TP-Link RE700X is a dual-band Wi-Fi 6 (AX3000) range extender based on
Qualcomm IPQ5018 (2.4 GHz) with a QCN6122 (5 GHz) companion radio.
Specifications:
- SoC: Qualcomm IPQ5018 (dual-core ARM Cortex-A53)
- RAM: 256 MiB
- Flash: 128 MiB SPI-NAND (ESMT F50D1G41LB)
- Wi-Fi: IPQ5018 2.4 GHz + QCN6122 5 GHz, both 802.11ax
- Ethernet: 1x Gigabit - IPQ5018 MAC1 (DWMAC) via SGMII/uniphy0 to a
Realtek RTL8211F (MDIO1 addr 6). The SoC internal GE PHY (MAC0/gmac0)
is not wired to any external port and stays disabled.
- LEDs: 5, Buttons: reset + WPS
- Power: 100-240 V AC, 50/60 Hz, 0.4 A (internal PSU, wall-plug)
- UART: 3.3 V serial console, 115200 8N1; on-board 4-pad header,
pinout from top: TX, RX, GND, VCC
MAC addresses (factory_data UBI volume, file default-mac, mounted
read-only in preinit like on the EAP650):
- LAN (label MAC): default-mac
- 2.4 GHz: default-mac + 1
- 5 GHz: default-mac + 2
Calibration data is extracted from the 0:art partition (IPQ5018 at
0x1000, QCN6122 at 0x26800).
Installation:
- From OpenWrt (or after a RAM-boot of the initramfs via U-Boot/TFTP):
sysupgrade.
- From the stock firmware: openwrt-...-squashfs-factory-webflash.bin via
the TP-Link web UI (System -> Firmware Upgrade).
scripts/tplink-re700x-factory.py wraps the rootfs UBI into the stock
"nvrammanager" upload container (the same "tplink2022"/safeloader
family as scripts/tplink-mkimage-2022.py); the stock flasher writes it
into the inactive dual-boot slot. This path has not been tested end to
end (no unit on stock firmware was left), so keep UART at hand for a
first install.
The stock U-Boot passes a slot-correct ubi.mtd= (rootfs / rootfs_1 per the
dual-boot index) but with an unmountable root=mtd:ubi_rootfs. The DTS /chosen
inherits ubi.mtd= and appends root=/dev/ubiblock0_1, so OpenWrt boots from
whichever slot the flasher wrote. Like on the EAP650, sysupgrade installs
into the inactive slot and then points tp_boot_idx at it, keeping the
running slot as a fallback; the U-Boot environment is on 0:appsblenv.
The QCN6122/IPQ5018 board-2.bin (BDF) data is supplied via
ipq-wifi-tplink_re700x (openwrt/firmware_qca-wireless).
Wi-Fi is disabled in the DTS for now: with the default ath11k DP ring
sizes both radios exhaust the 256 MiB of RAM. It will be enabled in a
follow-up together with the ath11k patch that selects smaller rings on
low-memory boards, once that has been accepted upstream.
Signed-off-by: Eduard Hart <eduard.hart@etik.com>
Link: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/23982
Signed-off-by: Robert Marko <robimarko@gmail.com>