Keenetic KN-1012 (Hero/Giga)

The Keenetic KN-1012 is a dual-band Wi-Fi 6 router on MediaTek MT7981B with 512 MiB RAM and 256 MiB SPI-NAND. Besides four gigabit ports it has a combo port: an RJ45 through an Airoha EN8811H 2.5G PHY and an SFP cage, used one at a time. The same hardware is sold as the Netcraze NC-1012; everything on this page applies to it, with NC-1012 in the image and recovery file names.

Snapshot

→ Install OpenWrt (generic explanation)

The vendor bootloader stays in place, so its TFTP recovery keeps working as the way back. OpenWrt boots a second U-Boot from it, which picks the device tree for the medium in the combo port and then starts the kernel.

→ generic.flashing.tftp

1. Connect the TFTP host to one of the LAN ports and give it the address 192.168.1.2.
2. Take the squashfs-factory.bin image for your brand and rename it to KN-1012_recovery.bin (Keenetic) or NC-1012_recovery.bin (Netcraze). Put it in the TFTP directory.
3. Power off the router, hold the Reset button, power it on and keep the button held for about 10 seconds.
4. The bootloader downloads the image and writes it to flash.
5. Wait for the reboot. OpenWrt comes up on 192.168.1.1.

The stock recovery accepts only images signed for its own brand, so a Keenetic image does not install on an NC-1012 and the other way round.

Download the official recovery package, KN-1012 or NC-1012, take the .bin out of it and repeat the TFTP steps above with that file in place of the OpenWrt image.

The two vendor firmware slots (firmware_1, storage_a, firmware_2, storage_b) are joined into one virtual flash device. Its first 8 MiB are the kernel partition and the rest is ubi. After installing OpenWrt the second slot no longer holds a vendor-bootable image. u-state stays read-only.

→ generic.sysupgrade

Use the squashfs-sysupgrade.bin image, from LuCI or with sysupgrade on the command line.

→ generic.debrick

The vendor TFTP recovery described above works as long as the stock bootloader is intact, which OpenWrt never overwrites.

→ failsafe_and_factory_reset

→ Basic configuration After flashing, proceed with this.
Set up your Internet connection, configure wireless, configure USB port, etc.

The default network configuration is:

The combo port is either copper or SFP, never both. The second U-Boot checks at every boot whether an SFP module is present and loads the matching device tree, so to change the medium, plug or unplug the module and reboot. With a module in the cage and a cable in the RJ45 at the same time, SFP wins.

• SFP: works. The port advertises 2500BASE-X, its native mode. A 10G DAC against a partner that does only 1G or 10G gets no link until ethtool -s lan4 advertise 0x20000000000 drops it to 1000BASE-X. A plain 1G module should be picked up on its own.
• Copper: does not come up yet on snapshot builds. The EN8811H driver loads its firmware from the root filesystem, after the switch has already attached the PHY. The kernel fix is on the netdev list and its OpenWrt backport is PR #24819. Once that is merged, copper works with no change to the image.

→ hardware.button on howto use and configure the hardware button(s).

• SoC: MediaTek MT7981B
• Switch: MediaTek MT7531
• Combo port: SFP cage and Airoha EN8811H 2.5G copper PHY on one SerDes, selected by a GPIO mux
• Flash: 256 MiB SPI-NAND, the chip varies by production run (Fudan Micro FM25G02B seen)
• USB: one USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0 port; USB 2.0 goes through a GL850G hub, each port has a switchable power rail. SuperSpeed under OpenWrt is not tested yet
• Power: 12 VDC, 2.5 A, center positive

→ port.serial general information about the serial port, serial port cable, etc.

There is a through-hole header J500 on the PCB. Its assignment is unconfirmed: 5V, TX, RX, NC, GND.

• Support was added in PR #24820, based on the out-of-tree port by Maxim Anisimov.
• The second U-Boot and the combo port handling are OpenWrt-specific. Mainline has no way yet to describe a port that switches between an SFP cage and a copper PHY at runtime, so the medium is chosen once per boot.