5 ms·

It is a little disconcerting that Foxconn (subject to deep Chinese government overreach) will now own Linksys

zitterbewegung 9y ago
I stopped buying linksys products a long time ago. Moved on to Netgear and Asus. But, doesn't Foxconn already manufacture a bunch of American products?
- Nokinside 9y ago
  46% of Foxconn revenue comes from Apple (they manufacture iPhones) also Kindles, Xbox, PlayStation 4, Wii U, BlackBerries, lots of of Google's hardware, many Cisco's routers etc.
- ausjke 9y ago
  pretty much all of them except for some high end gears such as cisco routers...
- spiderPig 9y ago
  Sure, but they own the firmware now though
bhouston 9y ago
Foxconn is Taiwanese like Asus, Acer, Gigabyte, MSI, MediaTek, D-Link, and HTC. Both Asus and D-Link are major router makers as well. Also fun fact, nearly all routers use the same chips from Boardcom. The majority of differences between routers is just firmware and packaging, the guts are all the same.
- spiderPig 9y ago
  Ah TIL, with their factories being in Shenzhen, I thought they were HQ’ed there. This still doesn’t rule out government strong arming though.
- gonzo 9y ago
  The firmware is mostly the same as well.
- coding123 9y ago
  It's a RoC
  - philliphaydon 9y ago
    Taiwan.
  - bhouston 9y ago
    Taiwan and China are quite distinct. It is not at all like Hong Kong and China. Details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_relations
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- wtallis 9y ago
  > The majority of differences between routers is just firmware and packaging, the guts are all the same. The firmware is the part you really have to worry about, though. But the proper solution is to simply never run the vendor's firmware on a consumer grade router, because none of them are any good at assembling and securing a Linux distribution.
  - srcmap 9y ago
    Just check if they are compatible with dd-wrt or openwrt and flash it with opensource build. Much easier than flashing cell phone and the open source version normally has more features also.
    - Tepix 9y ago
      It's such a shame that when using OpenWRT everything runs as root...
      - wtallis 9y ago
        OpenWRT is still trying to support devices with 8MB of storage, so they can't go overboard and start incorporating Docker or anything like that. But some services do run as separate users: on my routers, dnsmasq and avahi aren't running as root. What other services would you like to see isolated?
        Tepix 9y ago
        I didn't know that. Sounds like they are moving in the right direction. One important component that should not run as root is the web server.
        wtallis 9y ago
        Generally speaking, I agree that a web server shouldn't be running as root. But when the sole purpose of that web server is to provide root-level control over the system, is there really much security to be gained by running that process as a different user? That "unprivileged" process is still going to have some mechanism for causing arbitrary commands to run as root. I can imagine that you might have an unprivileged server presenting just the log-in page, then proxying to a privileged server that is started once the administrator is authenticated. But that doesn't get you much more security, and it probably does strain the resources of low-end routers. A small, auditable server may be better than a more complicated system, especially since it is trivial for more paranoid users to disable/uninstall the web server and just use SSH (which nobody seems to mind running as root).
Dirlewanger 9y ago
Right? I know it's not completely analogous, but the federal government blocks a US company (Qualcomm) from buying another American company (Broadcom) over concerns about the Chinese somehow (which I still don't fully understand), but allows a Taiwanese company to buy an American network hardware division? I guess the government doesn't give a shit about consumer products.
- che_shirecat 9y ago
  Qualcomm/Broadcom was mostly just political grandstanding
- sushid 9y ago
  > the federal government blocks a US company (Qualcomm) from buying another American company (Broadcom) over concerns about the Chinese somehow (which I still don't fully understand) I'm not saying that Trump's executive order is justified (and the market predicted that Qualcomm would reject a hostile takeover attempt) but you have a few things wrong there. 1. The acquisition would be the other way around (as in Broadcom taking over Qualcomm) 2. Broadcom's parent company is a Singaporean entity. So yes, it's an American company but its parent company is Singaporean. 3. Broadcom's M&A strategy is very short sighted. It usually strips the acquisition target's R&D costs and improves its bottom line in the short term. 4. Qualcomm has a pseudo monopoly on mobile chips. All high end mobile phones use their chips. If it loses out on its future 5G technology due to a shrinking R&D budget, US loses its market dominance possibly for good.
downrightmike 9y ago
You can roll your own and get better throughput: https://www.pfsense.org/ https://www.pfsense.org/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/09/the-router-rumble-ars-diy-build-faces-better-tests-tougher-competition/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/09/the-router-rumble-ar...

I stopped buying linksys products a long time ago. Moved on to Netgear and Asus. But, doesn't Foxconn already manufacture a bunch of American products?

Nokinside 9y ago
46% of Foxconn revenue comes from Apple (they manufacture iPhones) also Kindles, Xbox, PlayStation 4, Wii U, BlackBerries, lots of of Google's hardware, many Cisco's routers etc.
ausjke 9y ago
pretty much all of them except for some high end gears such as cisco routers...
spiderPig 9y ago
Sure, but they own the firmware now though

bhouston 9y ago

Foxconn is Taiwanese like Asus, Acer, Gigabyte, MSI, MediaTek, D-Link, and HTC. Both Asus and D-Link are major router makers as well. Also fun fact, nearly all routers use the same chips from Boardcom. The majority of differences between routers is just firmware and packaging, the guts are all the same.

spiderPig 9y ago
Ah TIL, with their factories being in Shenzhen, I thought they were HQ’ed there. This still doesn’t rule out government strong arming though.
gonzo 9y ago
The firmware is mostly the same as well.
coding123 9y ago
It's a RoC
- philliphaydon 9y ago
  Taiwan.
- bhouston 9y ago
  Taiwan and China are quite distinct. It is not at all like Hong Kong and China. Details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_relations
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
wtallis 9y ago
> The majority of differences between routers is just firmware and packaging, the guts are all the same. The firmware is the part you really have to worry about, though. But the proper solution is to simply never run the vendor's firmware on a consumer grade router, because none of them are any good at assembling and securing a Linux distribution.
- srcmap 9y ago
  Just check if they are compatible with dd-wrt or openwrt and flash it with opensource build. Much easier than flashing cell phone and the open source version normally has more features also.
  - Tepix 9y ago
    It's such a shame that when using OpenWRT everything runs as root...
    - wtallis 9y ago
      OpenWRT is still trying to support devices with 8MB of storage, so they can't go overboard and start incorporating Docker or anything like that. But some services do run as separate users: on my routers, dnsmasq and avahi aren't running as root. What other services would you like to see isolated?
      - Tepix 9y ago
        I didn't know that. Sounds like they are moving in the right direction. One important component that should not run as root is the web server.
        wtallis 9y ago
        Generally speaking, I agree that a web server shouldn't be running as root. But when the sole purpose of that web server is to provide root-level control over the system, is there really much security to be gained by running that process as a different user? That "unprivileged" process is still going to have some mechanism for causing arbitrary commands to run as root. I can imagine that you might have an unprivileged server presenting just the log-in page, then proxying to a privileged server that is started once the administrator is authenticated. But that doesn't get you much more security, and it probably does strain the resources of low-end routers. A small, auditable server may be better than a more complicated system, especially since it is trivial for more paranoid users to disable/uninstall the web server and just use SSH (which nobody seems to mind running as root).

Dirlewanger 9y ago

Right? I know it's not completely analogous, but the federal government blocks a US company (Qualcomm) from buying another American company (Broadcom) over concerns about the Chinese somehow (which I still don't fully understand), but allows a Taiwanese company to buy an American network hardware division? I guess the government doesn't give a shit about consumer products.

che_shirecat 9y ago
Qualcomm/Broadcom was mostly just political grandstanding
sushid 9y ago
> the federal government blocks a US company (Qualcomm) from buying another American company (Broadcom) over concerns about the Chinese somehow (which I still don't fully understand) I'm not saying that Trump's executive order is justified (and the market predicted that Qualcomm would reject a hostile takeover attempt) but you have a few things wrong there. 1. The acquisition would be the other way around (as in Broadcom taking over Qualcomm) 2. Broadcom's parent company is a Singaporean entity. So yes, it's an American company but its parent company is Singaporean. 3. Broadcom's M&A strategy is very short sighted. It usually strips the acquisition target's R&D costs and improves its bottom line in the short term. 4. Qualcomm has a pseudo monopoly on mobile chips. All high end mobile phones use their chips. If it loses out on its future 5G technology due to a shrinking R&D budget, US loses its market dominance possibly for good.

downrightmike 9y ago

You can roll your own and get better throughput: https://www.pfsense.org/ https://www.pfsense.org/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/09/the-router-rumble-ars-diy-build-faces-better-tests-tougher-competition/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/09/the-router-rumble-ar...