I’ll reach out at the provided email. Thanks!
Do we have proper enclosures with enough antenna openings? Many of the previous cases lacked sufficient cutouts to accommodate all 5G and WiFi antennas. For example, modules usually needs 4 antennas, and new one like the FM190W-GL or RM551 require 7 antennas, and mmWave modules may need up to 12. WiFi 7 also typically requires much more antennas (bpi’s be19000 says 14 Antenna, so no more sma hole for 5g). If the board/wifi module+5g module supports full antenna configurations but the enclosure imposes limitations, it becomes a design bottleneck — and far from ideal.
Additionally, is it really advisable to connect all modules via CPU-driven drivers, especially when multiple vendors are involved (e.g., Fibocom, Quectel, Meig, TD-Tech)? This can introduce considerable performance overhead and stability risks. And, I’ve had the BPI-R4 for over a year, and there still isn’t a stable, production-grade firmware available.
Some other 5G CPE/router vendors seem to be taking a better approach by using 2.5G/1G PHYs — which I believe is the optimal solution. In this setup, modern cellular modules (including quectel/fibocom/td-tech all support this way nativly) operate in PCIe RC mode and use interfaces like RTL8111/8125 (and newer modules such as FM190W also support attaching AQC 5GbE/10GbE NICs), connecting to the router through standard Ethernet. This design avoids the need for vendor-specific drivers (such as rmnet, QMI, RNDIS, ECM, or NCM), many of which are buggy, rely heavily on vendor patches, and disable hardware acceleration — leading to increased CPU load.
If all modules were connected via Ethernet-like interfaces and routed to the 7988 through a switch chip (with VLAN segmentation), it would save PCIe lane/USB bus bandwidth & routing complexity and significantly reduce CPU overhead. In effect, module connections would behave just like standard Ethernet or SFP WAN interfaces, fully leveraging hardware-accelerated forwarding (and most important, it doesn’t require vendor driver). This architecture would also enhance scalability by removing PCIe/USB bottlenecks.
By the way, it’s still a very promising board — is it currently available anywhere (e.g., Taobao)?
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Hi tutugreen,
We are debugging this board and discussing the case with the supplier, so it is not available for sale yet, but it should be available soon.
If using PCIe RC mode, each cellular module needs to add an RTL8111/8125 (this requires module support), and the MT7988 needs to expand 6 2.5G network ports through USXGMII.
Thank you very much for your suggestion. We will evaluate this possibility with MTK and cellular module suppliers.
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5G gateway base on Banana Pi BPI-R4 , Mediatek MT7988 chip design, all hardware function test ok.
Uhh @sinovoip new revision of BE14000 Wifi module? Design looks different from those two modules that I own. Any changes in fuction/specs about the WiFi module you can communicate already?
not yet design a new BE1400, we now design BE1900 , sample will ready soon.
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ahh ok. also did some digging and had to learn this is a v00 pre-release BE14000 card 
Major cellular module available already supports rtl8125, specifically Quectel as the largest modem module maker in the world.
I second tutugreens comments. Not including this to offload the amount of strain cellular data throughput puts on the SoC is a mistake.