Banana Pi launches $30 OpenWRT Wi-Fi 6 Router with WPA3 protection, optional PoE

Banana Pi BPI-WiFi 6 Router
(Image credit: Banana Pi)

Banana Pi is now selling a fully built Wi-Fi 6 router with some solid features for just $30 excluding shipping via Ali Express. This router uses OpenWRT firmware and dual-core Arm A9 Processor-based Triductor TR6560 SoC with Triductor's TR5220 WiFi 6 chipset. 

The company has been selling this WiFi 6 router board on its own, but now you can buy an out-of-box unit that contains an enclosure for the board with six external antennas, Ethernet cables, and a power adapter with either EU or US plugs. The only difference here is that one of the LAN ports is removed. 

The specifications of the Banana Pi BPI- Wi-Fi 6 router are as follows:

  • SoC – Triductor TR6560 dual-core Arm Cortex-A9 processor @ 1.2 GHz with LSW (Line-Card Switching) and hardware NAT up to 5 Gbps
  • WiFi chipset – Triductor TR5220 WiFi 6 chipset
  • System Memory – 512 MB DDR3
  • Storage – 128MB SPI NAND flash
  • Networking
    • 1x Gigabit Ethernet WAN port with optional PoE support
    • 3x Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports
    • 2.4 GHz WiFi 6 (802.11ax) 2×2 MIMO up to 573.5 Mbps
    • 5 GHz WiFi 6 (802.11ax) 2×2 MIMO up to 2401.9 Mbps
    • 4x external antennas
    • WiFi supports AP and STA modules, WPA, WPA2, WPA3 security
  • Debugging – 6-pin debug UART header
  • Misc – Power button, Reset button, WPS button, 9x LEDs
  • Power Supply – 12V DC via power barrel jack
  • Dimensions – SBC: 137 x 107 mm

The router supports the 802.11ax bandwidth protocol and provides WPA3 password protection. Power over Ethernet is optional and can be added via a module, but it needs to be soldered. Banana Pi's wiki page specifies that its 2.4G signal works up to 40 meters to provide 573.5 Mbps bandwidth and 5G works up to 160 meters up to 2,401.9 Mbps. 

Banana Pi responded to a query on YouTube that it sells the router boards pre-installed with the OpenWRT firmware, so it is probably safe to assume this would be no different with the fully built router. 

OpenWRT is currently finalizing its router specification that will pass on to its vendors, but the specifications are very different as it was based on a MediaTek SoC and has certain feature sets aimed to cost about $100. At the time of writing, there was no further information about OpenWRT One routers, but all Banana Pi had to do in this case was to sell its existing router board as a complete package. The code was written seven months ago and had the RC8 SDK update two months ago, according to Github's log.

While it may not have exclusive features, this router costs much less than many others you can find at retail. At the time this is only sold in China-based e-commerce websites like Ali Express, however, a much higher-spec Banana Pi board-based router is currently available via Amazon that's sold as a kit and likely needs the firmware to be uploaded manually. 

Roshan Ashraf Shaikh
Contributing Writer

Roshan Ashraf Shaikh has been in the Indian PC hardware community since the early 2000s and has been building PCs, contributing to many Indian tech forums, & blogs. He operated Hardware BBQ for 11 years and wrote news for eTeknix & TweakTown before joining Tom's Hardware team. Besides tech, he is interested in fighting games, movies, anime, and mechanical watches.

  • kanewolf
    WPA3 sounds like a good thing, but there are lots of devices that won't work in a WPA3 environment because of the requirement of WPA3 to have protected management frames (PMF). Even WPA2 with PMF breaks lots of devices.
    Reply
  • digitalgriffin
    Wanna bet it's full of security holes.

    If you get one, burn the firmware yourself.
    Reply
  • wakuwaku
    Banana Pi's low-cost router supports 2.5G+5G WiFi with LAN ports
    We now have confirmation that that:
    1. This article is AI written. No human tech writer would use the 2.5G term for WiFi. This is because it is used purely for marketing, yet its is false advertising since 2.5G doesn't exist as a WiFi standard. Also 2.5G is used to market 2.5 Gigabit ethernet ports, which is a valid way to advertise to customers seeking them, therefore potentially making the article misleading and confusing all because you want to up your SEO game.
    2. tom's AI is made in China. Because 2.5G is only used by Chinese based sellers to market WiFi just because 4 is not a nice number in China, they probably want a nice round number that is exactly half of 5Ghz, and bigger number better than 2.4G. I am very sure a non-China based AI will not do this, or at least has a very low chance of doing this.

    Note I am not being racist or xenophobic. I myself have relatives and friends of Chinese origin, being in a multiracial country. I'm just stating a possibility based on the facts. If the article had spewed out 2.4G, I would've thought your AI has a low chance being non-Chinese and complain anyway because you are being lazy by not typing Ghz.
    digitalgriffin said:
    Wanna bet it's full of security holes.
    Now this is being racist/xenophobic. Assuming the typical stereotype all because a Chinese company is selling a product on Aliexpress.
    The product is open source. There is not much choice in terms of having open source directly working with of the shelf hardware. If you want to complain why don't YOU established a non-China based company selling open sourced SOCs so that we can make our own ones that purportedly have less security issues all because we sell it on Amazon(?)
    Reply
  • das_stig
    wakuwaku said:
    We now have confirmation that that:
    1. This article is AI written. No human tech writer would use the 2.5G term for WiFi. This is because it is used purely for marketing, yet its is false advertising since 2.5G doesn't exist as a WiFi standard. Also 2.5G is used to market 2.5 Gigabit ethernet ports, which is a valid way to advertise to customers seeking them, therefore potentially making the article misleading and confusing all because you want to up your SEO game.
    2. tom's AI is made in China. Because 2.5G is only used by Chinese based sellers to market WiFi just because 4 is not a nice number in China, they probably want a nice round number that is exactly half of 5Ghz, and bigger number better than 2.4G. I am very sure a non-China based AI will not do this, or at least has a very low chance of doing this.

    Note I am not being racist or xenophobic. I myself have relatives and friends of Chinese origin, being in a multiracial country. I'm just stating a possibility based on the facts. If the article had spewed out 2.4G, I would've thought your AI has a low chance being non-Chinese and complain anyway because you are being lazy by not typing Ghz.

    Now this is being racist/xenophobic. Assuming the typical stereotype all because a Chinese company is selling a product on Aliexpress.
    The product is open source. There is not much choice in terms of having open source directly working with of the shelf hardware. If you want to complain why don't YOU established a non-China based company selling open sourced SOCs so that we can make our own ones that purportedly have less security issues all because we sell it on Amazon(?)
    I agree slightly racist/xenophobic but lets be honest, Chinese companies don't have a very good track record and who knows what the "Peoples Dept For Spying on Everybody and Everything" has made them include free of charge, that can't be seen in OpenWRT.
    Reply
  • digitalgriffin
    wakuwaku said:
    We now have confirmation that that:
    1. This article is AI written. No human tech writer would use the 2.5G term for WiFi. This is because it is used purely for marketing, yet its is false advertising since 2.5G doesn't exist as a WiFi standard. Also 2.5G is used to market 2.5 Gigabit ethernet ports, which is a valid way to advertise to customers seeking them, therefore potentially making the article misleading and confusing all because you want to up your SEO game.
    2. tom's AI is made in China. Because 2.5G is only used by Chinese based sellers to market WiFi just because 4 is not a nice number in China, they probably want a nice round number that is exactly half of 5Ghz, and bigger number better than 2.4G. I am very sure a non-China based AI will not do this, or at least has a very low chance of doing this.

    Note I am not being racist or xenophobic. I myself have relatives and friends of Chinese origin, being in a multiracial country. I'm just stating a possibility based on the facts. If the article had spewed out 2.4G, I would've thought your AI has a low chance being non-Chinese and complain anyway because you are being lazy by not typing Ghz.

    Now this is being racist/xenophobic. Assuming the typical stereotype all because a Chinese company is selling a product on Aliexpress.
    The product is open source. There is not much choice in terms of having open source directly working with of the shelf hardware. If you want to complain why don't YOU established a non-China based company selling open sourced SOCs so that we can make our own ones that purportedly have less security issues all because we sell it on Amazon(?)

    Personal experience and news reports. I got a generic ESP32 that tried to flood my computer with USB based hack attacks the second I plugged it in to test it. These small vendors are known for security issues. Even big ones do. IE: Huawei. Recently there was a company selling net appliance boxes that used a hack to bypass windows authentication. Guess what? It was full of malware. I will admit that they can come from anywhere.

    B8nJobY1SGM:1039View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8nJobY1SGM&t=1039s

    I will say cavaet emptor. If you want security, burn your own firmware from openly peer reviewed git hubs. Even netgate will tell you "You buy from us, you can be assured there are no backdoors and you get official support"
    Reply