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RISC-V Router
- PunchyHamster 5mo agoBananaPi 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 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 ?
- freedomben 5mo agoAre 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
- dwood_dev 5mo agoGiven 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.
- c0balt 5mo agoThe page linked above contains links to their bootloader and Linux kernel tree (6.1 apparently), so chances are rather low.
- snvzz 5mo agoMost K1 support is actually upstream in 7.0.
- eqvinox 5mo agoDepends 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".
- greguu 5mo agoThis BananaPi RISC-V router board is officially supported in OpenWRT https://docs.banana-pi.org/en/BPI-RV2/BananaPi_BPI-RV2 https://docs.banana-pi.org/en/BPI-RV2/BananaPi_BPI-RV2 and is very affordable. While not as powerful than the Spacemit K1 and having much less RAM, it works rather well and is very stable. Different metal cases available. POE option exist for the board as well. Orange Pi RV2 is very similar in spec to this star9.com router.
- marysol5 5mo agoThe case on there is also the same, the vent holes and layout is identical (sans the other USB and HDMI)
- cyberax 5mo ago> Ethernet: 1 WAN Gb, 1 LAN Gb Really? In 2026? Pass. It needs to be _at_ _least_ two SFP+.
- snvzz 5mo agoNote that most people, worldwide, only have <1gbps internet access if at all.
- cyberax 5mo agoSigh. 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.
- snvzz 5mo ago>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.
- cyberax 5mo ago> 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_.
- eqvinox 5mo agoWorking 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.
- annoyingnoob 5mo agoSingle WAN, Single LAN, is not actually what I would (or do) use for "home-based self-hosting". That hosted stuff gets its own network.
- zokier 5mo agothat is what vlans are for. but having only gigabit ports is limiting here.
- fmajid 5mo agoRISC-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.
- Melatonic 5mo agoExactly - seems like the only big thing going for it
- throwaway27448 5mo ago> 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?
- HDBaseT 5mo agoYep. 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.
- fmajid 5mo agoYes, 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.
- mieses 5mo agoTurris 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.
- MisterTea 5mo agoQuick 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.
- cyberax 5mo agoTurris has its own OpenWRT warapper, but you can just wipe it and install the stock OpenWRT.
- mieses 5mo agoVanilla OpenWRT runs Omnia (Marvell Armada). OpenWRT support for IPQ9574 is WIP. Omnia NG is IPQ9574. https://openwrt.org/toh/turris/turris_omnia https://openwrt.org/toh/turris/turris_omnia
- eqvinox 5mo agoYou can install whatever you want on Turris devices. And you get schematics and gerber files. https://project.turris.cz/en/hardware-documentation.html https://project.turris.cz/en/hardware-documentation.html
- frantathefranta 5mo agoPeople run NixOS on their Omnias, that's enough for me. https://gitlab.com/Cynerd/nixturris/ https://gitlab.com/Cynerd/nixturris/
- mbana 5mo agoThank you! 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/ https://www.turris.com/en/products/omnia-NG/.
- pshirshov 5mo ago> Router > Ethernet: 1 WAN Gb, 1 LAN Gb > $250000 Awesome.
- Melatonic 5mo agoCost is 300$ not 25k (for the end user) it looks like
- pshirshov 5mo agoBut the fundraising goal is.
- HDBaseT 5mo agoYes, 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.
- brucehoult 5mo agoI'm not sure why anyone would care what chip is in a router that should just sit there doing its job and you're not going to write or run other software on? 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?
- aniviacat 5mo agoPresumably ideology, striving to use devices as open as (reasonably) possible. I personally would accept a light downgrade in order to have a RISC-V system. But not a downgrade this steep.
- NelsonMinar 5mo agoIs 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?
- sunshine-o 5mo agoIt is not well know but I heard good thing about what they do. It is very similar to Umbrel [0]. - [0] https://umbrel.com/ https://umbrel.com/
- Aurornis 5mo ago> 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.
- WhyNotHugo 5mo agoI 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.
- kingstnap 5mo agoA 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-source-risc-v-router-for-home-self-hosting/ https://www.solosatoshi.com/start9-announces-fully-open-sour...
- neuronexmachina 5mo agoSince this has a foreign-made processor and WiFi module, would this be blocked by the Trump FCC's foreign-made router ban?
- jsLavaGoat 5mo agoLove this in theory, but can't do it with only 2 ports. I need backup WAN.
- nine_k 5mo agoA 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.
- nubinetwork 5mo agoI need a dmz. ;)
- mintflow 5mo ago250k for openwrt based risc v router? Maybe need do more work such as using vyos + fdio/vpp
- eqvinox 5mo ago> 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 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".
- crote 5mo ago> 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.
- hmry 5mo agoSo true. I haven't checked out the CPU start9 is using (so please don't read this as an attack on them), but so much RISC-V hardware advertises itself as "open", but when you look up the SoC, it's only partially documented, only works with old forked vendor kernel, only boots with forked uboot, has GPUs and NPUs that are completely undocumented and have no open source driver (or only an open wrapper around a big firmware blob)...
- mixmastamyk 5mo agoLooks cool. I'd hoped for usb-c for power at least. Trying to get rid of usb-a.
- phendrenad2 5mo ago> 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.
- DeathArrow 5mo ago$300 for 1 Gbit router + WiFi 6 seems too much for me when I can get one for $35.
- mixmastamyk 5mo agoYou have to pay more to not be the product, and even then not guaranteed.
- prashantk_ 5mo agoRISC-V shines in systems like this. I want systems (Embedded and low power systems) to be more RISC-V based.
- Someone 5mo agoFTA: > Hardware Specs > […] > Memory: 4GB LPDDR4 RAM > Storage: 16GB eMMC In contrast, https://openwrt.org/supported_devices 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?
- jetbalsa 5mo agoVPN and DNS Packages in OpenWRT eat a good bit of ram. and sometimes can be cheaper for faster speeds needed to higher packet processing.
- vitali2y 5mo ago[dead]
- ivan2221 5mo ago[dead]
- ivan2221 5mo ago[dead]