Hardware

Specifications

Component Detail
SoC Qualcomm IPQ4019 (ARM Cortex-A7, 4 cores)
RAM 256 MB
Flash 128 MB NAND + 2 MB NOR
WLAN 2.4 GHz QCA4019, 802.11b/g/n, 2x2:2
WLAN 5 GHz QCA4019, 802.11a/n/ac, 2x2:2
LTE mPCIe Cat 12 modem (MDM9250), QMI
Ethernet 4x Gigabit (lan1 is the WAN port by default)
USB 1x USB 2.0 external, 1x USB 3.0 internal (modem)
Serial console X8 header, 115200 8N1

Source: upstream OpenWrt support commit for zte_mf286d (a91ab8bc05b737d7e14976aaf929a71ea37fa1c6).

Network layout

OpenWrt maps the ports as follows:

  • lan1 → wan (Ethernet WAN)
  • lan2, lan3, lan4 → br-lan (192.168.1.1/24)
  • wan6 → DHCPv6 on wan
  • LTE → wan as QMI on /dev/cdc-wdm0 in the shipped config

Flash and image size budget

Region Size Used by
NAND total 128 MiB whole device
SPI NOR 2 MiB bootloader (SBL1, MIBIB, QSEE, APPSBL)
rootfs (mtd9) 29.00 MiB (30,408,704 B) kernel + OpenWrt rootfs + overlay
data (mtd10) 25 MiB stock data; unused by OpenWrt
fota (mtd11) 50 MiB stock FOTA; unused by OpenWrt

The rootfs partition is a UBI volume: 232 PEBs of 128 KiB, 2 reserved, so 230 LEBs × 126,976 B = 27.85 MiB of usable space. The kernel is stored uncompressed (≈3.3 MiB in the reference image), which leaves:

Overlay wanted Max rootfs (squashfs)
0 MiB 24.57 MiB
2 MiB 22.57 MiB
4 MiB 20.57 MiB
6 MiB 18.57 MiB
8 MiB 16.57 MiB

Practical target for this build: rootfs ≤ 20 MiB, leaving ~4 MiB of overlay for settings. The release hook fails the build above 27.85 MB of image payload and warns above 25.5 MB.

For reference, the packages that will not fit: sing-box alone is 15.3 MiB and xray-core is 10.8 MiB compressed. That is why the PassWall core is not in the image — it is downloaded into RAM at boot (about 25 MB of tmpfs).

Known hardware limits

  • Many LEDs are driven by the modem firmware, not the CPU. Only internal and Wi-Fi LEDs are controllable from OpenWrt.
  • The Wi-Fi LED follows phy0tpt only.
  • No VoIP support. The MF286D has no working phone port in OpenWrt.
  • ZTE provides a single MAC address per device; OpenWrt derives WAN/WLAN MACs with +1/+2/+3 increments.

Default Settings

Default Wi-Fi names, admin login and LAN IP are listed in Getting Started.