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Yes, it may very well be the most successful router ever sold, but have you thought about how many new models were NOT sold because the oldie WRT54G was chuggin
by NullPrefix 6y ago
Yes, it may very well be the most successful router ever sold, but have you thought about how many new models were NOT sold because the oldie WRT54G was chugging along all too well?
- bostik 6y agoIf its success has kept uncountable, "segmented" garbage devices from ever entering the market, I'd say WRT has been even better for the consumers than you think.
- enchiridion 6y agoI think you both agree. Unfortunately what is good for consumers in this case is bad for companies, because it reduces long term sales.
- therealx 6y agoThanks for connecting those dots for me.
- hyperman1 6y agoI'd think there must be another reason. Almost anything a corporation does is optimizing for the next quarter. Sales 2 years in the future are a problem for the next set of CxO's Some candidate reasons: Open source is still to different and hence risky. Or maybe arrogance and not invented here syndrome.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoBut think of the economies of scale and the $ saved in terms of RnD and marketing
- mywittyname 6y agoCisco didn't want a threat to their lucrative enterprise market. Imagine if they kept pumping out updated hardware supporting DD-WRT over the years, and eventually captured 80+% of the home networking market. Now consider that, during that time, a generation of future networking engineers cut their teeth on hi-po Linksys home routers, giving Linksys a segue into the lucrative enterprise market as this generation of people started gaining influence. This ended up being one of magical events that could have been the turning point for a small, unknown company to take on a giant, and win. Instead, the opportunity was squished through a smart acquisition by Cisco.
- kazen44 6y agowhile i understand your argument, enterprise/ISP routers have completely different functionality then home devices. most people in the network engineering field cut their teeth on enterprise gear in lower level positions. for instance, home routers do data and control plane processing on a single CPU with no or very little NPU involved, while enterprise gear has this functionality. not to mention the large array of technologies that are not even usable in small scale networks like VXLAN, BGP, IPVPN etc..
- betterunix2 6y agoActually I have found a use for VXLAN in my home network, when I was trying to set up a mesh and was finding that 802.11s support was poor and that WDS was creating annoying switching loops despite STP. So I just set up wireless links between routers, use OSPF to determine routes, set appropriate weights to prefer the 5ghz band (which periodically goes down because of DFS but otherwise gives higher throughput), and use VXLAN to create the logical network I want. It has worked extremely well for several months now and my wife is happy to not have cables going all over our house. There are probably "better" ways to do this but honestly, it works, it is flexible, and it is straightforward to extend to more routers if needed.
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoThe Linksys routers where not really competing in that corporate market though. Some Small Business may have used Linksys but they would not have been buying cisco kit in most cases.
- hungryforcodes 6y agoCertainly that's a good thing though. Conserving resources and discouraging needless waste of perfectly functional products is a good thing.
- asdff 6y agoGood for the world, bad for the capitalists. Guess who wins in the end?
- calvano915 6y agoOr perhaps more importantly, who loses.
- unicornporn 6y agoTrue dat. (Message sent via WRT54GL)
- tandr 6y agoI would continue to buy their newer routers if they have open firmware a la WRT54G. New wifi standards came out, had to install routers for friends and family, and WRT54G itself kind of died after 3 or 4 years... (I bought a second one, but by then N standard was up and running, so 3rd was not Linksys)
- mobilio 6y agoI'm still using one WRT54GL 1.0 in rural area. Because it just works and refuse do die.
- midasuni 6y agoThat’s a terrible product to sell in today’s world
- bitcharmer 6y agoCare to explain why a product that does what it's supposed to is terrible to sell in today's world?
- Hallucinaut 6y agoI believe it was a sardonic expression on bucking the inexorable trend towards consumerism and recurring-purchase/subscriptions
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y agoProducts need to fail or become undesirable to use after 3 years so you buy a new one.
- mobilio 6y agoThis one works 14 years without issue. Except that 2 times was crashed and then start with blank settings.
- midasuni 6y agoThus making the supplier $60 over 14 years. Sell a whizzy router with go fast blue LEDs for $150 that dies after 3 years and you make $750 in 15 years. Advertise it with some “value add” MITM dns hijacking by default and you can even get a recurrent revenue stream on top of it. Bundle it as “Internet security” and you can charge bothe the customer and the advertiser.