FCC Ban Leaves Davolink’s Minions Routers Legal in the U.S. but Blocks New Approvals

Kevin, or DVW-632, is the taller model at 9.6 inches. It is a tri-band Wi-Fi 6E router with a 2.5 Gbps WAN port, one gigabit LAN port, WPA3 security and mesh support. Its AXE5400 rating breaks down as 573 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz band and 2.4 Gbps on each of the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands. Bob, or DVW-642, is a smaller dual-band Wi-Fi 6 router with a gigabit WAN port and a top rating of 1.77 Gbps.

Kevin went viral after an X post described it as one of the best Wi-Fi 6E routers money can buy. The post drew millions of impressions, and Amazon’s stock, priced at $62.99, was gone by the next day, according to Engadget. Davolink first showed the routers at CES in January 2023 under an exclusive design agreement with Universal and put them on sale in South Korea that summer. Its core business is supplying gateways and access points to SK Broadband, KT and LG Uplus. The U.S. government’s vulnerability database lists only one Davolink product entry: a weak password flaw in a 2018 DVW-3200N router, rated 9.8 out of 10 for severity and fixed with new firmware.

RTINGS, which tested Kevin and TP-Link’s Archer AXE75, says the Minion wins on speed and range. Both carry AXE5400 ratings. The Archer has four gigabit LAN ports; Kevin has one, so using more than one wired device requires a network switch. Wi-Fi 7, the generation after Kevin’s, adds 320 MHz channels and allows a device to use several bands at once.

The FCC added “routers produced in a foreign country” to its Covered List on March 23. The move followed a national security determination three days earlier from an interagency body convened by the White House. Equipment on the Covered List cannot get the FCC authorization required for sale in the U.S. Law firm Wiley’s interpretation, cited by Engadget, is that “produced” covers any major stage of making a router, including design and development, regardless of the company’s nationality.

Routers authorized before the March listing can still be imported, sold and used; the FCC authorized Kevin and Bob between November 2023 and February 2024. The listing also bars changes to authorized devices, including software updates. The FCC has waived that restriction for security patches and compatibility fixes until at least Jan. 1, 2029, and its engineering office has said it will recommend writing the waiver into the rules. If that does not happen and the date does not change, Davolink will have to stop patching Kevin and Bob after 2028.

Exemptions, which the FCC calls Conditional Approvals, are granted by the Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland Security and last up to 18 months. Applicants must disclose where every component and the firmware come from, justify building abroad and commit to a dated plan for U.S. manufacturing, including spending figures and quarterly progress reports. Netgear was approved on April 14, Eero on April 22 and ASUS on Sept. 9, according to Engadget. Davolink, which has reported operating losses since 2022, has not publicly said whether it applied.

Editor’s Summary: The FCC’s Covered List addition blocks new authorizations for foreign-made routers, leaving Davolink’s existing Minions models legal but ineligible for future U.S. versions and guaranteed patches only through 2028. Davolink has not said whether it sought a Conditional Approval, while Netgear, Eero and ASUS have received exemptions.