alt.hn

5/14/2026 at 8:06:53 PM

RISC-V Router

 https://router.start9.com/

by janandonly

5/14/2026 at 10:31:47 PM

> StartWRT: Start9's fork of OpenWrt, including a modern GUI, that reimagines the router experience from first principles.

I wish them the best of luck with their hardware venture, but a custom fork of OpenWRT is not what I'd want for a router from a small startup.

I can't even begin to count how many startups have done crowdfunding projects for new hardware and tried to get too custom with the software stack before the company went under.

Others already covered the high price for the specs, but we really need to see some benchmarks for things that matter: Routing throughput, VPN throughput, and other real numbers. Faster ports aren't helpful if the CPU can't process packets fast enough.

by Aurornis

5/14/2026 at 11:13:38 PM

I also wonder why they wouldn't work with upstream in improving the existing GUI (or upstreaming their improvements), instead of putting the burden of a fork upon themselves.

Working with upstream is most convenient for their users, for them, and for the ecosystem as a whole.

by WhyNotHugo

5/14/2026 at 11:40:50 PM

A basic Google search leads me to this article [0].

> On March 27, 2026, Start9 CEO Matt Hill hosted a private unveiling of StartOS 0.4.0, the next major version of the operating system that powers the Start9 Server One. During that same session, Hill also gave viewers a first look at StartWrt, the router’s dedicated operating system. StartWrt is Start9’s fork of OpenWrt with a modern GUI that reimagines the router experience from first principles. The interface is sleek, modern, and a clear departure from the technical admin panels that define most open source router software today.

> Where OpenWrt’s default LuCI interface is functional but technical, StartWrt presented a clean, modern interface designed for users who have never configured a VLAN or written a firewall rule.

When you consider the circumstances a fork is the only thing here that makes sense. You can't just open a pull request to OpenWRT where you are like "Here is our purpose built simplified GUI we designed for our router, please merge."

[0] https://www.solosatoshi.com/start9-announces-fully-open-sour...

by kingstnap

5/15/2026 at 2:50:51 AM

> When you consider the circumstances a fork is the only thing here that makes sense.

No, because a fork and an overlay are not the same thing. Getting your custom frontend has nothing to do with sharing the maintenance burden on all the grit behind it.

by eqvinox

5/15/2026 at 7:08:05 AM

This is pretty much what GL.iNet does. A nice slick interface for normal people, full OpenWRT nerd power a couple of clicks away for HN readers.

by twic

5/15/2026 at 4:35:32 AM

> designed for users who have never configured a VLAN or written a firewall rule.

I always get the impression that when things are designed this way, you can't configure a VLAN or write a firewall rule, and so far I've never been proven wrong. :/

by LoganDark

5/15/2026 at 3:06:34 AM

Their OpenWRT wiki page for installing on my router was a mess, but I got through it and took extensive notes about where the page was wrong or confusing. Then I asked for access to their wiki and was… ignored. After a week or so I forgot all the info and the notes started to look like gibberish.

by mixmastamyk

5/15/2026 at 12:10:15 AM

The gui of openwrt is not great. It might be better if you already have lots of experience with linux networking and openwrt specific command line configuration. If not it seems like a mess, very vague and overlapping controls without much explanation. DDWRT and Tomato are much better although openwrt might be more powerful without resorting to straight firewall and routing rules through text.

by CyberDildonics

5/15/2026 at 7:05:57 AM

> we really need to see some benchmarks for things that matter

Honestly, we don't. We know it won't be competitive with the plethora of high performance ARM network SOCs found in commercial routers. If you use this with advanced features enabled (traffic shaping, packet inspection, etc.) on a fast uplink you will be CPU bound, and the CPU isn't fast. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that knows why this platform has any appeal.

You don't buy this expecting to max out your 10 Gbps fiber. There are other, valid reasons, but not that, and I'm glad it exists: one day, there will be RISC-V network SOCs that dominate benchmarks.

by topspin

5/15/2026 at 8:24:43 AM

As someone not involved in this space I assumed there was specialist hardware. My pi Pico can do fancy things with DMA etc, without the CPU at all.

So why isn't there this kind of stuff in routers?

by benj111

5/15/2026 at 8:41:45 AM

There is, and it is. Just not in this specific SoC, originally intended for general-purpose computing.

by crote

5/15/2026 at 3:26:12 AM

More open-source forks of OpenWRT and open-schematic router board designs are exactly what we need. It would further raise the cost of planting backdoors in routers at meaningful scale. We're currently too dependent on the OpenWRT project for router firmware. It's a high-payoff target for XZ Utils [0] type of multiyear infiltration by malicious actors.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor

The StartWrt port supposely adds some nice features, of which VPN chaining looks especially useful. And a better UI will make it more accessible. There are plenty of people out there who are willing to switch out their routers and chain VPNs to escape gov/ISP/big tech surveillance but don't have the technical means to do so. These are welcome improvements to reduce friction if they manage to pull it off.

The specs are not too bad for the price considering this is a startup project. It has 8 cores with per-core performance similar to Cortex-A55 + 4GB LPDDR4 + 16GB eMMC, which is better than most off-the-shelf routers. I wish they released the WIP schematics and code though, because there seems to be nothing at the moment.

by txrx0000

5/15/2026 at 12:54:49 AM

And at that point why not OPNSense? OpenWRT for me is what I would run on crappy BestBuy routers that can’t run a proper router OS. OPNSense is 100% amazing.

by IgorPartola

5/15/2026 at 9:30:30 AM

I don't know about that... I ended up getting a banana pi r3 (great discounts because they were pushing the r4)

I had to make a couple of tweaks for the fan controls (experimenting, i don't even remember if i wrote everything) and now i have a beast of a router with 8 cores, a 1TB NVME, 8GB RAM, and besides routing it hosts a media server and a bunch of containers. (gitea, home assistant, immick, ...)

If only it had a couple more USB-A ports..

by monegator

5/15/2026 at 3:13:11 AM

You’re not running a BSD on an embedded device with full driver support any time soon. Linux won this space.

by fellowmartian

5/15/2026 at 2:50:13 AM

Under the hood, the StartWRT UI is just another OpenWRT package, and it plays nicely with luci.

by samsartor

5/15/2026 at 2:46:17 AM

> Built on a RISC-V processor with an open-source boot stack and operating system, it is the most open router on the market […]

No it's not [cont'd]

> with a fully open-source boot stack (OpenSBI, U-Boot), open-source Linux kernel, and published board schematics.

You can all get all that for both OpenWrt One and Turris. Possibly more, they go beyond schematics on HW design. And that CPU is no more "open" than the libre end of ARM chips elsewhere.

https://project.turris.cz/en/hardware-documentation.html - that's the bar. CERN OHL (or equiv) with not only schematics but gerbers.

And, y'know, I rather get OpenWrt unforked from the OpenWrt people. Even the Turris people are burdened by OpenWrt "re-maintenance".

by eqvinox

5/15/2026 at 9:13:24 AM

> And that CPU is no more "open" than the libre end of ARM chips elsewhere.

It is amazing how often people seem to forget this. The only thing RISC-V means is that the person designing the cores doesn't have to pay a license fee for the architecture. It doesn't say anything about the open-ness of the core IP itself, let alone the final SoC.

Nothing is stopping you from making a RISC-V chip locked down tighter than Apple's, and nothing is stopping you from making a completely open chip based on the x86 parts whose patents have expired.

by crote

5/14/2026 at 9:44:46 PM

Is Start9 a well known company? The page by itself seems indistinguishable from a scam, but maybe they have a reputation that justifies their asking for $250,000?

by NelsonMinar

5/14/2026 at 10:15:22 PM

It is not well know but I heard good thing about what they do.

It is very similar to Umbrel [0].

- [0] https://umbrel.com/

by sunshine-o

5/15/2026 at 2:34:41 AM

250k for openwrt based risc v router? Maybe need do more work such as using vyos + fdio/vpp

by mintflow

5/14/2026 at 8:45:43 PM

BananaPi already sells boards with same CPU for around $100 with maybe $15-20 extra for case

https://docs.banana-pi.org/en/BPI-F3/BananaPi_BPI-F3

Is it doing anything different ? I assume at least made in US so it can be sold as router and not dev board ?

by PunchyHamster

5/14/2026 at 8:58:20 PM

Are the banana pi boards able to run a mainline kernel or close to it? I have a memory of getting real close to buying one of those, and then reading a comment on HN about having to run their Frankenstein setup

by freedomben

5/14/2026 at 9:49:53 PM

Given the similarities in port layout (just missing a HDMI and USB3 header), and that the case is nearly identical, I would guess that this router probably is a custom run of the exact same BananaPi board without those headers. Both also use MiniPCIe in 2026, which is a bit of an odd decision.

by dwood_dev

5/15/2026 at 2:54:18 AM

Depends on the board.

Btw, I don't see anything about mainline in TFA, did I miss that?

FWIW there is also "OpenWrt mainline" and "Linux mainline"; OpenWrt carries a whole bunch of things on top of Linus' tree but I'd still call that "mainline".

by eqvinox

5/14/2026 at 9:51:21 PM

The page linked above contains links to their bootloader and Linux kernel tree (6.1 apparently), so chances are rather low.

by c0balt

5/15/2026 at 9:47:45 AM

Most K1 support is actually upstream in 7.0.

by snvzz

5/15/2026 at 8:10:02 AM

The case on there is also the same, the vent holes and layout is identical (sans the other USB and HDMI)

by marysol5

5/15/2026 at 1:29:57 AM

Love this in theory, but can't do it with only 2 ports. I need backup WAN.

by jsLavaGoat

5/15/2026 at 3:02:41 AM

A backup WAN can be connected over USB, if it's a backup for graceful degradation when the primary high-speed WAN goes down. USB3 gives you a very decent speed, so if your WAN is not very fast (a typical 300-500 mbps home Internet connection), it can just be adequate.

by nine_k

5/15/2026 at 3:34:22 AM

I need a dmz. ;)

by nubinetwork

5/15/2026 at 1:00:25 AM

Since this has a foreign-made processor and WiFi module, would this be blocked by the Trump FCC's foreign-made router ban?

by neuronexmachina

5/15/2026 at 3:00:34 AM

Looks cool. I'd hoped for usb-c for power at least. Trying to get rid of usb-a.

by mixmastamyk

5/14/2026 at 9:22:17 PM

Turris Omnia NG is also "open source" and has 2x 10 Gbps SFP+ and 4x 2.5 Gbps ethernet ports. StartWRT and Turris OS are both forks of OpenWRT, which is kind of annoying. The Turris project has been around a long time and has an active community.

by mieses

5/14/2026 at 10:11:07 PM

Quick glance of their page only mentions Turris OS being built on open source. If I can't blow away Turris OS and install whatever, then it's not open and uninteresting.

by MisterTea

5/14/2026 at 10:42:15 PM

Turris has its own OpenWRT warapper, but you can just wipe it and install the stock OpenWRT.

by cyberax

5/15/2026 at 4:03:38 AM

> there is no open-firmware option for modern WiFi from any manufacturer

I wonder if this could be changed, if enough people got together and had a WiFi chip fabbed, or paid a company to open their firmware? I'm guessing the bar is higher than that, because the WiFi trade assoc. probably mandates closed firmware. So you'd have to create a competing (but open) WiFi standard and probably have to lobby the FCC to let us use it.

by phendrenad2

5/14/2026 at 9:02:09 PM

Single WAN, Single LAN, is not actually what I would (or do) use for "home-based self-hosting". That hosted stuff gets its own network.

by annoyingnoob

5/14/2026 at 9:07:19 PM

that is what vlans are for. but having only gigabit ports is limiting here.

by zokier

5/14/2026 at 9:26:42 PM

RISC-V is quite wimpy this far, so it’s not even clear if it can saturate a gigabit with features turned on. The one benefit is that it doesn’t have Intel IME/AMT, AMD PSP or ARM TrustZone backdoors built-in, but I would be extremely surprised if the Chinese SpaceMiT CPU didn’t have Chinese backdoors of its own.

by fmajid

5/14/2026 at 10:44:55 PM

> it’s not even clear if it can saturate a gigabit

If that's the case then it's not the CPU's fault. I can't open the linked site but assuming it's really the same as a BPI-F3 i.e. a SpacemiT K1 chip, that can do 2.8 GB/sec on large RAM to RAM memcpy using a CPU core i.e. 44 Gbps total, 22 Gbps each read and write. Plus I assume it's got DMA so no need to involve the CPU anyway.

Here is a test I ran in April 2025 on a Sipeed LicheePi 3A same chip).

https://hoult.org/K1_memcpy.txt

> RISC-V is quite wimpy this far

The new K3 chip from the same manufacturer does 8.7 GB/s RAM to RAM memcpy using a dual issue in-order A100 ("AI") core, just over 3x faster.

Sure this pales in comparison to recent Apple / Intel / AMD but it's a lot faster than home networking.

by brucehoult

5/15/2026 at 12:24:29 AM

Although your benchmark is interesting, I don't think it's very relevant here. In my experience, you'll saturate the CPU through packet decoding, routing, and firewalling long before memory becomes a bottleneck.

That's why all network SoCs have hardware to accelerate such thing, otherwise in software alone they can barely handle simple routing at a few hundred mbps.

That chip doesn't seem to have that: https://cdn-resource.spacemit.com/file/chip/K1/K1_datasheet_...

by tredre3

5/15/2026 at 2:34:22 AM

1 Gb/s is only ~100,000 packets/s at standard MTU. You literally get 10 us/packet which is a eternity. Normal fast-path router operation only really needs to consider the header of <100 bytes/packet, so you are getting ~100 ns of compute per byte of considered data and on even a 1 Ghz processor you are getting over 100 instructions per byte of considered data. Failure to achieve a measly 1 Gb/s really says more about those software implementations than it says anything about the impossibility or difficulty of the problem.

by Veserv

5/15/2026 at 8:45:07 AM

Not all packets are 1500 bytes.

by crote

5/14/2026 at 10:12:08 PM

> The one benefit is that it doesn’t have Intel IME/AMT, AMD PSP or ARM TrustZone backdoors built-in, but I would be extremely surprised if the Chinese SpaceMiT CPU didn’t have Chinese backdoors of its own.

That seems worth paying for. How could china hurt me more than my own government?

by throwaway27448

5/15/2026 at 7:08:07 AM

Yes, you have to decide in your threat model which is worse. There are people who’ve built entire systems on RISC-V FPGA soft cores like Bunnie Huang’s Precursor, but none fast enough to serve as a router.

by fmajid

5/15/2026 at 12:13:25 AM

Yep. It's crazy how effective the US Gov has made it seem like China are the bad guys, when it was US/Israel all along.

by HDBaseT

5/14/2026 at 9:37:32 PM

Exactly - seems like the only big thing going for it

by Melatonic

5/15/2026 at 2:45:06 AM

I helped a bit to develop this UI myself. Support for vlans was baked into it from day 1. The idea being good admin/guest/iot/hosted/etc separation without extra access points.

by samsartor

5/15/2026 at 3:08:09 AM

It still means you're permanently hassled with sticking a switch next to it.

Yes it's not a requirement per se to include an ethernet switch chip on the board. But at a $300 price tag I'll say it does become a failing.

by eqvinox

5/14/2026 at 10:14:42 PM

VLANs would appear to defeat the ease of use aspect here. Plus that means you need managed switches, and know how to use them.

by annoyingnoob

5/14/2026 at 9:00:28 PM

> Ethernet: 1 WAN Gb, 1 LAN Gb

Really? In 2026? Pass.

It needs to be _at_ _least_ two SFP+.

by cyberax

5/14/2026 at 11:22:02 PM

Note that most people, worldwide, only have <1gbps internet access if at all.

by snvzz

5/14/2026 at 11:35:10 PM

Sigh. 1gbps is widely available, even in relatively poor countries.

And if you're making a _new_ device that should last for 5-10 years, it's just stupid to use technology that is getting obsoleted even now.

by cyberax

5/14/2026 at 11:53:17 PM

>Sigh. 1gbps is widely available, even in relatively poor countries.

No, it isn't. Not even by far.

>And if you're making a _new_ device that should last for 5-10 years, it's just stupid to use technology that is getting obsoleted even now.

Anything higher than 1gbps would ramp up the cost today.

by snvzz

5/15/2026 at 9:08:05 AM

Rich countries suffer from a first-mover disadvantage: companies existed heavily in building internet infrastructure based on DSL and DOCSIS in the 2000s, so they are now trying to milk every cent of profit out of it while they can. Meanwhile in poor countries "the internet" was a 1Gbit LAN cable daisy-chained between houses, and the first large-scale commercial rollout is fiber - which is pretty much impossible to install these days at speeds below 1Gbps.

Going faster doesn't really cost that much extra. 10Gbps networking gear is 20(!) years old and considered obsolete by the rich countries, you can buy brand-new transceivers for literally $30. Go second-hand or Chinese and you can find them for $5. Basic 10G L3 switches? A bit over $10/port. Same with NICs. Heck, we're now at a point where homelabbers can get a 2x25G link between a pair of servers for less than $100!

It's 2026, and 1Gbps is obsolete. If faster gear is still expensive to you, it is only because you are getting ripped off by the western premium brands like Cisco.

by crote

5/15/2026 at 3:08:15 AM

> No, it isn't. Not even by far.

It is. You typically either have only cellular connectivity or you have fiber, with very little in-between. And fiber provides 1/10G capability.

Is it _used_ universally? No. But the capability is there.

> Anything higher than 1gbps would ramp up the cost today.

This is not going to be a cheap device _anyway_.

by cyberax

5/15/2026 at 3:12:21 AM

Working in this field - yeah don't underestimate what's available in "poor" countries. Most do better than poorly governed "rich" countries. And don't use it as an excuse to aim lower. CPE class devices do have a pretty long lifetime.

by eqvinox

5/14/2026 at 9:27:10 PM

> Router

> Ethernet: 1 WAN Gb, 1 LAN Gb

> $250000

Awesome.

by pshirshov

5/14/2026 at 9:38:38 PM

Cost is 300$ not 25k (for the end user) it looks like

by Melatonic

5/14/2026 at 10:13:06 PM

But the fundraising goal is.

by pshirshov

5/15/2026 at 12:14:12 AM

Yes, but you presented it like the product cost would be $250,000. You also failed to include the main selling point... It's a RISC-V chip.

by HDBaseT