Cisco Exits the Consumer Market, Sells Linksys To Belkin 284
Krystalo writes "Belkin on Thursday announced plans to acquire Cisco's Home Networking Business Unit, including its products, technology, employees, and even the well-known Linksys brand. Belkin says it plans to maintain the Linksys brand and will offer support for Linksys products as part of the transaction, financial details for which were not disclosed. This should be a relatively smooth transition that won't affect current customers: Belkin says it will honor all valid warranties for current and future Linksys products. After the transaction closes, Belkin will account for approximately 30 percent of the U.S. retail home and small business networking market."
WTB Cisco Switch (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Asus and Buffalo?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Okay, I bought the story at Linksys but lost it at WRT54G. Though I suppose Cisco could have botched the newer hardware revisions ;)
Our WRT54G is about... 9 years old. Still runs as our primary router with nary a hiccup. I managed to get a hold of 3 WRT600Ns as well -- the one that I've actually put dd-wrt on and put into service (with the intent of expanding our wifi coverage to the basement) can't actually hold a decent conne
Re:WTB Cisco Switch (Score:4, Informative)
I have a 3400 sqft house with a single Asus router running the whole deal.
I also went through 2 WRT54G's in as many years. I find both stories believeable, but of the people I know, no one is actually still using their WRT54G for anything other than one guy is using it for a small wired subnet. The wireless generally loses range on them as they get older for some inexplicable reason.
Re: (Score:2)
I have a 3400 sqft house with a single Asus router running the whole deal.
I also went through 2 WRT54G's in as many years. I find both stories believeable, but of the people I know, no one is actually still using their WRT54G for anything other than one guy is using it for a small wired subnet. The wireless generally loses range on them as they get older for some inexplicable reason.
You can count me as someone using one for his regular home network. The laptop I'm typing this on is connected to the net through it! It's an old v1.1 model that I've never had a single issue with. I bought it in 2001 or 2002, I think.
I intend to upgrade to an N router with gigabit ethernet soon. We have several N devices now, and I often transfer large raw picture files over the network, so a faster network would be nice, plus the some of the computers with ethernet ports have gigabit now, so I might a
Re: (Score:3)
I am not down on the WRT54G, it
Re: (Score:3)
I thought I was nearing the edge of useability on a WRT54GL with a 12Mbps connection: Load average when doing lots of stuff (ie: torrents and streaming) was 0.8. It seemed to be holding on quite well enough, though, so I ignored it for a long time.
Eventually I dug into the se
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting. I hadn't heard of that. Maybe that's what made all of the ones I've every used unreliable as time went on.
Re: (Score:2)
This could also be the problem for me and my buddies. Why the hell does it do this?
Belkin equipment (Score:2)
I bought my mother-in-law a $80 Belkin for Christmas and it needs resets every couple of weeks.
This has been my roughly my experience with Belkin equipment. It always seems to be a little bit unreliable. I realize my experience is entirely anecdotal but I've bought probably a dozen various bits of Belkin gear (usb hubs, switches, charging gear, etc) over the years and I've had small but irritating problems with most of them. A few simply didn't work at all. It's one of those things where I just don't trust their brand anymore even if they actually might have a good product.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I have a 3400 sqft house with a single Asus router running the whole deal.
I also went through 2 WRT54G's in as many years. I find both stories believeable, but of the people I know, no one is actually still using their WRT54G for anything other than one guy is using it for a small wired subnet. The wireless generally loses range on them as they get older for some inexplicable reason.
I must be the exception, the Linksys WRT54G I bought in 2005 still worked as well as the day I bought it when I retired it in 2012. The Belkin POS it was replaced with (not my decision unfortunately) has given me nothing but grief in the last 8 months.
Might just be where you're living, any extreme cold or humidity? But Linksys gear has gone to crap since then. I'd recommend Asus or Netgear over Linksys at this point in time.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure it's been deliberate too, since the firmware on the R16 switch that I replaced last year (original one from
Re: (Score:2)
I also went through 2 WRT54G's in as many years. I find both stories believeable, but of the people I know, no one is actually still using their WRT54G for anything other than one guy is using it for a small wired subnet. The wireless generally loses range on them as they get older for some inexplicable reason.
I'm still using my WRT54GL as my primary wireless router and I haven't noticed it's range decreasing at all. Perhaps it's just me, but I think it's working as flawlessly as when I first got it and installed OpenWRT on it six years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
I've had a WRT54GL running for I don't know how long now...2006 at least, probably earlier. It's still providing wired and wireless service in a 1900-sqft single-story home. It's in a wiring closet near the front of the house, next to the garage. I get good signal from it in the backyard and throughout the house. Nowadays, it's running Tomato; transmit power level is unc
Re: (Score:2)
apple routers are good (very stable, reliable) though with less features (QoS etc)
Re:WTB Cisco Switch (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be ridiculous. There's plenty of great routers out there. My Cisco E1000 is working flawlessly, now that it's loaded with DD-WRT.
Now, if you're looking for a consumer-grade router that has both great hardware and firmware out of the box, you can forget about it, but I'm not sure such a beast has ever existed. But there's lots of decent hardware out there that can be reflashed with an alternative firmware like DD-WRT. The enterprise-grade stuff is crap too BTW: I used to have a couple of Aironet access points and those things were a total PITA to set up because of Cisco's wacky IOS system. The hardware was really nice, I'll admit (all-metal chassis, kinda looks like something out of a UFO, could be dropped off the Empire State Building and suffer only slight damage), but the software and web interface were ridiculously bad unless you want to spend a lot of time becoming an expert in IOS. By contrast, DD-WRT does pretty much everything IOS could do (including RADIUS authentication) and it, despite being Free, has a perfectly usable web interface that anyone competent with computers and networking can look at once and figure out.
Re:WTB Cisco Switch (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:WTB Cisco Switch (Score:4, Insightful)
Amen! (Score:2)
Amen! Good riddance, indeed!
Re: (Score:2)
My experience with Linksys consumer routers is that they are crap. IMO they were only damaging Cisco's brand. Good riddance for them.
My experience with anything from Cisco for use at home is that it is crap - whether it is Cisco Linksys routers or Cisco IPTV boxes. Somehow I'm not convinced that it is Linksys, that is effing up Cisco's brand.
Cisco "small business" products also aren't great (Score:3)
Their "small business" product lines can be very poor, too.
We kitted out a small office with Cisco equipment not long ago. Our expectation was that with Cisco behind it and paying professional-level prices we'd get something with professional-level reliability and support, a cut above the consumer-level junk where just about everyone's devices seem to have poor reliability and/or limited functionality.
The reality is that some of the Cisco equipment just didn't work properly. Firmware updates for some of the
Re: (Score:2)
You are obviously too small of a business for Cisco.
Don't be absurd. You can't possibly determine that from just the information I posted, and somehow I doubt you speak for Cisco or know anything the rest of us don't about their intended market segmentation anyway.
Regardless, we're a small business, using functionality that is beyond most consumer-level equipment, but we're not running offices spanning entire large buildings or multiple sites. Cisco has an entire product range branded "small business", and a bunch of devices with specs on a similar level eve
Re:WTB Cisco Switch (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I have found Netgear to be consistently better than Linksys/Cisco routers for a long long time. Two linksys I owned would hang and reboo often in the 802.11g days.
Moved to a netgear 802.11n router and has been great.
Re: (Score:2)
The only Linksys router I've ever owned had a tendency to die. It's hard to call it a router. More like three routers. The first one I returned I received a new one with a new major version (and a new chassis). When it died I returned it and they couldn't fix it I got the same router back again but this time it had Wireless N.
So yes Linksys is great. Free upgrades!
Re: (Score:2)
hasnt been for a while now, I cant tell the difference between my chi-co and my old linksys
oh yes I can, the chi-co cost 1/3 the price, has more feature, and is just a non-branded belkin
Re:WTB Cisco Switch (Score:5, Insightful)
Wonderful, now there's no good router on the market.
There never was, if you're talking Consumer grade. Belkin, Netgear, and Linksys all have shit models and a few good models, and for each model they have decent versions and shit versions. The only thing that made Linksys any "better" overall was the ease of loading your own firmware, but if you're not into that type of thing then there's no clear winner or loser. You really need to do your homework on specific models and not automatically dismiss or include any particular brand.
Another word of caution- don't purchase from discount retail outlets, especially Wal-Mart. They often will make such large purchases that the router maker will actually contract a special production run from an especially shitty chip production facility so they can give a really good price to the store. The result is a much higher than normal failure rate if you're putting any significant load on the equipment.
Another option to consider is to ignore the price savings you get for buying an "all in one" unit. You can really get a lot more done if you use a stand-alone wireless access point and hook it to a decent wired router instead of using the wireless router combo unit. If you're going to be doing a lot of switching on your LAN, use an external switch instead of the built-in 5 port one. Those low-end consumer models simply don't have enough backplane capacity, not to mention RAM and CPU power, to use all the options to their fullest.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Over 1million PPS. Based on a forked Vyatta, running on a dual core MIPS64 Cavium Octeon with IPv4 (and soon IPv6) hardware offload, with a debian base. You can apt-get install from the MIPS repos all day. Check the Tolly Report here: http://dl.ubnt.com/Tolly212127UbiquitiEdgeRouterLitePricePerformance.pdf [ubnt.com], where it beat a Cisco 3925 and Juniper J6350 into the ground. Total cost for th
Re: (Score:3)
http://www.ubnt.com/edgemax [ubnt.com]
Dont know about the hardware, but that Video on front page is AWESOMO
Re: (Score:2)
I use the UBNT M units in site to site wireless bridges and have had excellent luck with them. For the price they stomp the hell out of much higher priced units.
It looks like they have miniaturized the linux boxes that I've been running as routers, OSPF, dhcprelay, firewalling, etc all in a much smaller format. Glad to see they are pushing out a good product against cisco and ilk that have gotten lazy lately.
Finally (Score:5, Informative)
The Linksys stuff took a nose dive in both reliability and software quality under Cisco's steerage. Belkin does better for some things though they are spotty on others. They are a very large player and I hope they unfuck what cisco's been fucking up.
Re:Finally (Score:5, Informative)
Linksys hardware under Cisco was pretty good. The firmware is what really bombed. I'll still take a Linksys any day so long as I can put DD-WRT or similar on it.
Re: (Score:2)
My most recent upgrade was from a LinkSys WRT54GS v2 to the ASUS RT-N16 Wireless Router 802.11b/g/n. I put the Tomato WRT software on the ASUS router and it's been running flawlessly now for over a year.
YMMV, of course...
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
They are a very large player and I hope they unfuck what cisco's been fucking up.
I find your abundance of faith... Disturbing. [google.com]
What about the Cisco branded Linksys devices (Score:3)
What does this mean for the non-IOS/NXOS devices with roots at Linksys, did Chambers and company finally realize that they were diluting and tarnishing their name by slapping the Cisco logo on such utter crap?
Re: (Score:3)
There's nothing all that wrong with the Linksys hardware, in fact much of it has been excellent for the price point. The firmware, under Cisco, has been another story, but that's what DD-WRT is for.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Have you tried DD-WRT, Tomato, or OpenWrt firmwares? They generally have excellent feature sets, including support for VLANs and other high-end features not usually found on consumer routers. The catch, of course, is that these firmwares only work on certain models (and sometimes only certain hardware revisions within a model), so if you're looking for a router to run one of them on, you have to be very careful about which one you buy, using the firmware project's online database to make sure the model yo
Re: (Score:3)
I wasn't really talking about the routers (though most of them are crap, overheating problems abound, firmware is terrible, the whole cloud management fiasco, etc) but more things like the switches. I hear time and again from colleges that have to deal with clients with unmanaged or web "managed" switches that aren't working for whatever reason and where the consultant can't diagnose anything because the tools aren't there, the clients of course come back with "but I bought a Cisco, I was told they were the
Re: (Score:3)
It frustrates the hell out of me to see people cheap out on the upfront cost and get upset when I have to charge them for all the time it takes to fix things. God forbid they listen to my recommendations.
What does CISCO stand for? (Score:3, Funny)
Investments
Suck
Causing
Outrage
Join in the fun!
Re:What does CISCO stand for? (Score:5, Funny)
Casualty In Senseless Chinese Outsourcing
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
How much does a Cisco two-pound sledge cost after you factor in the warranty coverage, firmware licensing, and maintenance contract?
Re:What does CISCO stand for? (Score:5, Funny)
Two pounds. Are you an American or something?
Re: (Score:2)
I had presumed two pounds of gold. Cisco would never sell something for just two pounds.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Have you tried to fit modules into a chassis after they changed suppliers to Chinese ones? Damn, I need a two pound sledgehammer to seat them now
You wont get a sledge hammer from Cisco for only two quid mate.
Not that they were doing much with the brand (Score:5, Insightful)
Cisco is to the consumer market what Oracle is to Java.
I was always confused with where Linksys belonged under Cisco. The not quite SOHO, not quite SME limbo was reflected on some of their decisions. Well, this just proves Cisco has no idea what to do with the general consumer market (E.G. The Flip).
Re:Not that they were doing much with the brand (Score:5, Interesting)
voip products (Score:3)
Belkin (Score:5, Funny)
I think I speak for many who have worked with 'Belkin' equipment when I say...
"Fuck."
*sigh* (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. Belkin has been on my "do not buy" list ever since the spam router [theregister.co.uk] fiasco. Then again, I guess it's fitting, after Linksys' Cloud Connect WTF.
On the other hand, anything that won't run DD-WRT, Tomato, or OpenWRT is on my "do not buy" list anyway...
Re: (Score:3)
That's the problem: they just bought most of the most popular platforms for those firmwares.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There's Buffalo. Buffalo is pretty good, and some of their routers come with a variant of WRT already installed.
Re:*sigh* (Score:4, Insightful)
And Asus, makers of the only router I could find at Fry's that takes aftermarket antennas and flashes Tomaato.
Re: (Score:2)
And you can power the router with a potatto
Re: (Score:2)
And you can power the router with a potatto
I don't recommend you take that root when powering your 'rooter/router'...
Re: (Score:2)
Netgear.
I also have an "only buy as a last resort to avoid Netgear" list, which does indeed include Belkin.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I bought Belkin's high end routers for my home and fought them every step of the way, replacing a new router with a newer router just to get it to work. I finally bought a Time Capsule and everything's worked since.
Re: (Score:2)
and nothing of value was lost (Score:3, Funny)
This is definitley a net improvement in quality for both Cisco and Belkin.
Everybody wins!
Re: (Score:2)
What I wonder is whether Belkin will ditch the Cloud Connect crap.
Good Riddance (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
My Linksys WRT54GL with Tomato firmware, overclocked to 250 MHz and sporting two 7dBi hi-gain antennas is awesome.
My old Netgear router, on the other hand, was a piece of shit... couldn't be modded, shitty performance, unreliable connection, you name it. Sold that thing as soon as I got my Linksys years ago, and I never regretted it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Amen. I used to buy 3Com for businesses and Netgear for SOHO. Now it's Netgear all around.....
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Seen in the warehouse break room:
Re: (Score:2)
I used to have a Linksys WRT54G2 router on my network. The big problem was after a few months, it would stop connecting my laptop and iPad 2 to the router, forcing a reset of the router--a major annoyance!
I switched to a Netgear N600 (WNDR3700) dual-band router and no longer get Wi-Fi connection problems. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Mixed reaction (Score:5, Funny)
Cisco sells Linksys
Yay!
...to Belkin
What in the actual fuck?
Re: (Score:2)
Prepare To Be Hosed (Score:5, Insightful)
>'This should be a relatively smooth transition that won't affect current customers"
Every time some corporate droid has told me this regarding a {buyout, merger, acquisition, sale, re-org} a major cockup has followed. The only thing worse is when they use the phrase, "transparent to the end user," and you know the apocalypse is coming next week.
Re:Prepare To Be Hosed (Score:4, Insightful)
>'This should be a relatively smooth transition that won't affect current customers"
Every time some corporate droid has told me this regarding a {buyout, merger, acquisition, sale, re-org} a major cockup has followed. The only thing worse is when they use the phrase, "transparent to the end user," and you know the apocalypse is coming next week.
The major cockup started a few years ago shortly after Cisco bought them. It can't get worse under Belkin.
It's sad, really. Back in the day I bought 7 or 8 Linksys routers, many of which were put into service in other ways using openwrt. The replaceable antennae was a wonderful feature that I never needed. A few of them didn't even have the radio turned on.
Anyway, I gave up with the Cisco fiasco and started buying Netgear. While Cisco was busy trying to sell the lowest-spec'd machines that still performed the basic functionality Netgear was selling me a router with the *very* decent hardware specs printed on the box. It totally kicks the asses of desktops that I was using 10 years ago.
So it's good to see Linksys isn't under Cisco anymore. Sad that it's with Belkin, but, whatever. At least there's still some competition.
More three card monte accounting games (Score:5, Interesting)
fixing the error (Score:3)
> "Belkin says it plans to maintain the Linksys brand and will offer support for Linksys products as part of the transaction,"
Belkin says it really sucks to have to maintain the Linksys brand and offer support for Linksys products, but the law requires this at least for the guarantee period, so they will have to comply. What happens afterward is, as always, not a topic for a spokeperson. That would be something worth saying, and it's against the rules of a spokeperson, who never say anything useful or that we don't know already."
About time (Score:3)
In an attempt to save some money for my business I bought several WAP4410N's in my office to provide wireless networking. They worked great, the setup was easy, they had good range and nice functionality, they were even quite cheap.
So, based on my good experiences with the AP's, I decided to use them in one of our other offices. I bought three of them and configured them like the first ones I bought. None of them worked..... They crashed at random (but at least a couple of times each day), multiple SSID's did work, RADIUS failed. After some research I realized that the sticker underneath the AP's said "V2", the first ones I bought said "V1". It turns out that Cisco had done "something" to the hardware and called it version 2.
Contacting Cisco was meaningless, the only answer I got was "Yes, we know it does not work, you should have bought something more expensive from us". Hopefully Belkin has a bit more respect for its customers.
Belkin doesn't make anything... (Score:2)
...they get other companies to make it and slap the Belkin name on it.
Therefore anything you buy from them has the potential to be anywhere from crap to first-rate, with a price tag of from anywhere to kind of expensive to really expensive.
So I only buy their stuff used or off of closeout tables.
BEFSR41s and WRT54Gs... (Score:2)
...can be much improved by adding a little cooling fan internally
http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/CF-392/12VDC-40MM-COOLING-FAN/1.html [allelectronics.com]
Old Joke... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"I will not buy netgear because of requiring a internet connection to configure it. I should be able to configure it before I hook it up to any network."
I am pretty sure it was Cisco that did that to their LinkSys products, not Netgear.
I could be wrong. Maybe Netgear did it too. But I've had Netgear routers before and never had to connect to the internet to configure them.
Re: (Score:2)
It really depends what you're trying to do. D-Link's low-power gigabit switches are great, for a dumb switch, and most home users really don't need a managed switch. Sucking down only around 8 watts of power, they're nice and cool to the touch and pretty hard to beat. I also have an old D-Link 802.11g router that has travelled around the world with me, giving me wireless internet in the hotels that only provided wired. It's nothing fancy, but small and has gotten the job done, and has stood up to all th
Re: (Score:2)
What exactly is it lacking? Or do you just like to justify your own outrageously expensive "enterprise class" router purchases by slamming the common "consumer class" products?
I seriously would like to know if I'm actually missing anything of major importance, because my modded WRT54GL seems to be satisfying my own needs quite well over the years.
Re: (Score:3)
List of lacking features in consumer class routers (that many would fin
Re: (Score:3)
what about the CiscoPad iPad-killer tablet that they were gonna sell? Was it not a success?
That wasn't a consumer device, and not it was not.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
well dad (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:buyers (Score:5, Informative)
You were very confused, Linksys was a tiny gnat compared to Cisco when Cisco did the acquisition, Linksys cost Cisco $500M which was less than half of their net income for the quarter in which the deal closed. Hell, two years later they swallowed Scientific Atlantic which cost $6.9B.
Re: (Score:2)