
Track Record In China Sets Cisco’s “TOS” Scandal in More Sinister Light - iProject
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/08/track-record-in-china-sets-ciscos-tos-scandal-in-a-more-sinister-light/
======
quesera
Cisco is untrustworthy, that's absolutely true, but it's a bit of a stretch to
tie this to the China stuff.

They enthusiastically jumped at the chance to sell Chinese-law-enabling
hardware to the Chinese government. Juniper or Extreme would certainly have
done the same, and Cisco probably got a promise to clamp down on counterfeit
hardware out of the deal.

It's beyond my personal threshold for ethical behaviour, but corporations
don't always have the luxury of standing on principle. Neither do individuals,
for that matter.

I'm not absolving them. They did the wrong thing and it makes them
untrustworthy. They did what the Chinese government asked them to do, and took
the carrot offered. In other countries, it might have been done with a stick
instead.

But the inherent difference here is that the government will always get your
packets (and voice datagrams) if they want them. Carrot or stick, hardware
manufacturer or service provider or common carrier, they will get them. You
have to accept that on some level to exist on the Internet.

This Cisco TOS scandal is something else entirely. They think they can do
something valuable (for Cisco) with your data, and your permission (not
necessarily your awareness). This is just run of the mill abuse of customer
privacy -- which we see everywhere and usually tolerate -- and very typical
almost boilerplate content restriction rules for any image-conscious hosting
service.

The important difference is that customers don't get or expect anything of
personal and specific value out of their Linksys router. Contrast to Facebook,
Google, etc.

Cisco really really doesn't want to be commoditized, either. They have spent
many years in their enterprise markets going up-stack. They aren't satisfied
with being easily replaceable in consumer markets either now, apparently. This
is new, and troubling.

------
Zenst
Oh and if your thinking I can install dd-wrt then check it out as currently
they don't support the chipset inside the ea3500 and have no plans to either.
Currently.

Kinda sad though that to use yoru own router saftly you need another router
infront of it filtering out the extra overheads.

Personaly not keen on linksys since they were purchased by Cisco and been a
happy draytek customer for over 5 years. Though next upgrade I might go
homecrafting again having previously run a OpenBSD p90 box for 5 years prior
to the draytek.

Think is nomatter what you get, if you don't have control of the firmware then
there is nothing to stop them changing it later on down the line or the
company get brought up and the same pattern playing out. That all said you
don't have to upgrade blindly. Check out what the chanegs are and then decide.

Think is though this whole story reoslves around Cisco being able to see what
websites you visit and it's not like your ISP can't do that already and in
alot of cases has to by law and keep that on record for x amount of time.

Guess John Smith will be buying routers and internet connections for some from
now on.

~~~
SkyMarshal
_> Oh and if your thinking I can install dd-wrt then check it out as currently
they don't support the chipset inside the ea3500 and have no plans to either.
Currently._

A better strategy is buying a router based on whether it is supported by FOSS
firmware or not. Just eliminate any router that isn't, and pick from what's
left.

Even if you end up with older hardware, you get the benefit of highly tuned
software for it which can compensate for the hardware. I'm still mind-blown by
how good my Linksys WRT54GL [1] is running Tomato Speedmod [2]. Best, most
trouble-free router I've ever owned.

I get the strong impression that the corporate firmware is produced to be just
good enough, whereas something like Speedmod has been continually tweaked,
tuned, and improved over ~8 years. Like a late-cycle console game squeezing
every ounce of performance out of older console hardware.

1.a. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_WRT54G_series#WRT54GL>

1.b. [http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Linksys-WRT54GL-Wireless-G-
Broad...](http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Linksys-WRT54GL-Wireless-G-Broadband-
Router/dp/B000BTL0OA?tag=duckduckgo-d-20)

2\. [http://touristinparadise.blogspot.com/2008/04/linksys-
wrt54g...](http://touristinparadise.blogspot.com/2008/04/linksys-wrt54gl-
routers-improving.html)

~~~
nodata
> A better strategy is buying a router based on whether it is supported by
> FOSS firmware or not. Just eliminate any router that isn't, and pick from
> what's left.

This strategy doesn't work for routers people have already bought.

And trying to buy a router based on open source firmware support is not as
simple as you imply - the hardware pages are out-of-date as a rule. It's rare
that new hardware is listed.

~~~
anthonyb
What part of

 _Even if you end up with older hardware, you get the benefit of highly tuned
software for it_

were you having trouble with?

And if you want support for newer routers it's easy to arrange - buy two, and
ship one to your nearest Tomato/DD-WRT/Hyper-WRT dev :)

~~~
nodata
But then I end up with a WRT54GL again.

