RISC-V Router(router.start9.com) |
RISC-V Router(router.start9.com) |
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.
Working with upstream is most convenient for their users, for them, and for the ecosystem as a whole.
> 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...
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.
So why isn't there this kind of stuff in routers?
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..
[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.
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 ?
Orange Pi RV2 is very similar in spec to this star9.com router.
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".
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".
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.
I've been looking for a WiFi 7 router that has SFP+ ports for a while now and it seems what you mentioned is just that.
For anyone interested please see https://www.turris.com/en/products/omnia-NG/.
It is very similar to Umbrel [0].
- [0] https://umbrel.com/
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.
> Hardware Specs > […] > Memory: 4GB LPDDR4 RAM > Storage: 16GB eMMC
In contrast, https://openwrt.org/supported_devices says:
> Sufficient Flash to accommodate OpenWrt firmware image
> 8MB min (bare minimum)
> 16MB better (will fit other applications)
> Sufficient RAM for stable operation
> 64MB min
> 128MB better
So, that’s 64 times the RAM, 1024 times the flash memory. If that’s necessary, what is it used for? If not, why pay for it?
Really? In 2026? Pass.
It needs to be _at_ _least_ two SFP+.
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.
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.
Specialized hardware is in routers. Typically, for this class of router, what you're buying is a highly specialized proprietary chipset and a stack of proprietary driver software that runs on a couple ARM cores. Most of the actual network activity is offloaded (switching, packet filter, cryptography, etc.,) and the software control plane just manages the proprietary hardware. The specialized hardware is why the thing can handle traffic at full rate in a compact box with little to no active cooling and a ~10W SMPS.
That doesn't exist in this router: it can't because no one has yet integrated a best-of-class hardware data plane with a RISC-V CPU+drivers and made it available to third parties for developing such devices. So nearly everything must be done by the CPU, and the CPU isn't all that fast.
If you'd like to learn about all this, have a look at Tomaž Zaman's YouTube channel and his development of an "open" router.
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.
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.
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_.
Sure it's kind of nice to know the car media player thing I've had for a couple of years has a RISC-V D1s/F133 chip in it, but I bought it because it receives CarPlay (and Android Auto) and transmits audio on FM (actually the best quality one I've had, and I've had a few) and cost $30, not because it's RISC-V.
And I'm eagerly awaiting a pico-ITX SpacemiT K3 box arriving in the next week or so.
But a router? Why do I care, past price and functionality?
I personally would accept a light downgrade in order to have a RISC-V system. But not a downgrade this steep.
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.
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_...
That seems worth paying for. How could china hurt me more than my own government?
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.
All I'm saying is that a full-on fork is not the right thing to do when all you're trying to do is have your own frontend, or modify a small number of packages.
It's not really a binary concept either. It's a scale from "immediate & transparent overlay" (not keeping anything from OpenWrt vendored and just piling on top) all the way to "hard fork" (one-time hard break from source) with lots of steps inbetween.
Also, wtf is "pull request begging"? If you can't get pull requests merged, that normally means the target project doesn't have enough maintainers. In turn, that means you should be going around reviewing pull requests on your own initiative. You don't need anyone's permission to make comments on other people's pull requests (at least not in general.) Just do it. I mean, yeah, some projects have very high or maybe even obnoxious requirements, but in my experience that's very rare and happens primarily with "enterprise" / "corporate" things. Unless proven otherwise, I'll assume most FOSS projects are at least trying to make things work collectively. OpenWrt certainly does.
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. :/
This has always been my reason to avoid StartOS for running a Bitcoin node. When you're dealing with contentious forks (like we are right now) it's helpful to be able to get as low level as you want without realizing that things have all been hidden from you.
That said it depends on exactly what you're doing. Their server having a jitsi server that just works is nothing to shake a stick at. Nor is Start Tunnel making the server accessible over the Internet without any port forwarding required to the casual user.
I'm just not certain I'm their target userbase.
And then your ISP's setup instructions tell you "configure VLAN 6 with PPPOE MTU 1500" (this is literally what my ISP requires).
I get that the average person has no clue what VLAN means, but if an ISP requires that clients configure VLAN 6 and a router doesn't expose that setting, the owner of that router is going to be very unhappy.
If I'm looking for a consumer friendly router, I'll go with an option that is cheap and capable, I don't care about the OS being open source and if I cared about it being open source, I'd prefer it if they don't fork the software in a way that splits the community and where the fork is dependent on their commercial success to the point where I might be stuck with the hardware and no upstream support.