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They could use BSD underneath, like JunOS and Netscaler run on.

But maybe an operating system is too large in scope. You're right that these devices only run one application, why use a tool (operating system) that can run many applications?

It's a bit like running a hypervisor for only one operating system. There are benefits, true.

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Well, there's the kernel, which handles flinging packets between interfaces, filtering, etc., but your average router has lots of services it provides as well: DHCP, DNS, file/print sharing via USB ports, etc.

Right, and the Kernel could just provide those. No need to write something to load extra code from storage and run it.

Loading even more functionality into the kernel is at odds with security, stability and maintainability. Its also not going to save much/any in the way of resources.

A big part of the OpenWRT project is hardware support for wireless chipsets and SoCs.

Sure, they could move all that to BSD, but then if they wanted to do that, why didn't they do that in the first place, rather than working on Linux?

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