[BPI-R3] information

Banana Pi Router design
1

Hi,

As forum category changes its name and a first question came up (user cannot create new threads)…

just to collect information in a bpi-r3 thread (and not in r2 threads)

bpi-r3 is afaik a planned board based on mt7986 SOC and mt7531 switch.

Bpi and mtk are working on hw layout and basic software support (basic patches like clock,pinctrl for linux got recently posted).

@sinovoip can you post more information of it,how far is development process? Can you separat wan port to second gmac (not connect to switch) like r2pro,as dsa can handle only 1 cpu port. Configurate it as separate external interface makes it easier to configure and use the gmac

2

If wan is not on the switch, is it still possible to implement HW NAT?

3

Afaik yes as you configure hwnat on soc and not switch chip

to be more preceise, hw-nat should relax the SOC-CPU by offloading NAT-calculations/lookups to separate “cpu”, this is done for traffic reaching the SOC (you cannot do NAT on switch - this is L2 only, NAT is L3)

4

Hi Frank,

  gmac1----(p6)mt7531(P1-4)--LANx4
                     (P0)----WAN
                     (p5)---1st SFP slot
  gmac2---2nd SFP slot
  • HNAT can work with all above interfaces.

2.5G SFP dongle: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002835610787.html

chip info: https://www.mediatek.com/products/mediatek-filogic-830

product info: https://www.tp-link.com.cn/product_2246.html

Linux patch status: https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-mediatek/list/?series=&submitter=187725&state=&q=&archive=&delegate=

2 Likes
5

SFP sounds nice (especially for fibre connection), but i guess these 2 slots will take much space on the board

tp-link ax6000 looks different on us/de page, i guess it’s another base, right?

wifi BGN/AC/6GHz is on board? how about PCIe/internal storage/mobile (SIM-Slot,LTE modem) support?

6

TP-XDR6020 is for China market only, but we can see more mt7986-based products for worldwide market this year.

R3 has built-in 2.4G/5G 4x4ax (WiFi6) capability and one pcie slot for ssd/modem.

7

Looks like it’s a 4xARM Cortex-A53@2GHz, any RAM capacity info?

Wifi 6E sounds exciting, Any HDMI planned?

P.S. is the mt7986 the same as filogic-830?

8

afaik no hdmi, i have no info about ram (i guess 2G like r2{,pro})

@moore told chipinfo for filogic830, so imho it’s same

9
  • 2GB DDR4, no HDMI
  • Mt7986=filogic 830
2 Likes
10

The question to mtk is the software support on linux and bsd.

Will they be providing the base software support on mainline linux and help bsd team port mtk drivers so opnsense can be used in this board?

11

MTK is continue sending patches for public review and you can check status by below link.

https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-mediatek/list/?series=&submitter=&state=&q=MT7986&archive=&delegate=

1 Like
12

Interesting and why just 2gb?

If we want to use a full size firewall appliance than we need minimum 4gb

13

DRAM is 2 gigabytes not gigabits. It should be ok for most router applucations.:grinning:

14

640K ought to be enough for anybody © Bill Gates :smiley:

So what about BGP Fullview? And/or DPI.

4G+ sounds more confident :wink:

15

Imho 4G+ is better of course…but in my case more for virtualization needs. Just separating all functions not directly related to router functionality (e.g. web-service,database, irc connection,vnc,…)

Running a dev board in IP Backbone or as edge router for isp is imho a bit dangerous. I see it still more for private use,maybe small business. And there should be nearly none that use BGP. Maybe for testing and there you should have not much subnets to manage.

If you mean DPI as graphics support (hdmi): afaik SOC has no such support and this is still uncommon for routers. There are few usecases, e.g. using panel for view/configure smarthome,system state or similar,but imho most users will have a headless router. So in my opinion hdmi is nice,but not necessary for router application. Maybe there are usb/pcie extensions possible. R3 has full wifi on board so you have basicly mpcie/sata free if not using a LTE connection

16

I meant Deep Packet Inspection. In fact, nDPI runs on R2 at speeds up to 40-50 Mbits/s, and in that case the CPU is insufficient resource, not the RAM. Anyways - 2G is better than 1G, and taking into account the absence of GUI it should be enough :slight_smile:

18

MTK just sent mt7986 WiFi patch. https://lwn.net/Articles/881020/

1 Like
19

sample ready:

Banana%20Pi%20BPI-R3%20Router%202

2 Likes
20

would be interesting especially with fibre sfp :slight_smile:

but i have not enough knowledge which are the right (singlemode, multimode, connectors,…). Can insert some in my switch too. If i find some matching for testing and a “cable” i could test it

21

I don’t see any SATA ports on the picture. Are they not planned?

And SFP, are they separated from RJ-45 or shared?

1 Like