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Belkin Buys Linksys from Cisco
- sigil 14y agoI'm only a little sad about this. Linksys was my go-to for hackable wireless routers until I discovered Ubiquiti. Seriously, these guys make some awesome stuff. http://www.ubnt.com/ http://www.ubnt.com/ $80 will get you a legal-maximum 1000 mW transmitting, fully OpenWRT-compatible router with 8M flash, 32M RAM, a PoE injector, outdoor enclosure, mounting bracket, and a standard replaceable RP-SMA omni antenna. http://www.ubnt.com/picostation http://www.ubnt.com/picostation
- joenathan 14y agoThat isn't a router, that is only a wireless access point, big difference!
- sigil 14y agoOh it routes just fine. Add a cheap switch if you need ethernet ports.
- ajross 14y agoHow exactly is that not a router? It takes packets and decides which of several interfaces to transfer them out on. That's the very definition of a "router". It even does such exotic stuff as dynamic NAT, firewalling, and DHCP provisioning.
- gonzo 14y agoDoes it run a routing protocol?
- jauer 14y agoIt runs static routes just fine ;-) You can bake in quagga using their SDK if you want OSPF etc.
- ajross 14y agoIs NAT not a routing protocol? It certainly seems so to me -- you dynamically change your packet destinations, error behavior, and even their contents based on dynamic state detected from the network. But yes, you mean OSPF et. al. Yes, you can certainly run those on a wifi router (they don't from the factory, so reflash with dd-wrt or whatever). Machines much less powerful were doing dynamic routing using these protocols 20 years ago.
- joenathan 14y agoRouters will traditionally have more than a 180MHz CPU to deal with all the duties a router must contend with, they also have more than one Ethernet port, you know for WAN and for Wired LAN. This will only work as a Router if every device on your network is wireless, either that or you have no internet.
- zokier 14y agoIf it supports VLAN/802.1q then single ethernet port is enough to do routing on wired networks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-armed_router http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-armed_router
- sigil 14y agoYup. OpenWRT supports 802.1q VLANs. So does the stock firmware from Ubiquiti, AirOS (which is just linux). http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/networking/network.interfaces#vlan.and.bridging.concepts http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/networking/network.interfaces#vl...
- ajross 14y agoYou're using a marketing definition for router, apparently meaning a (presumably expensive) rack-mounted piece of IT equipment. But traditionally "router" has been a technical term, and your wifi hardware absolutely meets the requirements.
- darkarmani 14y agoActually that is the definition of a switch. Routing happens at layer 3 between networks domains. I'm sure this is going to turn into a semantics battle with the layers blurring, but traditionally all routing happens at the IP address level.
- ajross 14y agoIt is indeed a semantic battle. But as for semantics: sorry, that's just wrong. A switch connects the same network transparently. A device doesn't need to know that there is a switch in place to find, say, 8.8.8.8. It just ARPs for the destination address and sends the packet. If you are connected to a wifi router, you must send a packet destined for 8.8.8.8 to the router, because it is your gateway.
- darkarmani 14y agoI think we agree, but looking back my sentences are ambiguous. I slashed a lot of content out and lost the transitions. I meant that is the definition of a switch (not a router) and that a router does the following things, not that a switch is a router.
- swalsh 14y agoThis is a really cool looking company, thanks for pointing it out!
- dholowiski 14y agoI totally agree. I have a couple of the Nanostation Loco's for a woreless link at work and they're excellent, and ridiculously cheap.
- IamBren 14y agoWe used the Ubiquiti wireless access points at my last job. Aside from being awesome for the price, the management software was a cinch to install on Ubuntu and seemed quite cool (what little I saw of it). They really seem to know what they're doing.
- Cherian 14y agoDoes this support Tomato?
- Ecio78 14y agoHave you tried Mikrotik Routerboard? I know they are cheap and wireless oriented too (but they use proprietary router sw) but I've never had the opportunity to try one. http://www.mikrotik.com/ http://www.mikrotik.com/ http://routerboard.com/ http://routerboard.com/
- keidian 14y agoI haven't personally used Mikrotik products, but I know a few people who have and they really like them. It's on my list of things to buy and try out when I have time & money
- AnIrishDuck 14y agoThis is horrible news. Linksys used to make some great consumer hardware; I still have a 4+ year old WRT54GL plugging happily along from college. In contrast, I've never been satisfied with any Belkin product I've owned.
- vl 14y agoEvery Belkin product I ever bough had problems (KVM switches and routers), so I just stopped buying from them, even cables. Now I'm not going to buy from Belkinsys too.
- sliverstorm 14y agoThe WRT54GL was a great router for its day, but Linksys has not really been making great consumer hardware for a couple years now. I decided to jump ship for ASUS, and I've been pretty happy so far.
- leeoniya 14y agoi swore by WRT54GL w/sd card mod for many many years (on dd-wrt, then tomato). jumped ship to an Asus RT-N16 recently cause i needed the wireless-N and gigabit switch. currently sporting the Toastman mod of tomato, Shibby mod is also good choice. Toastman: http://www.4shared.com/dir/v1BuINP3/Toastman_Builds.html#dir=v1BuINP3 http://www.4shared.com/dir/v1BuINP3/Toastman_Builds.html#dir... Shibby: http://tomato.groov.pl/download/ http://tomato.groov.pl/download/
- jmreid 14y agoI'm running the latest Toastman on an Asus RT-N66U. Great firmware and awesome hardware.
- circa 14y agoI did the same thing. my Asus + tomato firmware = sanity. I couldn't believe how easy it was I've had the thing for about 4 years and never have to reboot it or anything.
- joshhart 14y agoThere goes the neighborhood :(
- gz5 14y agoCisco focusing more and more on software and services. Interesting litmus test will be their hard VC and telepresence endpoints. Enterprise market and Cisco a leader...however Cisco knows future is soft clients, UC, video-enabled apps, services...how quick do they leap?
- ChuckMcM 14y agoSpeculating that since the terms are not disclosed, they are not material to Cisco's earnings. That suggests they sold it for a lot less than the $500M they bought it for[1]. I wonder why they couldn't figure out how to make it work. I blew it by not working on NetApp's low end box (the Storvault) I really should have, it would have helped me understand where the sticky problems in 'consumer' are. [1] http://www.twice.com/news/cisco-systems-buy-linksys-0 http://www.twice.com/news/cisco-systems-buy-linksys-0
- stock_toaster 14y ago> Speculating that since the terms are not disclosed, they are not material to Cisco's earnings My guess is their stock pops a little bit, if nothing else than from removing the dead weight.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoCisco is built bottom-to-top around enterprise sales. Linksys is a consumer company. Combining those two after-the-fact requires a lot of willpower that few companies successfully manage.
- jseliger 14y agoThose of us who fondly remember the Flip video camera understand your point too well: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/will-we-ever-find-out-what-happened-to-flip-video/ http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/will-we-ever-find-o... .
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoI knew there was another example out there, but I couldn't remember it. And it was the Flip (poor thing...).
- nikcub 14y agothe writedown from $500M to whatever they sold it for will have to appear somewhere in the next set of accounts
- bifrost 14y agoSounds like a win for me, concentrating all the terrible products in one company. I have no idea how Belkin stays around, I assume its due to a 500% markup on cables or something.
- benesch 14y agoSo if Belkin hasn't ever made good hardware, and Linksys hasn't made good hardware in a few years—what company is making solid consumer networking hardware at a decent price? Legitimately curious.
- happycube 14y agoFor consumer routers, the Netgear 3xxx's have been pretty good (aside from bad batches), and I hear good things about ASUS routers, too. IIRC Cisco axed the Linksys people around 2009 after a GPL violation suit caused by Broadcom not providing gcc source.
- singingfish 14y agoI've had significant problems with netgear kit.
- angryasian 14y agohardware is cheap and commodity. your best bet is looking through dd-wrt and finding what hardware offers the best specs and easy to install this firmware
- angryasian 14y agohardware is cheap and commodity. your best bet is looking through dd-wrt and finding what hardware offers the best specs and easy to install this firmware
- danilocampos 14y agoI know next to nothing about networking hardware, so fuck me, but... I always had to power-cycle my routers, no matter the brand, for years. Some once a week, one every other day. Then I bought a Time Capsule from Apple. It seemed kinda pricey, but I wanted the convenience of the backups. This was in 2008. Five years later, that thing still works perfectly. Never had to power cycle it. Entirely reliable. So Apple will keep getting my money for consumer networking gear.
- 14y ago
- justlearning 14y agodoes anyone know why Cisco sold Linksys? As far as I recall, Cisco wanted to enter the consumer market (as opposed to their enterprise presence). Did they fail? I like the fact that Cisco is not afraid of letting go stuff they acquired. Last time I heard was when they acquired tribe.net and later put it up for sale? correct me if I am wrong. And then there was the acquisition of Flip camera, that flopped (no pun intended).
- stock_toaster 14y ago> does anyone know why Cisco sold Linksys? I recall reading somewhere that the Linksys devision was more or less going downhill fast, due largely to cable/dsl modem vendors including wireless in their models, and operators simply using them for customers. Can't remember where I read that, or if it was even true, so consider it a rumor I guess.
- colinloretz 14y agoNot sure about Linksys but Cisco did acquire Meraki a few months back. http://www.meraki.com/company/cisco-acquisition-faq http://www.meraki.com/company/cisco-acquisition-faq
- shuzchen 14y agoI wouldn't call Meraki a consumer product though. Their cheapest AP is $400 and you have to buy per/AP license at $150/year. Not something I'd put in my parent's house.
- jsz0 14y agoThey made really bad bets on consumer products. For Linksys they bought it to get into the entry level / small business market as well. Another bad bet. The competition has been stepping it up to the point where these products overlap with Cisco's existing platforms. Spending the money to develop a separate hardware/software platform doesn't make a lot of sense. They can just downsize/license option their existing platforms into that space and save themselves a ton of money.
- IvyMike 14y agoIn one of those "I have no way of knowing that it's true, but it's still almost certainly true" predictions: For the last 10 years: - Cisco upper management has been yelling at the Linksys guys to add features and do things "the Cisco way". - Linksys engineering has been subtly hinting back to the Cisco guys if they added those features and did things the Cisco way, a low end router would cost $1000. And most of the best Linksys guys acquired either work for another division within Cisco or a different company altogether, because they saw the writing on the wall a long time ago.
- NatW 14y agoCisco neutered/limited the specs of Linksys WRT devices when they purchased Linksys so the offering wouldn't poach on their higher-end offerings. For instance the WRT54GS line used to have 32mb ram and 8mb flash and it was lowered to 16mb/2mb: source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_WRT54G_series#WRT54GS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_WRT54G_series#WRT54GS under Cisco. There is huge potential for beefier hardware that can run open source linux or bsd in this area. Hopefully Belkin will see the market opportunity and start creating some affordable routers that are hackable and powerful running 802.11ac. They'd sell millions imho.
- ghshephard 14y agoAs the purchaser and support, either personally, or through family, roomates, co-workders, and one landlord, of no less than Fifteen Linksys WRT54G[L] in the last 10 years (with the obligatory OpenWRT Mods), and a network engineer/manager by occupation - I look forward to seeing if Belkin can come up with a <$200 router that reliably works for more than 3 years. I think I've seen about 50% failure rate in a 3 year period for those fifteen Linksys WRT54Gs, as compared to the dozen Cisco 2621s that I have reaching year ten w/ 0% mortality. Yes - I realize that a $75 Consumer WAP is going to be less reliable than a $2000 commercial router, but I would hope, over time, someone would come up with a inexpensive, reliable, workhorse consumer router. Now that Belkin is acquiring the Linksys name, maybe they'll deliver it.
- ericcholis 14y agoThe WRT54Gs needs to be in a museum somewhere. It sparked a side-movement of openness and hacking. Such a great device.
- Ecio78 14y agoI had a Dlink ADSL router (in the 100 Euro range) and it died after 2-3 years (i think 2004-2006). Then I bought a Draytek router (because I needed VPN features), it was pricey (250 Euro) but it has since lasted for years (I'm still using it after 6-7 years). For SoHo I think an Alix or similar hw running Pfsense could be a good choice.
- Djehngo 14y agoWhen I was a student a lot of the houses I or my friends lived in had belkin routers/wifi access points. I don't think I encountered a single one that worked reliably, so I wouldn't hold my breath if I was you.
- pilif 14y agoWhile everybody is complaining about Apple's AirPort being too epensive, of my ~15 devices that I have deployed for myself and for others in the last 8 years, none have broken down. Also in all this time, none have crashed and needed to be restarted. I realize that a web interface for management would be nice. I realize that I pay a premium for the brand. But I also think that there's a value in not having to replace devices continuously or just having to explain people how to restart them when they crash. For me, this value is worth the premium.
- josh2600 14y agoDoes anyone know if Belkin also picked up the SPA lineup of phones? That would be an interesting addition to their business.
- casca 14y agoCisco was always a poor fit for Linksys as they were scared of cannibalizing their own high-margin products. This market is getting hammered by TP-Link which provides consistently good quality products at low prices and many are DD-WRTable. Why buy a mid-range Linksys when you can get a very powerful Draytek et al with extra WAN ports and 3G backup for the same price?
- raverbashing 14y agoMy experience with Belking is: don't Really, it's not "it's ok for your grandma", it's DON'T Features not working, router freezing constantly, etc So, too bad.
- meaty 14y agoNow we can expect huge unopenable packaging, price hikes, overheating and zero support from Linksys! Belkin here in the UK used to sell 2m ethernet cables for £20 ( ~ $31). For anyone who wants to bail out and get some decent kit, try Draytek: http://www.draytek.com/ http://www.draytek.com/
- junto 14y agoI guess this means we'll be going back to the incredibly ugly Belkin design ideals then as well?
- Fundlab 14y agohttp://www.ubnt.com/ http://www.ubnt.com/
- nathan_long 14y agoMaybe this explains why Cisco has neglected to fix the giant WPS security holes in their routers. Reaver destroys WPS: https://code.google.com/p/reaver-wps/ https://code.google.com/p/reaver-wps/ Cisco's routers are mostly listed as "TBD" for when they will fix this: http://homekb.cisco.com/Cisco2/ukp.aspx?vw=1&articleid=25154 http://homekb.cisco.com/Cisco2/ukp.aspx?vw=1&articleid=2...