Cisco to Acquire Linksys

forged writes "The Boston Globe is reporting that networking giant Cisco Systems plans to acquire Linksys later this year for $500M, thus entering the consumer market. Linksys also has a press release. The good news is that those who bought a Linksys access point now have a Cisco access point for 1/2 of the price ;)"

Comments

Re:Expect a price hike for Linksys equipment

[LarsBT]

You mean they will raise the price 100% so it doesn't compete...

Not too surprising

[TopShelf]

As the economy looks to ramp back up again over the next year, consolidation among hardware/software companies should accelerate in 2003. Just like IBM bought Rational recently, there are probably going to be more big acquisitions coming up. Anybody's guess as to who's next? My bet is Sun...

Re:Expect a price hike for Linksys equipment

[sk8king]

And my 8 port has had one crash 6 months ago that was immediately followed by a firmware upgrade with no problems after that. I really like that little router.

Re:And the bad news...

[JPriest]

Actually for price/performance and ease of install Linksys seems to be dominating the home networking sector. You can pick up a 4 port 10/100 full duplex Linksys router for about $50. My slower 4 port cisco (806) router was $550. Maybe They can offer less expensive IOS/firewall home LAN solutions now.

Re:Is Cisco the new Microsoft?

[Loudog]

It's still a good place to work (not that we haven't had to endure market forces like everyone else.) We still give money to charity. It's not paradise, but it doesn't suck either.

I've been there for more than 5 years, so consider me biased :-)

-- Loudog
-- Stamp out phase jitter!

Re:Buy them to kill them...

[RedX]

Most companies do not selectively choose individual lines unless they have too. It is not surprising to see Compaq servers, Compaq san's, Compaq tape backups, and Compaq PC's and laptops on every desk and server room in a corporate environment.

This is typically because a)companies obtain better volume pricing by sticking with a single vendor, and b)companies many times prefer to have a single point of contact for support issues. And not surprisingly, with things such as tape backups and SAN's, you're essentially getting the same or very similar hardware no matter what vendor supplies it since they have someone else (Quantum, Brocade, etc) OEM the hardware in the first place.

Cisco 675: Free with DSL, $245 to fix bugs.

[Futurepower(R)]

Yes, but, if you want to fix the published security bugs in a Cisco 675, you have to pay $245 to Cisco support.

Re:Is Cisco the new Microsoft?

[Xformer]

From the PortSentry 1.1 license file:

License

All software, papers, and other works of information are being licensed for use as laid out in the terms of this agreement and remain the property and copyright of Psionic except where noted otherwise. These works may not to be used in part or in whole of a commercial product offering without express written consent from Psionic. Permission is granted to modify source code for personal use only. DISTRIBUTION OF MODIFIED SOURCE CODE WITHOUT PSIONIC'S PERMISSION IS PROHIBITED.

Distribution

All distributed software, papers, and other works are free to use by any individual, organization, or commercial venture as long as the above conditions are agreed to. This software may be included with any freely distributed Operating System provided it is not sold separately or as part of a "security bundle" or similar packaging. Outside of the exceptions noted above, this software may not be re-sold without permission from Psionic.

IANAL, but it looks like you can, as long as you're not charging and you haven't modified it. It does say that it's "free to use", but only explicity grants distribution rights if it's part of a free OS. I haven't checked the license for Logcheck yet, but I'd imagine it's the same or very similar.