. Inventory every Cloud Router, its attached gateways (Cloud VPN tunnels, VLAN attachments/Interconnect, peering), advertised custom IP ranges, BGP ASNs, MED/priority settings, and which VPCs depend on the routes. Match each to an ER target placed in the same regions as the GCP regions, because ER is regional and cannot span regions without Cloud Connect central-network peering attachments. Confirm ER regional availability and quotas (one ER per account default; attachment and route-table limits that are partly non-adjustable) before committing a design.

Rebuild routing constructs in ER, not by direct import. Recreate advertisement and failover intent using ER route tables, associations, propagations, and route policies; there is no automated Cloud Router-to-ER migration tool, so all BGP advertisement, custom IP ranges, ASN, and MED/priority intent must be re-expressed manually. For hybrid connectivity, attach Direct Connect virtual gateways and VPN gateways as ER attachments and use multi-link active/standby or load-balancing; for cross-region use ER peering attachments through a Cloud Connect central network rather than ER alone. Avoid attaching service VPCs that are co-used with ELB, VPC Endpoint, NAT, or DCS directly to ER; use a transit VPC scheme for those.

Validate control, data plane, and failover before cutover. Confirm propagated routes show expected next hops, route-policy filtering matches Cloud Router advertisement behavior, and failover behaves under forced link failure. Validate 0.0.0.0/0 constraints where ECS EIPs, ELB, NAT Gateway, VPC Endpoint, or DCS are present, since ER will not turn VPC traffic to the router in those cases. Use ER flow logs for traffic visibility and cross-check route counts against per-attachment propagation limits (1,000 BGP routes) and overall ER route capacity to avoid silent truncation.

Account for gaps and cost-model differences. Cloud Router is included with the network and billed through VPN/Interconnect and egress, whereas ER is billed as a resource-hour service plus the underlying Direct Connect/VPN, bandwidth, and processed-traffic costs across ELB/NAT/ER/DC where applicable. Recalculate TCO with peak forwarding load, attachment counts, cross-region Cloud Connect traffic, and the transit-VPC sizing needed to satisfy ER's service-VPC constraints. Document unsupported or partial-parity areas (per-gateway advertisement sets, regional BGP-only scope, route-quota ceilings) as design risks before production cutover.