
Belkin Buys Linksys from Cisco - rkudeshi
http://allthingsd.com/20130124/ciscos-flirtation-with-consumers-is-over-as-belkin-buys-linksys-unit/?reflink=ATD_yahoo_ticker
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sigil
I'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/>

$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>

~~~
joenathan
That isn't a router, that is only a wireless access point, big difference!

~~~
ajross
How 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.

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joenathan
Routers 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.

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zokier
_If_ 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>

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sigil
Yup. 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#vl...](http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/networking/network.interfaces#vlan.and.bridging.concepts)

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AnIrishDuck
This 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.

~~~
sliverstorm
The 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.

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circa
I 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.

~~~
kyrra
New Asus routers like the N66U used TomatoUSB as a base, creating their own
custom version of it. Then there are custom versions of Asus's firmware, such
as the AsusWRT Merlin builds.

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jseliger
>New Asus routers like the N66U

Tangential questions: why do consumer routers never have six or eight ethernet
ports? Most appear to have space, yet so few include extras.

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sliverstorm
Probably because hardly anyone uses all four ports, and extra ports is extra
cost. Besides, you can always get a switch.

Not saying I would object to more ports, just my guess as to why.

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wtracy
Offering models with extra ports sounds like it would be an awesome way to
price segment your customers.

The enterprise people have already figured this out, I don't know why the
consumer people haven't.

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wtallis
I suspect that the Ethernet switch is not part of the SoC, so it's a separate
component that is already price-segmented. A consumer wireless router with 8+
Ethernet ports would probably not have significantly better margins than the
existing models, but might need another round of FCC certification, and might
also cannibalize sales of enterprise routers.

Also, I think most consumers who have a need for more than 4 computers to
connect to their router via Ethernet probably don't want their entire network
to have such an expensive single point of failure. I've had Ethernet ports on
wireless routers die before. I like my switch separate from my router/AP
separate from my modem.

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ghshephard
As 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.

~~~
darkarmani
An idea why my Tomato flashed router needs a weekly reboot? I can't tell if it
overheats, or what, but it gets to a point where it just stops responding:
dhcp, WIFI association, etc.

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ghshephard
Is it a Linksys WRT54G? If so - check out my comments up top. The devices just
tend to fail, with approx 50% mortality rate over 3 years.

With that said, I have a Linksys WRT54G that is now about 8 years old and
still going strong, so obviously there is variance.

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NatW
Cisco 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> 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.

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bifrost
Sounds 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.

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meaty
Now 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/>

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flyinRyan
Well, at least the device is no longer likely to spy on you.

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meaty
How would you know? They are all closed source.

~~~
flyinRyan
Past history of Cisco.

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casca
Cisco 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?

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ChuckMcM
Speculating 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>

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madsushi
The StoreVault's key problems: artificial limitations, awful 'consumer' AI,
and lack of SAN experience in their target audience.

The StoreVault ran a modified version of ONTAP, but still generally had most
of the ONTAP features. Unfortunately, these were hidden by the special
StoreVault System Manager. Even if you were familiar with NetApp, it was a
major struggle to perform your typical tasks. The System Manager was buggy,
slow, and only had the most basic workflows available. If you manually
connected in to FilerView, you received a nasty warning about how
dangerous/unsupported it was. But from FilerView, you could actually manage
your filer the right way.

Non-savvy users struggled with the software and were steered in the wrong
direction. It was incredibly frustrating being limited by the System Manager.

Now, the low-end filers like the 2040 occupy the same space, and are "full"
NetApps so you don't have to worry about an abrupt EOL notice.

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18pfsmt
I just went to see if I could find the "2040," but it seem the lowest-end I
could find was the v3140. Am I missing something? Older model?

Anyway, when I went to see what these appliances' specs are and what they
would sell for, it was obvious why they failed at the consumer market:

These high-touch sales models where one is required to talk to a salesperson,
and there are a ton of configurability options will not work in the consumer
market.

~~~
madsushi
Exactly, the configuration options are daunting, and your average consumer
doesn't understand a SAN architecture well-enough to make the right choices.
It's sort of a catch-22, where any company looking at a low-end SAN also
doesn't have the personnel to run any SAN effectively.

NetApp's FAS product line has 3 families: the 2xxx series, the 3xxx series,
and the 6xxx series. Each of these families then also has sub-groupings based
on release date/capabilities, like the 20xx series, 22xx series, etc. So the
2040 is their lowest-end filer they still sell (and that supports the latest
OS version), while the 2240 is the newer build designed to replace the 2040
(better CPUs, RAM, etc).

The 2xxx series (2040 (older, but available), 2220, 2240) are all lower-end
and have limited expansion capabilities, as well as including disks in the
controller chassis. The 2240 is unique in that it can support a single 10Gb
ethernet card or an 8Gb FC card (but not both at the same time), while the
rest of the 2xxx family can't.

The 3xxx series (3140 (older), 3220, 3250) are mid-range filers with decent
expansion options (SSD/Flash PCIe card, 10Gb ethernet, 8Gb fiber channel, more
SAS ports, etc).

The 6xxx series (6040, 6080, with the 62xx series coming soon) are high-end
filers with tons of expansion ports and built-in ports to handle larger
workloads and higher total storage limits.

The v-series is designed to be a front-end to another SAN, giving you the
NetApp suite of software/capabilities without rebuying all of that disk.

There's also the E-series, which is the Engenio tech they're selling after
acquiring them a year or two ago. I haven't worked with that, but it's the
very high-end filer.

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nathan_long
Maybe 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/>

Cisco's routers are mostly listed as "TBD" for when they will fix this:
[http://homekb.cisco.com/Cisco2/ukp.aspx?vw=1&articleid=2...](http://homekb.cisco.com/Cisco2/ukp.aspx?vw=1&articleid=25154)

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raverbashing
My 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.

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benesch
So 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.

~~~
augustl
I use a home-built router and a TP-link WiFi access point, works great!
Building your own router is as simple as having a Linux box with two ethernet
plugs and installing a DHCP server, and some iptables tweaking for NAT.

~~~
whalesalad
Seems like overkill power wise though, right? I wouldn't mind repurposing an
old box for that either but even something with a 250w lightweight desktop PSU
is gonna out-juice a little embedded device.

~~~
zokier
That depends. There has been low-power CPUs along the history[1], if you
manage to find a box with one of those then I wouldn't be surprised if you get
way below 50W. Of course that probably is still significantly more than what
an embedded solution would consume, but on the other hand you should get
better performance and more flexibility. You could use the same box for eg
NAS.

[1] Intel ARK finds 108 =<35W desktop CPUs, from the original Pentiums to
modern day i5 Ivy Bridges.

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junto
I guess this means we'll be going back to the incredibly ugly Belkin design
ideals then as well?

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IvyMike
In 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.

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justlearning
does 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).

~~~
colinloretz
Not sure about Linksys but Cisco did acquire Meraki a few months back.
<http://www.meraki.com/company/cisco-acquisition-faq>

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shuzchen
I 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.

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gz5
Cisco 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?

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josh2600
Does anyone know if Belkin also picked up the SPA lineup of phones?

That would be an interesting addition to their business.

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Fundlab
<http://www.ubnt.com/>

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joshhart
There goes the neighborhood :(

