If the emmc will be great if 128GB
Why not just use NVME at that point?
Nvme not booting the OS
Is is a bit more work to setup the bootchain and copy rootfs to nvme. Not just flash image to adcard and being guided through complete install process.
But basicly it is possible. I have my r3 working with rootfs+kernel on nvme. R4 is basicly same.
Hi Frank Since I dont have much experience how to do it so I wish to get learn how to do it At least firest step on path
You should discuss this in different/ new thread.
Here are some insights using my image/uboot:
No idea how to do with openwrt,but afaik openwrt has problems using the 8gb from current emmc (afaik because of overlayfs needs to be backed up on sysupgrade - please correct me if i’m wrong). There are several threads on expanding rootfs, but some are reported to not (more) working.
But with all os you can boot from emmc and use nvme as additional storage.
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I would still use it first as a router board but would probably end up playing with it as some sort of ingest station.
I need it in Debian11 I dont use openwrt
Ok,then you can try the guide above
Hi everyone, I’ve come to this topic as a bananapi-R4 (and previously R64) user, and can I somewhat try to give a bit of advice based on my experience?
- Provide documentation! explain what SFP modules you’d need to get it working properly. There are many SFP modules out there, only a few of them would provide me what I want (having EEE on RJ45)
- be clear about the board’s limits: I tried to add 4 wifi PCIe cards using the lanes provided by R4, but ended up having not enough power on the 3.3V line. If I knew, I’d have thought of that before starting to buy all kinds of wifi chips, M.2 adapters etc. 3 cards is fine, it was simply a waste of money because of the board’s limits.
- thermal limits. While I see you’re exposing a lot of PCIe slots (and it’s beautiful for several projects), I honestly have my doubts about the thermal limits: imagine you’d put a 10W regular operation card in all slots (and most of them do these days), You’ll end up having a heat dissipation of almost 50W on one side, and 20W on the other. Regular desktop CPUs start from 65W and they have a 90mm fan … are you sure the MT7988A has enough features to let PCI ASPM do its job?
- the USB port: would it be possible to have a 2-port variant? or flip the port and add a USB-C with role switching / PD / embedded serial support?
These are all wild ideas, and I’ll probably end up buying the board anyway, but it would be cool if they (especially option 4) could be added …
EDIT fixed some layout / grammar options
Hello Janpieter Sollie,
could you please share which Wi-Fi cards you have tested, and let us know which ones worked and which didn’t?
Thank YOU!
I tried a lot, actually, but I’ll tell how I came to the conclusion it was a power supply issue:
- I populated my R4 with a mini-pcie mt7916 and mini-pcie mt7915 card, to have “one band on 6ghz and one on 5ghz”
- I added a m.2 mt7916 card on the SSD slot “to get the same dual-band effect on 5ghz because of 80+80 doesn’t work properly”
- I tried to add a number of cards into the key B slot (to split the non-wpa3 devices into a legacy ssid):
- ath10k 9884 (no luck)
- ath11k QCNA755 (nothing either)
- ath10k 9882 (sometimes it worked, sometimes it crashed due to an IRQ interrupt and unplugging+ rebooting was the only way to get it working, though not always)
- intel 8265 (no luck)
Somewhere, I suspected it was a power issue, but never sure…
I then saw a advertisement of mediatek launching a m.2 key B adapter. I asked the people of Mediatek whether they thought the R4 could handle a 4th card on the 3.3V line, but the answer was “no, wait for our 12V adapter and put your mini-pcie cards on the 12V line” So it’s not a big thing, it’s simply a pity I didn’t see earlier
I have TP-Link’s DECO BE95, aka BE33000. Would be very interested in the claimed PHY max BE36000. Keeping my eyes on this thread for future development…
Hey @simon
according to Banana Pi BPI-R4 Pro Wifi7 Router board design with Mediatek MT7988A | BananaPi Docs the combo ports are 10GE but you’re saying they are 2,5GE? Which one is the case?
Please tell me they are 10GE, even if it is more expensive… that would be one of the few router board to offer this option and this is what I would be looking for.
Please see diagram here
Mt7988 has 2 10G macs. One is either 2g5 phy (similar to R4 phy variant) or 10G SFP+ and the other one is connected to 2g5 switch with 10G SFP±cage (normally used as Uplink).
So basicly you can use the switch-ports (4x2.5g) and 10G-sfp without routing traffic through r4pro (to the mac) or if you want routing it goes out over the other mac (2g5 phy or 10GSFP).
…I’m confused.
In the board image there are 7 ethernet ports.
- 4 are the 2.5g switch - OK
- 1 is a 1g “FPC” port - OK
The remaining two (JWD chips?) are the combo’ed ports to the SFPs? Are they 10g or 2,5g?
Diagram says 5 x 2g5 on switch +1x SFP+
On the other mac 1x SFP+ and 2g5 with mt7988 internal phy and 1 1g port
Not sure yet about the 2x internal conn on internal switch
But i do not have such board yet and also have not completely understood the schematics here,also with combo-selection
Ok, pending an official answer from @sinovoip, after about 1h on the phone with a friend 
, we came to the following conclusions:
- the hardware specs mentions 2 AS21010P chips (10g PHY) that are visible on the board so 2 ethernet ports should be 10g
- in the prototype board picture, between the port and the below chip, there’s a tiny print that seems to read “10g”
- not sure about why one port is tagged “10g/1g” and the other “10g/2,5g”
If the above is correct, and the 10g ports are combo’ed with the SFP then:
- the mediatek SoC has 2 10g lines:
- one is connected directly to the wan sfp/eth combo
- the other one is connected to a 10g line of a maxlinear switch chip MxL86252C (typo in the hardware specs but good in the hardware diagram) and then:
- the lan sfp/eth combo is connected to the other maxlinear switch chip 10g line
- the maxlinear chip should have 5x2,5g but only 4 port are wired (?)
That adds up to:
- 2 SFP/eth combo port (10g phy) lan/wan
- 1 1g eth (see as well tiny print on the board)
- 4 2.5g eth
- 1 extra 1g FPC LAN connector (no RJ45) on the side of the board (?)
If this is the case (i.e.: 2x10g eth phys)… then I would be very good with this board… 
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I guess bpi follows this board from mtk-sdk in most parts
There is also devicetree overlay and dsa driver for the MxL86252C ethernet switch.
But it looks like mtk used a AQR113C phy instead of the AS21010P.
Btw. Also wondered about the 2 phy ports with same chip,but one 2g5/10 and the other 1G/10G…i guess one is wrong described. Btw. Blue lines on blue board are hard to follow.
Phy seems to be this:
https://www.edomtech.com/en/product-detail/as210-series-10gbps-ethernet-phy/
But i have not yet found any linux driver for it 
For those who interested or having already such board, i collected some parts and upported the mxl switch driver to 6.16
Edit: seems there is a driver in current net-next and i guess this is the phy id
this may be of use - mt7988a-bananapi-bpi-r4-pro.dts
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