Banana Pi BPI-Wifi 6 is an ultra-low-cost WiFi 6 router board with five Gigabit Ethernet ports based on Triductor Technology TR6560 dual-core Cortex-A9 router SoC and TR5220 WiFi 6 chipset and that sells for just $26.32 plus shipping on Aliexpress, or $39.99 as part of a kit with the board, four antennas, and a 12V power supply.
The board is equipped with 512MB RAM and a 128MB SPI flash for OpenWrt, comes with four antenna connectors for WiFi, and can also take an optional 12V PoE module for power instead of relying on a 12V power adapter via a DC jack.
Banana Pi BPI-WiFi 6 board specifications:
- 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
- 4x 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 U.FL antenna connector
- WiFi supports AP and STA modules, WPA, WPA2, WPA3 security
- Debugging – 6-pin debug UART header
- Misc – Power switch, Reset button, WPS button, 9x LEDs
- Power Supply
- 12V DC via power barrel jack
- Optional RT5400 PoE module
- Dimensions – 137 x 107 mm
The board runs OpenWrt, but no source code is provided at this time, and we only have a binary image (tgp3.1.0-rc4-THG6500-TAX2-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin) available for download through the Wiki for the board. The video below shows the board powered by PoE and booting to OpenWrt with Linux 5.10.138 and running the LuCi web interface.
Triductor Technology is a chip design company headquartered in Suzhou, China, and they appear to specialize in router and PLC chips. The SoC page has one dual-core Cortex-A9 router SoC for xDSL gateways, but nothing about the TR6560 processor, and the WiFi page features a couple of wireless chips but the TR5220 found in the Banana Pi BPI-WiFi 6 board is nowhere to be found. Searching the web for TR6560 on Google and Baidu always brings up the Banana Pi board, so it does not look like other companies are using the chips yet.
Banana Pi should probably design an enclosure for this type of board and sells it as a complete WiFi 6 router for under $50, although the lack of source code is worrying for a router. I’ve had a look at WiFi 6 routers on Amazon, and the cheapest I could find is the TP-Link Archer AX10 going for $59.99 but with the combined speed limited to 1,500 Mbps (AX1500 router).
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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