Router board features WiFi 6 and five GbE ports

Wallys’ “DR5018” router board is equipped with a Qualcomm IPQ5018 with dual Cortex-A53 cores and offers 5x GbE (or 1x GbE and 1x 2.5GbE) plus 802.11ax, BT 5.1, USB 3.0, and 2x M.2 E-key slots.

Wallys (or Wally’s) Communications has announced another Linux-driven router board based on a Qualcomm reference design. The new DR5018 incorporates a Qualcomm IPQ5018 networking SoC.

We do not see a Qualcomm product page for the 1GHz, dual-core, Cortex-A53 IPQ5018, which incorporates 802.11ax (WiFi 6) and is also available on a Xiaomi MI Router. (Xiaomi’s specs list a 1GHz NPU, which is presumably a third-party chip since Qualcomm is unlikely to have chosen the lowly IPQ5018 as the first of its router processors to feature an AI chip.) There are also various posts on the Internet citing IPQ5018 vulnerabilities.

DR5018
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The DR5018 can be considered a lower-cost alternative to the DR-6018S or the earlier, more feature-rich DR6018, both of which use the 1GHz, quad -A53 Qualcomm IPQ6018. Like those and most other Wallys boards we have covered, the DR5018 features dual-band 802.11ax, in this case with up to 573Mbps physical data rate and 23dBm per chain.

If that’s not enough WiFi for you, there are also dual M.2 E-key sockets. Bluetooth 5.1 is also available along with 2x IPEX antenna connectors. There are 5x GbE ports, one of which may be a WAN port. The other four can be swapped out for a single 2.5GbE port.

DR5018 front and back detail views
(click images to enlarge)

The DR5018 ships with 512MB DDR3L, 4MB NOR, 128MB NAND, and 4GB or 8GB eMMC flash. The 185 x 116mm board is further equipped with a USB 3.0 port, a 12V power supply, and an LED header. The DR5018 has a -40 to 70ºC operating range with 5-95% (non-condensing) humidity tolerance.

Further information

No pricing or availability information was provided for the DR5018. More information may be found on Wallys’ product page.