Cisco's Cloud Vision: Mandatory, and Killed At Their Discretion

An anonymous reader writes "Last week, a number of Cisco customers began reporting problems with three specific Linksys-branded routers. When owners of the E2700, E3500, are E4500 attempted to log in to their devices, they were asked to login/register using their 'Cisco Connect Cloud' account information. The story that's emerged from this unexpected "upgrade" is a perfect example of how buzzword fixation can lead to extremely poor decisions."

Comments

Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

Will never buy from again...

Re:Voting with wallet

[i kan reed]

Well, as long as you buy from the remaining duopoly of router manufacturers.

Re:Voting with wallet

[NettiWelho]

What are the guys at Cisco thinking, really? http://i.imgur.com/x9im4.jpg

Re:Voting with wallet

[MightyMartian]

That's why I build my own from a very basic Debian install. Since most of the routers out there are just embedded Linux boxes using iptables, why would I pay for what I can build for free. If I'm looking for high capacity stuff like Cisco's real offerings, I doubt I'll be running up against his problem anyways.

Re:Voting with wallet

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I can only assume that the people inside Cisco who believe that they have a natural right to be paid for a support contract on every item they ship finally could contain themselves no longer...

Since nobody buys support contracts on $40 plastic shitboxes, they had to 'monetize' them somehow.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

(100 watts) * 1 year = 876.581277 kilowatt hours

Not free. Look for the routers that can run an open source platform out of the box.

Re:Voting with wallet

[icebike]

Duopoly?

There are at least 30 brands listed at Best Buy and New Egg. Some of these may be re-badged, but there are far more than two or three alternatives.

Re:Voting with wallet

[SJHillman]

Until May, my router was a repurposed Dell Dimension 2100 with four PCI NICs thrown in it running ClearOS 5. Started having some hardware issues with it, so I built a new rack-mount box with a low-power Athlon II x2 and a small SSD with a quad-port NIC, threw ClearOS 6 on it and off to the races. Runs great and because it's a full PC, it can do a lot more than DD-WRT (my old router with DD-WRT is now just used as a regular WAP). Sure, it's overkill but it gives me a lot to play around with. You can easily pick up an PC for the price of a Linksys router that will do everything that Linksys could and more (at the expense of an extra dollar or two a month in energy costs)

Re:Voting with wallet

[vlm]

That's why I build my own from a very basic Debian install. Since most of the routers out there are just embedded Linux boxes using iptables ...

... which are never updated or only updated with security patches when shamed into doing it...

My debian based firewall is about 15 seconds of "apt-get update apt-get upgrade" away from the most recent security patches.

why would I pay for what I can build for free

A 486/50 clocked down to 25 so as to be fanless could run "a couple megs" with no serious bus or CPU issues about a decade ago. Pretty much anything made in the last decade has WAY more than enough "compute power" to be a firewall.

$100 of electricity instead of router hardware provides 25 watts extra power continuously for 5.7 years.

Also I can run some pretty advanced stuff on my firewall that you can't get with commodity NAT boxes.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw that, roll your own.

Re:Voting with wallet

[EmagGeek]

Try building your own x86 PC that takes 5 watts out of the wall.

Of course, anyone who runs a fileserver 24/7 can just put ESXi on it and virtualize everything, including a nice router like pfSense or ipcop, and actually save the 5 watts.

Re:Voting with wallet

[vlm]

What kind of box would run 100 watts as a router, no routers use zero watts, so you need a delta between the router and the PC, and 6 months out of the year I'm paying to heat anyway, so 100 watts of electricity merely means the equivalent of 100 watts less of natgas. If you go laptop I can't even find a laptop power supply that can draw 100 watts.

Also that ridiculous 100 watts would cost me about $5/month. Well worth the staggering expense to avoid Cisco.

Re:Voting with wallet

[SJHillman]

My PC-as-a-router draws about 50 watts under load and 40 watts idle, so using your calculation above. Let's assume it's always under load, so that's 438 kwh. My last electric bill was about 11 cents per kwh, which comes to $48/yr to run it or about 13 cents a day. Considering it gives better performance than any dedicated consumer-grade router I've ever used, I'll glad shell out a dime a day for the upgrade. And that doesn't even account for the fact that I can set up my PC-as-a-router to go to sleep while I'm at work and at night, which drops its power usage lower than the dedicated consumer router. In the end, the energy cost increase is negligible as long as you're not using something horribly overpowered.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

Duopoly? Maybe chipset makers, but there's plenty of companies that make their own routers. At the consumer level, I'd say asus is pretty close to the top especially the N series wired/wireless.

Re:Voting with wallet

[MightyMartian]

My latest builds were three Mini-ITX VIA boards; two are 1ghz VIA Centaurs and one is a 1.2ghz VIA Nano (the latter because I need to run a couple of KVM guests). They're fanless and I'm using 60gb SSD drives, because the idea is not only relatively low power, but no moving parts, as two of them are located about 60 miles away over some pretty nasty roads, so I want to reduce the likelihood of having to go out there to swap out power supplies or drives.

I did set up a WAN with three Tomato-upgraded Asus routers, and that worked very well, but because I'm running servers, I think they'd be a little under-powered for that purpose.

Re:Voting with wallet

[cusco]

We put in a number of Linksys R16 and R08 layer three switches at remote customer sites in the first couple of years after the Beast Of Cupertino purchased the company. Through the web interface I could set up a couple of VLANs, DHCP, DNS forwarding, firewall, a PPTP VPN connection, and a DMZ (if necessary) on them in a couple of hours, a set of tasks that would take a $250/hr CCNA most of a day on order-of-magnitude more expensive Cisco hardware. Everyone was happy, then one of them got hit by lightning.

I took the replacement unit out to the site and went to set it up. The VLAN option was gone, and was actually necessary at that site. When I tried to access the help file I found that the new switch no longer had an on-board set of help files, but insisted on phoning back to the mother ship in California. Several other options had been changed or crippled. Fortunately I had a backup of the original configuration stored on a local server, and when I uploaded the config file my VLANs returned (although I still couldn't access their interface).

Last one of those we installed.

Re:Voting with wallet

[vlm]

Try building your own x86 PC that takes 5 watts out of the wall.

Well, you asked for it. I've been a happy customer of these guys no financial gain. This is buying a complete system with case and everything although you get to purchase drives and possibly RAM separately.

http://www.zotacusa.com/

The zbox makes a great, ridiculously overpowered mythtv frontend.

http://soekris.com/

This box is commercial / semi-industrial grade and is basically a router platform ready to go.

You have to carefully avoid google to avoid finding "single digit wattage" PC-like hardware.

Only on /. would a guy paying $75/month for cablemodem to connect to a $2000 gaming PC that gets a new $500 graphics card every couple months worry about 5 watts of electricity, considering that in a civilized area 1 watt costs about $1 per year.

Re:Voting with wallet

[poetmatt]

Not if you don't want to get a cheap and/or gigantic piece of shit that can't even keep things secure, want actual functionality, etc.

Re:Voting with wallet

[bhcompy]

It's not the router, it's the interface, and most of them are different. Personally, I've avoided Linksys ever since they fubar'd wifi on their consumer routers/APs

Re:Voting with wallet

[rhook]

ThinkPad W Series power adapters can pull 170watts.

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product-and-parts/detail.page?&LegacyDocID=MIGR-76762

Re:Voting with wallet

[vlm]

Yikes those watts are all going into heat, so programming with that on your lap must be very much like pushing a space heater onto your thighs. Ouch.

Re:Voting with wallet

[jimicus]

I don't know what part of the world you're in, but in mine 100 watts worth of heat from a gas-fired boiler costs a lot less than 100 watts worth of heat from electricity.

Re:Voting with wallet

[BagOBones]

Dd-wrt and tomato-USB firmware builds run on several buffalo and asus brand routers.

Buffalo even ships dd-wrt on select units.

Re:Voting with wallet

[pak9rabid]

They're called embedded systems. Maybe you've heard of them? Not free, but when you load a Linux distribution tailed for embedded systems (like this one) they're MUCH more stable than anything you can buy at any big-box store (even if you're flashing the firmware with something less retarded).

Re:Voting with wallet

[icebike]

You still need a wireless radio.

I've found the internal wireless NICs have a range equal to the radius of a swung cat.

This has forced me to get a cheap wifi access point, (or a router that can be told to just run as an access point) and use it for
its radio only. I run my own DHCPD, DNS, Nat and IPTables, NTP, (etc) in a Linux box, and bridge my network onto a cheap ($25) ap that can do WPA2.

Since I run it in access point mode, it does nothing but handle wifi authentication and wifi access, it remains rather simple, and I really need only watch for bug fixes to WPA2.

I've been looking into various Open Router distributions for the radio side of things, but most are overkill for what I do.

Re:Voting with wallet

[gman003]

I just got* an Asus G75. Power supply is 150W. And yes, it has some crazy-sized fans to keep itself cool.

* Well, got, and then had to send back in for repair after only three hours, and now I've been waiting for weeks just to get an ETA. Long story short, fuck Asus, I'm never buying from them again.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you have Linux on your blender and toaster

Re:Voting with wallet

[icebike]

Sticking with a duopoly brand is no assurance of them being secure. This story should have made that patently obvious to you.

Moving everything off the router except the secure wifi functionality and putting it into my Linux machine running IPTables means that I can use any of these cheap routers that is able to function as an Access Point, and never expose them to the internet.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

I second that. as an owner of the EA4500 I am pissed!

Re:Voting with wallet

[icebike]

You'd be well advised to go get your own dd-wrt rather than accepting one from the router manufacturer. Sort of defeats the purpose of dd-wrt and puts the fox on guard at the hen house door to use their version.

Re:Voting with wallet

[marcosdumay]

Oh, I see. You want secure things, like the CISCO models on TFA?

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us do live on solar power you know. Every watt counts.

Re:Voting with wallet

[MickyTheIdiot]

I run my laptop with a stationary bike.

Re:Voting with wallet

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Through the web interface I could set up a couple of VLANs, DHCP, DNS forwarding, firewall, a PPTP VPN connection, and a DMZ (if necessary) on them in a couple of hours, a set of tasks that would take a $250/hr CCNA most of a day on order-of-magnitude more expensive Cisco hardware."

I, er, think I can guess why Cisco may have "simplified" the interface of certain linksys products...

Re:Voting with wallet

[h4rr4r]

It is to run the laptop full tilt and charge a 100% depleted battery all at the same time. It will likely never see that use.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Bert64]

Well he never said he was running it on a big power hungry box...

You can get low power Linux boxes such as the Sheevaplug or OpenRD, which must be pretty comparable to common routers in terms of power usage, while being considerably more capable.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Bert64]

Get some USB wireless cards such as those from alfa networks along with a decent antenna...
A long USB cable means you can site the wifi card and antenna away from the system itself (which is a source of interference).

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

> It will likely never see that use.

Bologna.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that it will matter, but here's a contrary anecdote about Asus. I purchased a refurb M70 from Newegg, wiped the OS, and used it for ~6 months before something started preventing boot. Probably bad ram, maybe a faulty mobo, don't know. I sent it to Asus' processing facility 900+ mi. away, and received the system back 4 or 5 days later with a brand new motherboard. They also replaced my screen because apparently it had a broken pixel or something I never noticed.

Re:Voting with wallet

[hawguy]

Also that ridiculous 100 watts would cost me about $5/month. Well worth the staggering expense to avoid Cisco.

Few people live where electricity is that cheap. $5/month to run a 100 watt load means you're paying $5.00 / (0.1KW * 30 * 24) = 6.9 cents/KWh.

In California, I'd pay over twice that, or about $10/month. A year's worth of 100W power costs more than I paid for my Wifi router in the first place.

(I use a Linksys Wifi router, but I run dd-wrt on it. I use a low-power Atom based system running Ubuntu as my home fileserver / security camera DVR, the whole thing including UPS + Wifi + internet modem uses about 40W)

Re:Voting with wallet

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The W Series is more of a man-portable-desktop/monitor combination than a laptop.

Of course, if the W Series is just too wimpy for you, there is always the Eurocom Panther 3.0, available with 6-core Xeon processor and SLI or Crossfire dual GPU configuration... Having to use two 300watt power bricks for maximum performance is heavy; but surely you want the best?

Re:Voting with wallet

[FireFury03]

Not if you don't want to get a cheap and/or gigantic piece of shit that can't even keep things secure, want actual functionality, etc.

Tell me, which consumer-grade routers *don't* fall into the "gigantic piece of shit" category? (when running the stock firmware)

On my list so far:

Linksys - a number of the Linksys routers do crazy stuff like limiting your total number of outgoing connections to about 10.

Netgear - My Netgear router has more bugs than you can shake a stick at: it hard crashes when it receives certain UPnP packets (even when the UPnP server is turned off!). The extent of its logging is "Connected" or "Not Connected" - good luck figuring out why it won't connect. Last time I had to debug a connection fault I had to connect a laptop between the router and DSL modem to see that the PPP stream said "authentication failure" - would it kill them to put this stuff in a log file? The wifi also periodically drops a machine off the network at random for no obvious reason, requiring a reboot of the router. The web interface also doesn't accept CHAP usernames longer than 16 characters, so to enter these you have to dump the config to an XML file, hack it and then upload the XML file again. This router also has a habit of mangling the port numbers in SIP traffic from being correct (determined by the SIP endpoint using the rport extension so it matches the port in the router's NAT table) to being incorrect (doesn't match the port in the router's NAT table so the router ends up dropping the return traffic).

Dlink - My Dlink router has a firewall that periodically starts blocking legitimate traffic after it has decided it is malicious, even though the firewall is completely disabled. The web interface also doesn't support CHAP usernames with a dot in them (luckilly you can get around this by turning off javascript in the browser while entering the username)

TP-Link - Ok, I'll admit that this is a dirt cheap box, but on the face of it it seems to be pretty feature rich. I'm using it as a DSL bridge (the PPP session is terminated on another machine). Unfortunately in the evening the SNR drops on my DSL and the router never bothers to retrain. Eventually all the traffic is arriving at the router as a CRC error and you have to powercycle the router to get it to retrain the connection. The manufacturer tells me that this is the "expected behaviour". I'm guessing they weren't expecting anyone to actually use the "bridge" feature and were relying on the internal PPP daemon blowing up and triggering a retrain if the SNR got too bad - this doesn't work so well when you're not using the internal PPP daemon.

So as yet, I've not found anything that I would describe as fit for purpose at the consumer end of the spectrum (and all these, except TP-Link, are "big name brands"). Billion seem to get good write-ups, but at £150 a pop, I'd hardly call that consumer equipment.

Re:Voting with wallet

[LocalH]

Sometimes freedom is not cheap. Would you rather buy a cheap router with this onerous shit, or roll your own, paying a bit more in the process, to end up with a device that you fully control?

Re:Voting with wallet

[msauve]

I would suspect that many slashdotters have PCs which run 24/7 to provide other services - file/media sharing, email, web server, etc. Running iptables in addition adds little to the power consumption, almost certainly less than running an additional consumer NAT gateway in addition.

Re:Voting with wallet

[synapse7]

Here is another embedded system vendor with pfsense. Their products have intrigued me but I have never got around to trying one myself, although I have used soekris with monowall.

http://store.netgate.com/Desktop-Kits-C82.aspx

Re:Voting with wallet

[Dahamma]

Except this article is about cheap Linksys-branded routers, ie. the same consumer crap that he was talking about.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

It's no so much how much it costs you to use 100W (which is very low for a desktop), but about how you're abusing natural resources unnecessarily. Your position is just like people who steal pieces from historical parks and ask what the harm is in "just a little" piece, ignoring the effect when a large number of people exhibit that behavior. It's a narcissistic and selfish behavior.

Re:Voting with wallet

[OneAhead]

I agree that GP is oversimplifying things, but aren't you doing the same thing?

Some people pay to cool 6 months out of the year. For them, the thinking goes exactly opposite: for every kWh of energy dissipated by the appliances in your house, you're consuming (roughly) another kWh to pump that thermal energy out of your house.

Also, if you're paying to heat, the cost of a kWh of heat produced by burning, say, natural gas is usually lower than the cost of a kWh of electricity. Even if you're heating with a heat pump, the amount of thermal energy the thing pumps into your house is higher than the amount of electric energy consumed by the pump.

Oh, and there's the monetary cost of consuming energy, but there's also the environmental cost, which the current system doesn't factor in.

Re:Voting with wallet

[WhiteWolf666]

876.581277 kilowatt hours for your debian router.
Minus
150 kilowatt hours for your consumer router

726 kilowatt hours times $0.11 dollars per kwh = $80 per year as your cost delta.

If you go with a standard intel atom platform, you can get that unit down to 50 watts, or $48 per year as your total operating cost.

At slightly hardware cost, you can buy a fanless nano-itx Atom pc that runs at about 13 watts. That's about $12 per YEAR. Make sure you use a USB flash drive as your storage media, for optimal energy usage.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

Only on /. would a guy paying $75/month for cablemodem to connect to a $2000 gaming PC that gets a new $500 graphics card every couple months worry about 5 watts of electricity, considering that in a civilized area 1 watt costs about $1 per year.

There's something that always gives a Libertarian away: you just can't view anything in terms other than cost. That's why it's such a failed philosophy. The Toyota Prius, Chevy Volt, solar power, wind power, and other alternative sources of energy are perfect examples of people willing to pay more for the same commodity. This must be totally mysterious to a Libertarian, and it would be confusing to anybody with such a limited way of interpreting the world. What is the cost in terms of pollution of a million /. users consuming an addition 5W of power, or the cost in non-renewable resources being used to generate it? 5 MW of unnecessary demand. Why is that such a trivial thing?

Re:Voting with wallet

[rhook]

ThinkPads stay surprisingly cool at full load.

Re:Voting with wallet

[pak9rabid]

I've purchased a decent amount of hardware from Netgate, including the ALIX.2D2 embedded system (manufactured by PC Engines..one of the links I provided above), which I'm currently using as my home router. I would highly recommend them. My previous router was running on a Soekris Net4521 box, which while good, wasn't quite fast enough for my 20+ Mbit Internet connection. For anything over 10 MBit, you really need something faster than a 486-class CPU.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that 5W of less demand for a single household will never make an ounce of difference where the majority of power is generated - at a power plant. Maybe if everybody was interested in spending lots of money saving as much energy as possible it might make a difference in the long run, but in order to get people to do that you start looking to the government to incentivize energy-saving devices - regardless of how little they save or how expensive they are - but then you get into tax loopholes and allowing the rich to exploit the system to tilt the benefits steeply in their favor, and it looks a lot less like a realistic goal and a lot more like an environmental circle jerk for the sake of feeling good about yourself "saving" the earth while not actually having much, if any, of an impact.

Disclaimer: I'm a liberal who still thinks the US government should be aggressively (but not stupidly, like with Solyndra) pushing green technology (and not just cheap, crappy technology like "green" hard drives or "green" water heaters that just do a half-assed job of heating water) and taxing oil-based energy supplies to pay for it. Green energy will only take off when we stop subsidizing non-green energy (read: is more expensive than green energy), in my opinion. I am simply stating the other side as I see it.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Shark]

It would explain why they bought linksys in the first place too. Just before they got bought, you could get stuff off of linksys 'pro' hardware that would cost about 10 times more for the equivalent cisco product. They quickly discontinued/crippled those.

They'll probably buy Netgear any day now, some of their switches have some pretty nice 'pro' features and are very cheap.

Sure, you might not want them in a datacenter, but the small/medium business has no use for a cisco support contract, can't justify cisco prices, and have needs that fit right in the offered feature set.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

I run my laptop with coal - suck it Al Gore.

Re:Voting with wallet

[tburkhol]

Your linux machine can be your WAP, too. hostapd is not hard to install, only moderately harder to configure than a consumer WAP, and it will let you unplug one more wallwart. If you're really ambitious, it will do much more complex authentication than your WAP.

Re:Voting with wallet

[atheos]

I own about a dozen of those Pc Engine WRAP / ALIX boards - some of the best money I've spent.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I can top that one. I run MY laptop off the furnace in Auschwitz.

Re:Voting with wallet

[shiftless]

Well worth the staggering expense to avoid Cisco.

What if we were talking about a data center, with hundreds or thousand of routers? Still think you could afford it? Still think all that heat is helpful?

Re:Voting with wallet

[shiftless]

It's a narcissistic and selfish behavior.

Oh really? And cordoning off the "historic park" with barriers and shrink wrap with big "do not touch" signs isn't "narcissistic and selfish behavior"?

Free clue: These "historical places" aren't going to last forever, regardless. The world was put here for us to use and enjoy. No, somebody picking up a fucking rock from the ground in the Grand Canyon, or pulling a plant out of the ground in Yellowstone doesn't matter me a bit.

Re:Voting with wallet

[dissy]

I've always done the same, using slightly older PC hardware with Debian as a router.
My last system started having hard drive problems after 5 years of service, so on my hunt for new hardware I've kept the power draw issue in mind.

I just purchased some of these little 1u Atom servers:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101365

They have on-board dual gigabit, plus a PCI Express slot with a quad port gigabit card in it.
It can boot from USB as well, and even has an internal USB jack on the motherboard, as well as headers you can use your own connector with, and keep the USB flash drive internal.

Other than a small fan in the PSU, there is basically no moving parts to fail, and the PSU is only 200 watt max. It draws just under 60 watt when idle.

Add in a 2gb soDIMM and the price is still under $400, a great buy if you only need 2 network interfaces. I already had the quad gigabit card, which might bump the price up a bit more, but it's well worth it for the lack of over heating issues most tiny embedded systems have like the Guruplug.

Re:Voting with wallet

[simplexion]

I use a TP-Link with Open WRT. It is the best value for money router ever.

Re:Voting with wallet

[dissy]

They have on-board dual gigabit, plus a PCI Express slot with a quad port gigabit card in it.

Oops, should have hit preview...

I meant to say they have a PCI express slot, which you can Get a quad port gigabit card to put in it.
It does not come with one of course :}

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

"Because that 5W of less demand for a single household will never make an ounce of difference where the majority of power is generated - at a power plant."

Multiply that times a million households and golly, that starts adding up. 10 million and it starts getting huge.

Re:Voting with wallet

[the_humeister]

I'd rather get a cheap router that I can put OpenWRT on, and there are plenty of them (eg WRT54gl, etc.).

Re:Voting with wallet

[aztracker1]

Asus RT-N16 with TomatoUSB .. works pretty damned well for consumer use... note: I'm not using it for network storage, or for VPN... so can't comment on that.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember every laptop out there comes with a discaimer that IT SHOULD NOT BE USED ON YOUR LAP! That's why they started labelling them notebooks.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

full load

Ha

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with using an old PC for routing - it just uses too much power

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

that's why they're called Anus not Asus

Re:Voting with wallet

[jamesh]

I think the point is that because the manufacturer ships dd-wrt, you can probably run your own dd-wrt/openwrt/tomato without too much fuss.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong camp, turbonerd. They used gas chambers in Auschwitz.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Nethead]

The Westel stuff is good. You can dig very deep into the DSL stats. Don't know how long that will last now that Netgear bought them.

Re:Voting with wallet

[kelemvor4]

It's much more difficult if you want to run a router with modern features like Gig-E, wireless N, multiband, jumbo frames etc... I loved dd-wrt when I had a linksys 54g but that old beast was decommissioned from my home several years ago. Now I run a D-Link that supports all these things and was only $130 when I bought it... should be cheaper by now.

Re:Voting with wallet

[poetmatt]

I was referring to his "brands at newegg/best buy" of which the only proper choice is NONE.

Re:Voting with wallet

[kelemvor4]

It's a narcissistic and selfish behavior.

Oh really? And cordoning off the "historic park" with barriers and shrink wrap with big "do not touch" signs isn't "narcissistic and selfish behavior"?

Free clue: These "historical places" aren't going to last forever, regardless. The world was put here for us to use and enjoy. No, somebody picking up a fucking rock from the ground in the Grand Canyon, or pulling a plant out of the ground in Yellowstone doesn't matter me a bit.

Pity, but you're not dead yet - there is still hope for you.

Re:Voting with wallet

[viperidaenz]

If I want 100 watts of heat in my home, I use the heat pump on the wall that would consume 23 watts* to produce 100.

* peak COP

Re:Voting with wallet

[NotSanguine]

That's why I build my own from a very basic Debian install. Since most of the routers out there are just embedded Linux boxes using iptables, why would I pay for what I can build for free. If I'm looking for high capacity stuff like Cisco's real offerings, I doubt I'll be running up against his problem anyways.

I've been running a similar (Fedora based) setup on a low-end box since 1996. First with ipchains and now with iptables. It works like a champ and I can configure it as I like without interference from vendors.

What's even better (at least for the less technical) is that there are a number of Live CDs that provide similar functionality *and* they have easy to use GUI configuration tools.

However, the TFA says that Cisco has backed off of their power grab. I guess we'll see if they try it again

Re:Voting with wallet

[damnbunni]

I call shenanigans. I'm old enough to remember when they stopped calling portables 'laptops' in ads and started calling them 'notebooks'.

The computers advertised as 'notebooks' were much smaller than the older models advertised as 'laptops'.

The older ones WERE big and heavy enough that setting them in your lap was a realistic way to use them. 'Notebooks' are small enough that they don't balance well in the average lap, and calling them a 'thightop' - balanced on one leg - just sounds stupid.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

What?

You don't want to pay for malware?

Next you'll be telling me you refuse to pay $120/mo to carry a tracking device you can't shut off.

Re:Voting with wallet

[hawguy]

Sometimes freedom is not cheap. Would you rather buy a cheap router with this onerous shit, or roll your own, paying a bit more in the process, to end up with a device that you fully control?

That's a false dichotomy. You don't need to use a 100W computer to have an open source router. Less than $200 buys you a 15W Soekris board (there are lots of other low power options, including buying an off the shelf wifi router and reflashing it with dd-wrt, openwrt, etc) , depending on where you live, the power savings can pay for it in less than 2 years.

Re:Voting with wallet

[prezkennedy.org]

Sorry to hear that. I got an Asus G75 a few weeks ago and it works great. I haul it with me everywhere. It's an amazing laptop and I've always had good results with Asus prior to it. HP is one to steer clear of though. I've got more dying HP laptop carcasses laying around than I really should...

Re:Voting with wallet

[mea_culpa]

These things do pay for themselves in more ways than power savings. I have yet to have any downtime with a the few I've deployed in harsh environments. For me it is the peace of mind and the trips I didn't have to make to power cycle a router.

Re:Voting with wallet

[hawguy]

It's much more difficult if you want to run a router with modern features like Gig-E, wireless N, multiband, jumbo frames etc... I loved dd-wrt when I had a linksys 54g but that old beast was decommissioned from my home several years ago. Now I run a D-Link that supports all these things and was only $130 when I bought it... should be cheaper by now.

You can still use dd-wrt and get modern features like Gig-E, Wireless-N, multiband. not sure about Jumbo Frames, but then again, nothing I run at home needs jumbo frames. dd-wrt is supported on some of Netgear's WNDR* series. (like the WNDR3700)

Re:Voting with wallet

[lessthan]

That is what I adore about narcissistic and selfish behavior, it always has a rationalization. Your argument boils down an either/or scenario, we either preserve the park for future generations or we take what we want from the park regardless of consequence. Since 'these "historical places" aren't going to last forever,' makes the preservation option impossible, so we should take what we want. Since this is Slashdot, you should already know that the false dilemma is an invalid argument.
Preservation is about making something last for as long as possible. It actually hurts my head to try to think like you and argue about this. I can't come up with an actual reason for not trying to preserve a park, especially one like the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone. Do you not understand cumulative damage? Please tell me.

Re:Voting with wallet

[DigiShaman]

Dlink is about the only brand I like so far (like, tried about every brand in the past 13 years). It's like the best of the worst. But so far, I've been extremely happy with my DGL-4500. It's been a long road of buggy firmware, but the last update solved everything (that I know of).

Re:Voting with wallet

[sjames]

Nothing that can be force 'upgraded' at someone's discretion other than the owner's is 'secure'

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

The wifi also periodically drops a machine off the network at random for no obvious reason, requiring a reboot of the router.

I've had this problem with a Billion router, too.

Re:Voting with wallet

[DigiShaman]

SonicWALL can't be beat for the SMB market. Even Dell knew this prior to purchasing the company (grumble grumble).

Re:Voting with wallet

[sentientbeing]

My laptop is powered by a cat on a treadmill and a hamster in a wheel. The power only goes off when they fight.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Cylix]

Been running a Buffalo model with everything mentioned and OpenWRT. They have their stock firmware and you can always grab an OpenWRT binary or compile a tree.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

100 watts is pretty ridiculous. My desktop that I use for gaming typically only uses 125 watts plus the power consumption of the monitors. My laptop has a power adapter that maxes out at 65 watts, most of the time, it's using only around 20 watts of electricity and often less.

When you get under 20 watts the difference starts to get smaller and less noticeable, what's nice about using a laptop as a router if you can, is that you can just open it up if something isn't working and type on it directly. Plus, you can choose your own software completely.

Re:Voting with wallet

[gman003]

Time for the full story:

I used to be an Asus fan. I still have the parts from my M50 lying on my desk (it finally died after years of good service - I have no complaints about that one). The one time it broke under warranty (hard drive failure, probably actually my fault), I shipped it back no-questions-asked and got it fixed within a week.

So, when the time came to replace it, I figured I'd go Asus again. And I figured I'd upgrade to the G5x series (the "gamer" model, instead of the "notebook" model). However, around the time I was going to buy one (a G54), they were mysteriously discontinued. Ivy Bridge was just about to come out, so I figured they just stopped making the old ones in favor of a new model, and just sold out quicker than anticipated. No problem, really.

Well, Ivy Bridge got pushed back a few weeks. Still not Asus's fault, really. So it took a few more weeks for the G55 to come out.

So I found the first place to list them (a site called HIDEvolution, and I'm hating them more than Asus right now). They sold out pretty much immediately. Not that they told me, by the way - I didn't find out they were on backorder until the next week when *I* called them up.

Fine. "Good things come to those who wait" and all that. So I waited.

Four weeks later, I get an email. The customization I had ordered, putting an SSD in the secondary drive bay, was impossible, because apparently they don't *have* a second drive bay. Despite what the product info had said. So either HIDEvolution fucked up on listing the product, or Asus neglected to tell their resellers that they'd removed that option from the new model. Most likely both.

Well, I got things sorted out. Upgraded to the G75. A bit bigger than I'd like, but otherwise identical to the one I thought I'd ordered.

It took a week for them to process the order. Then another week for them to ship it, *by* *ground*, across the country. Who the fuck ships a laptop 2000 miles by truck?

Whatever. I finally have it, right? Very nice, a bit unprofessional-looking (this is technically my work laptop / signing bonus), but I don't care too much about that. I set aside a full weekend for setting everything up *just* *right*, maybe play some of those games I'd bought that don't run on my backup desktop. That night, though, all I do is run a couple benchmarks, then unplug it and surf the web a bit so I can see how long the battery lasts.

Half an hour later, it clicks off. Rather short battery life, I thought, but to be fair, it's a pretty powerful rig. I plug back in and try to boot again. Clicks on, lights flicker, it dies again. Nothing.

I let it charge a bit - maybe it just doesn't like booting from 0%. Five minutes later, the light shows it's fully charged. Still won't power on. Won't even hit BIOS.

FUCK

So I immediately shoot off a problem ticket, describe all the troubleshooting I did, every symptom I can notice. They promise to respond within 48 hours or the ticket will be immediately escalated.

I don't get a response to *that* ticket for a full week. By which time it was irrelevant, as I'd called them up on Tuesday. First Asus insisted it was HIDEvolution's problem. Then HIDEvolution insisted it was Asus's problem. After two hours or so, and not a small amount of profanity, I get Asus to issue an RMA. I ship it off immediately.

That was literally a month ago. June 6. I still have not heard even an ETA on the repair - it's still marked as "awaiting spare parts". Despite the fact that most retailers are still showing them as in stock - I could have gotten a refund and bought a brand-new one in the time it took them to do nothing.

I've emailed them, told them to just send me a new one - I have *nothing* on that particular machine that I want. They refuse. I ask for an ETA. Nothing. I ask at least for some sort of second-day air shipping when they send it back. I get a vague promise that it is *marked* for "expedited shipping".

Two weeks ago, I gave them an ultimatum - either I have

Re:Voting with wallet

[The Master Control P]

What the hell computer configured as a _home router_ uses a hundred watts? When I got tired of a clunking old P4 using 75W, I bought a new set of parts from minibox and now have a gateway router that uses a whole 20W, for under $250.

Re:Voting with wallet

[sjames]

There's a lot to that. Linksys may not be as reliable as the Cisco branded gear, but for every one you deploy you can buy 5 more as spares and still save money.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Afecks]

Try building your own x86 PC that takes 5 watts out of the wall.

Why build it?

http://www.fit-pc.com/web/purchase/order-fit-pc2i/

It's actually 6 watts. So, you've got me there.

Re:Voting with wallet

[QQBoss]

Call shenanigans all you like, but Dell specifically changed from calling them laptops to notebooks after a German customer sued for the 3rd degree burns he sustained to his nether regions. Seems it isn't that difficult to do it if you use your computer naked and the heat builds up slowly enough, just as cooking frogs is easier if you turn up the heat after they are in the water.

Re:Voting with wallet

[kullnd]

Where are you finding your $250/hr CCNAs that take this long to do that kind of configuration? The couple of hours you spent on the Linksys should be plenty for a decent cisco guy to do the same on actual enterprise cisco hardware... just saying. And where could I get paid $250/hr to do CCNA work (I have a business, will consult, call me!).

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

My router uses very little power. It is IP cop running as a virtual machine on my ESXi server which is a HP 7700 SFF desktop (ESXi is free in a scaled down version for personal use). Yes, my ESXi server uses power but it is already running anyway hosting other VM's, including a Ubuntu file server, Windows 7, and two Windows XP machines. I've consolidated all of those into a single running machine with 3 network careds and through bios power settings, ESXi power settings, and virtual machine OS power settings, it is using very little power when "computing power" is not needed.

Re:Voting with wallet

[SJHillman]

I used my handy kill-o-watt to see how much it uses... comes to about $50 a year if it's under load 24/7. Given that it has a lot more power management options (IE: sleep when I'm at work) than an appliance would, it actually comes out pretty close to even. And even if it didn't, the extra performance alone is worth it, never mind the fact I can use it as a full fledged web server, print server, file server, irc server, proxy, dns, dhcp, etc, etc without affecting performance of its core functions.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

What gas chambers?

Re:Voting with wallet

[Grishnakh]

It likely will, but for most users only for brief durations and infrequently. However, people do run their battery down from time to time, and then plug it in and start doing something computationally intensive, so the power supply has to be able to handle that.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

Any good building instructions for that?

Re:Voting with wallet

[Grishnakh]

This sounds like BS to me. Burns, sure. 3rd-degree burns, however, mean that the skin is charred; most people never experience this, and only at the worst experience 2nd-degree burns, where you have redness and blistering. 2nd degree burns are extremely painful, worse than 1st degree (which is sunburn, scalds, etc.). 3rd degree burns, OTOH, are not painful at all, because the nerves have burned away and you can't feel anything.

The idea that someone would sit still and allow their skin to be burnt to char seems ridiculous to me; you have to first progress through the 1st and 2nd degree stages which are extremely painful themselves, and then in the 3rd degree stage you'll smell the unmistakable stench of burning flesh (there's nothing that smells like it, once you've smelled it once, you'll remember it forever).

Re:Voting with wallet

[Grishnakh]

My last D-Link router (DI-624) wouldn't allow me to print from a wireless device to my ethernet-connected HP printer after I upgraded the firmware (downgrading to the old version worked), and they ignored my complaints about the bug and never fixed it. Sorry, I can't buy a D-Link after that experience.

Re:Voting with wallet

[swalve]

Not a PIII, which is just fine for a cable connection. I've got an old Compaq SFF unit with everything unplugged, running off a CF card, and it is rock stable, silent and just as fast as plugging into the raw cable connection. It's a thing of beauty.

Re:Voting with wallet

[swalve]

Not a wrt54g v2. Mine would bog down if I had the temerity to use wireless AND routing at the same time.

Re:Voting with wallet

[postbigbang]

It's still not that easy. The duty cycle of transactions produces a baseline load that's a fraction of rating. Behind the load are fat battery systems in data centers, dynamos, and other power storage devices that smooth the maniacal loads of equipment. Routers, servers, they all have aperiodic loads that are smoothed out to the transformers, which are where the cross-connections with the grid occur.

Servers are at best, about 3-5% power efficient. The rest must then be cooled. Routers are actually more efficient than servers, but not by that much.

Where the power company saturates the coils inside the transformer is a variable load fact. Learn about power factor.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Decker-Mage]

libertarians, and I intentionally left it uncapitalized, are well aware of externalities. Where differences occur is usually on how to internalize those externalities into the cost of any particular good or service. Huge differences. Like the size and powers granted to the State.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but did you try MyCleanPC?

Re:Voting with wallet

[cusco]

Most of the time the trouble is finding a "decent Cisco guy". Just saying . . .

Re:Voting with wallet

[clarkn0va]

I can tell you from experience that an Atom D525, Core i3 550, and Core i7 2500 all idle under 20W at the wall when using solid state storage and a decent DC-DC power supply. The Atom tops out under 30W while the Cores obviously can go much higher.

A Soekris net5501 with SS storage and a PCI GBE card tops out around 17W, and an ASUS WL-520GU sits around 3-4W.

Re:Voting with wallet

[DarwinSurvivor]

Don't remember seeing that anywhere in the documentation for my x220.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

or just multiply it by one, unless of course he owns and maintains a million households.

Re:Voting with wallet

[davester666]

You'll be fine. It's the power supply that is super cheap and gets really hot.

Re:Voting with wallet

[DarwinSurvivor]

A) They make some VERY low-power tower systems (atom boards, etc).
B) If you are *already* running a server (ssh, apache, nfs/samba, etc), adding iptables a couple nics is more power-wise than an additional device solely handling routing.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

Any of that hardware will work fine if you install OpenWRT onto it.

For all the debugging and research you appear to have done so far you could have installed it a dozen times...

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what Procurve/HP Networking is for.

Re:Voting with wallet

[ultranova]

Call shenanigans all you like, but Dell specifically changed from calling them laptops to notebooks after a German customer sued for the 3rd degree burns he sustained to his nether regions.

3rd degree burns would require the laptop to catch fire. While that's certainly possible, I'm pretty sure that simply renaming them notebooks would be insufficient to avoid liability in case one does.

Re:Voting with wallet

[ultranova]

Servers are at best, about 3-5% power efficient.

How do you calculate the power efficiency of a machine that doesn't output any work?

Re:Voting with wallet

[arglebargle_xiv]

Well, as long as you buy from the remaining duopoly of router manufacturers.

Maybe in Ruritania where you live, but here in Australia we have one to two dozen to choose from. I have a Draytek Vigor (fabulous gear) with an uptime of "since I first plugged it in several years ago". My Cisco-branded Linksys (free from my ISP) in contrast needs rebooting roughly every 1-2 weeks to restore functionality, and it fails in bizarre ways with random bits of functionality locking up while other aspects keep working. There's also my Cisco-branded PAP2 (ditto) which needs rebooting about once a month. My neighbour has a Cisco-branded Linksys WAG310 that's on a one-week preventive maintenance reboot schedule. They don't suck quite as much as DLink consumer-grade gear does (I think there are black holes that suck less than the likes of a 502T), but they're close.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Kalriath]

You know, I was honestly expecting it to end with "but then I tried MyCleanPC and it fixed all my problems with my slow gigabits this minuteness!"

Re:Voting with wallet

[arglebargle_xiv]

Of course, if the W Series is just too wimpy for you, there is always the Eurocom Panther 3.0, available with 6-core Xeon processor and SLI or Crossfire dual GPU configuration... Having to use two 300watt power bricks for maximum performance is heavy; but surely you want the best?

Holy fscking s**t!. This thing has three times the power draw of my quad-core desktop and they call it "Extremely Energy Efficient".

Re:Voting with wallet

[asdf7890]

I'll call BS on "3rd degree" burns - to not notice before it got that bad the laptop would need to basically combust.

But a little scorching on a bare leg is definitely possible, and I've had laptops that carried explicit warnings about that sort of thing.

Re:Voting with wallet

[asdf7890]

If you are using 100W for that sort of job, you've done something wrong.

There are many devices that draw no more than 15W which are perfectly capable of providing basic routing for 100mbit (more than most internet connections can channel). You might need to bump the power requirements up a fair chunk for GigE, wireless, and if you need the CPU to handle the encryption of VPN traffic (rather than just pass it through), but still 100W is far more than you should need.

The cost of creating and maintaining your own setup is time, not power. That and finding kit that fits nicely in your rack or other kit arrangement, if you are not doing this for a home or small office arrangement where such things don't matter.

Re:Voting with wallet

[uninformedLuddite]

The ones with all the documentation

Re:Voting with wallet

[Kalriath]

Cisco, not Linksys. Cisco switches don't get updates without direct crediting a year's procurement budget to Cisco, and they sure as hell won't force upgrade them (and I bet they'll never include Cloud shit either).

Re:Voting with wallet

[Kalriath]

Yeah, it's like a billionth of the price and HP is just large enough that Cisco would balk at trying to buy them.

Re:Voting with wallet

[hawkinspeter]

Buffalo make some nice dual band routers that ship with DD-WRT firmware on them. I've had no problem with my one at home, but I only use it as a wireless access point.

I installed one at work in a remote office to automatically open and share a Cisco VPN connection and it works like a charm.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

b) Loudly denounce Asus to anyone who will listen

I have another one for you: try looking up ASM1083.

It's a PCIE-PCI bridge used by Asus in most of their Sandy Bridge motherboards and all of their AMD Fusion boards (well the ones with PCI slots). And it's broken -- so much broken that no single PCI card on those motherboards will ever work correctly. The problem has been plaguing Linux users since at least March 2011, and they're still shipping boards with the same defective bridge chip, and no statement if they ever plan to fix it. Luckily they haven't pulled their "we don't support Linux"-card this time, I'm guessing because Windows users are similarly affected.

MSI is my A-brand these days.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

It's much more difficult if you want to run a router with modern features like Gig-E, wireless N, multiband, jumbo frames etc...

TP-Link WR2543. Not sure about jumbo frames though.

Re:Voting with wallet

[FireFury03]

Asus RT-N16 with TomatoUSB .. works pretty damned well for consumer use... note: I'm not using it for network storage, or for VPN... so can't comment on that.

What part of "when running the stock firmware" was hard to understand?

Re:Voting with wallet

[BeardedChimp]

Also make sure that the linux drivers can put the usb card into master mode, a considerable amount can't be.

Re:Voting with wallet

[damnbunni]

The burned penis incident you're referring to was in 2002.

It wasn't a third degree burn. According to medical records, the gent had reddened skin and one blister.

'laptops' were transitioning to being called 'notebooks' a full ten years before that.

The Dell 325NC, for instance. NC for Notebook (Color). 1991.

Dell's first portable, as a comparison, had a model number of 316LT. For LapTop.

So yes, I call shenanigans on 'you can't use them on your lap' being the reason laptops started being called notebooks. Notebooks were MUCH smaller and lighter than laptops. Like, well, a notebook. Or a three ring binder, at least.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a WNR3500L (v1 or v2, v2 preferred).
It's specifically supported. http://www.myopenrouter.net

Re:Voting with wallet

[Calvin Deck]

Not all hardware requere 100 watts. You can buy hardware that are meant to be used to build your own router from, like a soekris box. http://soekris.com/

Re:Voting with wallet

[postbigbang]

Input vs load vs output.

If it does no work, then it's a short circuit-- no load.

Re:Voting with wallet

[AmiMoJo]

My old server was an Intel Atom D550 (dual core) that idled at 11W using a DC-DC (laptop style) PSU. It would be orders of magnitude more powerful than required for a router.

For off-the-shelf hardware a HP Microserver idles at about 40-50W, depending on what drives you have in it.

My current router is an ASUS N16 running Tomato USB. It is by far the best general purpose router money can buy, but unfortunately I have not measured power consumption.

Re:Voting with wallet

[vlm]

the thinking goes exactly opposite: for every kWh of energy dissipated by the appliances in your house, you're consuming (roughly) another kWh to pump that thermal energy out of your house.

Yeah they might think that; they'd be wrong. Ask a guy who knows thermodynamics, maybe from chem eng classes or physics, about the COP coefficient of performance of a refrigeration unit, or the trendy consumer level term SEER which boils down to a simplified real world average long term measured COP, whereas COP is usually expressed theoretically solely given mechanical perfection and specified temps/pressures/refrigerants. Its been illegal in the US to install anything with a SEER under 13 for half a decade or so, as in you'd have to smuggle it into the country and it couldn't be UL listed and would never pass a building inspection. That doesn't mean that until 6 years ago everyone installed SEER 1 units as you claim, either. Even my relatively ancient system at home, at least 10 years old now, was something like a 12. Illegal to install now, but not bad, not bad at all.

To some extent you can visualize it qualitatively, like each sq meter of my house exterior has a kilowatt space heater applied to it when the suns up, my 30 amp oven can be cooking dinner, blah blah but somehow a mere 20 amp compressor keeps the inside cool as a cucumber... so 1:1 clearly doesn't apply.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Rainbowdash]

Just because you don't know how to config one doesn't mean it's bad.

I agree with the article, but Cisco overall aint bad, they had their primetime.

Also gl hf at a company using your old HP Box as firewall, damn.
And at home anything works fine as long as you have a DHCP server, doesn't matter if it's Linux, Windows or Mac OS X.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Rainbowdash]

So did Apple, I used to work for Apple Tech Support (phone line) and we where instructed to notify customers as soon as they called it a "laptop" we where to correct them and say "portable computer".

Re:Voting with wallet

[CimmerianX]

>> $250/hr to do CCNA work

Yeah, I want a piece of that too....

Re:Voting with wallet

[Compaqt]

Which model? Or are all TP-Links upgradeable to custom OS's?

Re:Voting with wallet

[QQBoss]

The incident was in 2002, yes, and I joined Dell in 2004, and the story was used as the reason why I was banned from using the word laptop in any of my presentations. I didn't mean to suggest that the switch to using the term notebook ONLY occurred because of the incident, but more that the term laptop was forbidden afterwards- no one could argue that a 17" notebook would qualify as a "laptop" under previous usage definitions, but they were all notebooks from that point on.

BTW, 3rd degree burns do not require charring of the skin, only that the damage goes the full thickness of the dermis. Anywhere the skin is very thin (e.g. a man's penis), what would normally be only a 1st or 2nd degree burn in other places can be upgraded a notch. It is 4th degree burns that have charring by definition. At least that was what I have been taught by the Red Cross for the last 30 some odd years. That said, if he only had one blister and it wasn't bloody, it was probably at most a second degree burn. On that, I stand corrected.

Re:Voting with wallet

[whereissue]

I call shenanigans on all of you.
Dell still sells laptops... and refers to them as such:
http://www.dell.com/us/p/laptops

Re:Voting with wallet

[cavebison]

I run my laptop with a stationary bike.

I would actually pay for a little pedal power charger to sit under my desk at work or a table out anywhere - cafe, etc. Medium resistance slow pedal exercise while I work, charging my laptop battery while I use it, able to be used anywhere. Why not? I think it's a great idea.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiots like you are too dumb to function without manuals. You don't possess the ability to think. Dimwits like yourself don't ever develop inductive reasoning's why.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Fjandr]

You can argue about what "appropriate use" really is, but no, setting up guidelines which serve to benefit more than one person or homogeneous group cannot be classified as "narcissistic and selfish" behavior. Those necessarily preclude the recognition of anyone else's experience mattering one single whit.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Fjandr]

There's something that always gives away someone who doesn't understand the definition of words they use: Using them incorrectly and acting as if there is no other way to use them.

I routinely pay more for many things than I otherwise could, specifically because I wish to promote the model they use as preferable to those which hide their complete (monetary and non-monetary) impact.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Fjandr]

You've got it backward, you run Blender on Linux, not vice versa.

Re:Voting with wallet

[EvilJoker]

MSI is my A-brand these days.

I used to work for an OEM that used a wide variety of MSI parts (as well as other major suppliers)

MSI is *VERY* hit-or-miss. It is very clear that they either have multiple engineering teams (with very different cabilities) or multiple manufacturing processes/facilities (with very different standards)

Some of their products have been absolutely top-notch, better than ASUS or Gigabyte has ever been. Others (most of them, from what I dealt with, but that may be selection bias) were absolute garbage, more on par with ECS or Biostar. That includes their notebooks (ODM stock models, for OEM re-branding)

Re:Voting with wallet

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Extremely Energy Efficient"*

*When compared with hardware requiring a four-post rack and premises wiring upgrades.

Re:Voting with wallet

[DarwinSurvivor]

Correct, I have contributed nothing to the Kernel. I do however contribute to Ubuntu's brainstorm system (as a moderator) and irc channel, arch's wiki (translations), FreeBSD's ports (notmuch mail port) and help to file bug reports on 4+ operating systems whenever necessary.

Tell us: How much have you contributed to slashcode? Zero, right?

Re:Voting with wallet

[rsaralegui]

I have a TP-Link MR3220 with openwrt. With wireless disconnected and external USB Flash plugged in, it draws 4 W (four watt). I installed openwrt in minutes, never had a problem. Very useful in my case for torrenting and having high ratio in private trackers.

Re:Voting with wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a few problems with this thread.

First: Show me a CCNA who makes $250/hr and I'll show you a client who is getting ripped off..

Second: The consumer business unit at Cisco accounted for about 2-3% of the total revenue in April 2011, even before they decided to close the Pure Digital (Flip camera) division. What happens to these product lines makes no difference to the success of Cisco. There is no reason why they would EVER buy Netgear, and IMHO the only reason they probably bought Linksys in the first place was to get wider recognition of the Cisco brand. Now that the Linksys name has been dropped from all the consumer products, I think associating the Cisco name with these poor quality consumer products is certainly causing bad PR for the Cisco brand overall.

Re:Voting with wallet

[robsku]

That would actually be really good idea - it could also be used by UPS to provide electricity from pedaling when possible and to charge it when the power is out.

Re:Voting with wallet

[robsku]

It's a narcissistic and selfish behavior.

Oh really? And cordoning off the "historic park" with barriers and shrink wrap with big "do not touch" signs isn't "narcissistic and selfish behavior"?

How would it be?

Free clue: These "historical places" aren't going to last forever, regardless. The world was put here for us to use and enjoy.

It was put here by whom?

Re:Voting with wallet

[robsku]

I'd vote your post Insightful if I had mod points :)

Re:Voting with wallet

[juancn]

Not really, there are very good router manufacturers, such as TP-Link (it's a chinese brand, but they're really good). Their software is much better than CISCO Linksys or D-Link, and if you don't like it, most support DD-WRT, etc.

Buzzword fixation? What buzzword fixation?

[dkleinsc]

After all, with outside-the-box thinking, we can proactively re-prioritize synergies to get cloud-based enterprise solutions that go viral in mobile social media.

Re:Buzzword fixation? What buzzword fixation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you worry about Planet Express, let me worry about Blank.

Re:Buzzword fixation? What buzzword fixation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Project Jabberwocky, the wave of the future!

Re:Buzzword fixation? What buzzword fixation?

[MozeeToby]

And if you prefer engineering buzzwords, there's always this.

Re:Buzzword fixation? What buzzword fixation?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

After all, with outside-the-box thinking, we can proactively re-prioritize synergies to get cloud-based enterprise solutions that go viral in mobile social media.

Bingo, sir!

Re:Buzzword fixation? What buzzword fixation?

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, with outside-the-box thinking, we can proactively re-prioritize synergies to get cloud-based enterprise solutions that go viral in mobile social media.

Efforting that as we speak, sir.

Re:Buzzword fixation? What buzzword fixation?

[zingfodd]

You forgot to innovate... :)

Don't confuse malice for stupidity...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm pretty sure that this wasn't a case of mere stupidity, brought on by poor, poor, management's exposure to too many buzzwords. This is a straightforward control grab, an overt attempt to turn a low-margin hardware sale into an ongoing data harvesting and customer lock-in opportunity. The putrid buzzwords and condescending infographics are just the cover.

It looks like this would be a very good time for owners of cisco-branded routers to start hitting the OpenWRT, assuming that Cisco hasn't also locked-down or VXworks-ed all of the linksys routers by this time...

Re:Don't confuse malice for stupidity...

[Penguinisto]

Sadly, most folks won't even know about it (or they will have had it sold to them as a good thing(TM, pat.pending). )

This means that most folks will happily continue buying the stupid things as if nothing at all is wrong with doing so. Your only hope os to persuade otherwise, word-of-mouth.

Of course, if you spread this news on enough pr0n sites ("Cisco collects all your browsing information!"), I'm willing to bet that Cisco would likely have their small routers division go bankrupt almost overnight...

Re:Don't confuse malice for stupidity...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid malicitude, probably.

I'm just waiting for...

[ad454]

... my FaceBook router. (Hopefully a FaceBook branded Cisco device.)

Why wouldn't I want FaceBook to intercept all of my Internet traffic? It would allow FaceBook to provide better services and targeted ads just for me. This would be the best solution, until I get that FaceBook brain implant installed.

Re:I'm just waiting for...

[antdude]

And Google router. :P

Re:I'm just waiting for...

[TheGratefulNet]

imagine if AOL wanted to get into the router business.

endlessly dinging, 'You Have Mail!' each time someone tries to connect to your incoming SMTP port.

Another lousy company

[cpu6502]

"The Terms and Conditions of using the Cisco Connect Cloud state that Cisco may unilaterally shut down your account if finds that you have used the service for 'obscene, pornographic, or offensive purposes, to infringe anotherâ(TM)s rights, including but not limited to any intellectual property rights, or⦠to violate, or encourage any conduct that would violate any applicable law or regulation or give rise to civil or criminal liability.'" ---- So basically they'll be watching what we do, and if they don't like it, then they turn-off your Cisco account. Time to add Cisco to my ever-growing list of bad companies:
- Cisco
- Microsoft
- GM
- Ford
- Toyota
- et cetera

Re:Another lousy company

[cpu6502]

Wow:

"IIn some cases, in order to provide an optimal experience on your home network, some updates may still be automatically applied, regardless of the auto-update setting." --- So Cisco will install some updates even when you specifically say no updates. I hope Microsoft or Google doesn't see this, and start updating Windows or Chrome w/o my permission.

Re:Another lousy company

[cusco]

So now that their router is considered to be part of the Cisco Cloud, if I use it to browse porn they have the right to disconnect me? Are you sure Cisco isn't based in Salt Lake City, rather than California?

Re:Another lousy company

[TheDarkMaster]

Wow... Simply wow... If I understand correctly, then Cisco can now decide what you (as a normal user) can access or not with your Cisco/Cisco powered router?

Re:Another lousy company

[msauve]

I hope the US DoJ does see it (they might even prosecute).

"Whoever...knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer...the term 'damage' means any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information;..shall be punished..." - 18 USC 1030 (a "protected computer" includes any involved in interstate commerce - ever used eBay or Amazon?)

Before someone says that users somehow agreed to upgrades, think again. User buys AP/router which has auto-upgrade on by default. Plugs it in and uses it. Upgrade gets automatically applied without authorization, impairing the availability of the system (the article describes how features are removed). Cisco is in criminal violation of federal law.

The described tracking of browsing behavior is another crime - a violation of the ECPA.

Re:Another lousy company

[tomhath]

Not quite. They kick you off the Cisco Cloud, which appears to mean they will also turn off some of the "advanced" features in your router. You'll still have a router, but not necessarily what you thought you would have when you paid for it...

Re:Another lousy company

[fahrbot-bot]

...some updates may still be automatically applied, regardless of the auto-update setting.

Which means they're monitoring your router no matter the local settings.

Re:Another lousy company

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft recently pushed a Windows update to Windows 7 users, even those who had auto update disabled. The update name is Windows Update Agent 7.6.7600.256.

Re:Another lousy company

[BronsCon]

You were going for +5, Funny, right?

Re:Another lousy company

[green1]

I guess you now need to put a firewall in front of your router.... (or buy a more consumer friendly device)

Of course maybe I'm just seeing this from a skewed perspective in my part of the world, but I suspect that the market for stand alone consumer grade routers has probably plummeted recently. All consumer internet packages from any of the major carriers include a "gateway" device instead of a simple modem, these include firewall, NAT, and wired and wireless routing. This means the only people who still have a need for a dedicated router are the more tech-savy people, exactly the people who would be likely to use a router with an open firmware or such.

Re:Another lousy company

[fahrbot-bot]

All consumer internet packages from any of the major carriers include a "gateway" device instead of a simple modem...

I'm a CS professional and only a minor geek, but I purchased not only my own router but cable modem rather than renting or obtaining one "free" from my ISP (Cox). I recommend this approach to friends that ask - and help them with setup if asked. I also don't (and won't) do wireless here at home and have wired my own coax and CAT5 to the TV and to each bedroom - though I only have one TV in the house, I have multiple computers w/Windows, Ubuntu and MythTV....

Re:Another lousy company

[Anonymous Coward]

+5 Paranoid Nutjob, more like it. Yes, on Slashdot, that's a positive moderation.

Re:Another lousy company

[mcavic]

Chrome has always auto-updated without my permission. Imagine my surprise when I see 50% CPU utilization, and I see a Setup.exe running, but I'm not installing anything that I'm aware of.

Re:Another lousy company

[stewbacca]

Curious to know what your gripe is against GM (mine is they make crappy cars), Ford, and Toyota (other than they make soulless cars). I'm pretty sure I can find something "evil" about any "for-profit" company on the planet. It's a matter of tolerable evil for me.

Re:Another lousy company

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a case of silent, unauthorized updates to Windows a while ago. They happened even if Windows Update was (supposedly) disabled. I'd have to search for sources, but it's not like it hasn't happened before.

Re:Another lousy company

[BronsCon]

In the sucurity industry, it's not paranoia, it's job security. :)

Re:Another lousy company

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, a few years back, I had a problem with a Linksys home router... I upgraded the firmware and it broke the WAN-side (outside-internet-side) DHCP lease renewal. So after whatever the timeout was, like 8 or 12 hours, my DHCP address became invalid and my internet service stopped working... Unfortunately, my provider (Comcast) skimped on their hardware. After a few more hours, my invalid WAN-side IP address would start working again. Intermittently. Off and on. Often with traffic coming in on unoccupied ports that was clearly destined for someone else. (There's a reason I no longer have Comcast!)

Took a while to figure out what was broken. I had a wget job in cron to manually renew the lease every few hours for about a year there...

But considering how much trouble that caused, yeah, I can see Cisco thinking it might be nice to push a fix out to all the affected parties rather than watch their screwup melt down ISPs and destroy their reputation across the planet. (Not that their "fix" isn't worse than the problem it was supposed to cure, but... I can see their point of view.)

As for the eavesdropping. Of course it will be abused. But it probably started out with some lawyer putting it in so Cisco couldn't get sued if someone somewhere saw something they shouldn't have. And then the next guy comes along and says "Hey, why don't we use this ability to spy on our customers for financial gain."

More and more, open source seems nicer and nicer....
 

Re:Another lousy company

[stepho-wrs]

damage without authorization

I'm sure the EULA will fill that loophole for them.

Re:Another lousy company

[msauve]

What EULA? There is no EULA. The user isn't making copies of anything. If the argument is that the firmware is copied from flash to RAM, that's fair use - a normal, expected, required part of operation, which the product would be worthless (and therefore unable to fit it's claimed purpose) without.

Re:Another lousy company

[Anonymous Coward]

You clicked "I agree". Case closed. Unfortunately.

Re:Another lousy company

[Kalriath]

You do realise what that update was for right? It's the update that blocks the ability of malware to hijack your Windows Updates as a delivery mechanism. I think it's one of the few updates I'd see as a worthwhile use of that power. You'll also note they never use that ability to push shit like WGA or IE.

Re:Another lousy company

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need a licence to use the copyrighted product, including any copies made to use the product as intended.

Re:Another lousy company

[L4t3r4lu5]

You forgot the 1% Rule;

The rules don't apply to the 1%.

Re:Another lousy company

[Wootery]

So Cisco will install some updates even when you specifically say no updates.

So just block Cisco's update mechanism with your router. Oh, wait...

Seriously though, does anyone know if that would work? If you have the router block all traffic to/from Cisco update, will that block apply to connections initiated by the router itself?

Re:Another lousy company

[Anonymous Coward]

But it runs SOFTWARE! All you need is a EULA on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.

Re:Another lousy company

[green1]

I'm not sure that's even officially allowed where I live. and if not, then it's unlikely that anyone other than true geeks will be doing it.

Re:Another lousy company

[CimmerianX]

>> I guess you now need to put a firewall in front of your router.

A cisco Firewall .. lol

Actually, the firewall would have to allow 443 outbound from the router's IP (I assume the router is NAT'ing). Thus defeating the 'firewall' since the 'router monitoring' will probably be over 443 anyway. It's probably like trying to block Skype.... time for deep packet inspection....

Re:Another lousy company

[green1]

My post was (mostly) in jest... but it is not a problem for a proper firewall to block a specific IP or range of IPs regardless of port, and once you do, you know the router won't be able to change which ones it uses because it won't be getting updates to tell it to do so. (and the cisco router update server being blocked is unlikely to negatively impact anything else a customer is trying to do online)

is this legal in the US ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think I can count the number of privacy laws and consumer protection laws this violates in Europe.

Re:is this legal in the US ?

[Jeng]

It may not be legal, but if the rewards outweigh the fines then companies really do not give a shit if it is legal or not.

The fines are most likely less than the fine for illegally downloading music.

Re:is this legal in the US ?

[Kalriath]

Just be careful - I enquired with our consumer privacy watchdog and actually got a phone call(!) the next day(!!) to tell me that unfortunately if the company has no local presence, they have no ability to prosecute or even investigate (which is odd, since they did get in on that whole "investigate Google" bandwagon).

Re:is this legal in the US ?

[rant64]

When stories like "Cisco consumer products violate privacy" (maybe a bit juicier) start appearing in the news I hope they suffer a lot more damage than just the fines.

Has anyone investigated yet what data is actually transmitted to Cisco's backend?

Next Step is to PS3 Them...

[h2okies]

Count on it...then you don't 'Own' the router you merely pay a fee for the hardware but it wont do much until it connects to the internet to get the latest version of the software. And if you somehow get a 3rd party software to run on it they could then start DMCA proceedings against you. They won't provide services or updates unless you allow to remain connected to the internet. They will absolutely monetize your routing history

Re:Next Step is to PS3 Them...

[h2okies]

Oh I completely forgot the most important issue:

The local FBI, Police, NSA, ....IA,...AA ...will now subpena Cisco for your routing history to convict you of crimes....

Re:Next Step is to PS3 Them...

[PRMan]

Instead of your ISP, which will gladly roll over and give it to them...

Re:Next Step is to PS3 Them...

[SQLGuru]

Except where the ISP has joined the group that only keeps 2 weeks of history........Cisco will have more because it's all marketing data.

EA, not E

[PianoComp81]

The version numbers are the EA-prefixed ones, not the solely E-prefixed ones.

Re:EA, not E

[PRMan]

The version numbers are the LINKSYS-prefixed ones

FTFY

Wait what? My porn.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Cisco may unilaterally shut down your account if finds that you have used the service for “obscene, pornographic, or offensive purposes,...

I use my internet for 2 things, reading slashdot and browsing porn. This would offline 75% of healthy males......

Re:Wait what? My porn.....

[PPH]

offensive purposes,...

Hmm. After the update, I can't reach any GOP campaign or PAC websites.

It's Belkin all over again

[alanw]

It's Belkin all over again

The marketing geniuses at Belkin, the consumer networking vendor, have dreamed up a new form of spam - ads served to your desktop, by way of its wireless router.

Re:It's Belkin all over again

[amicusNYCL]

I was thinking the same thing. That single incident was enough to get me to never purchase a Belkin product. I don't even buy one of their surge protectors if I have an alternative. It looks like Cisco is going on the list too, which is actually sort of shocking. Cisco and Linksys have both been on the tops of their game, it's a pity to lose the expertise they bring to the table because they decided they wanted complete control. I guess that's a strength of the free market though, another company will see a niche market for easy, reliable DIY routers and fill that void (if they aren't already there).

Cisco's statement, straight from the horse's ass

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Cisco's Vice President and General Manager of Home Networking, Brett Wingo said, "Cisco Connect Cloud was delivered only to consumers who opted into automatic updates. However, we apologize that the opt-out process for Cisco Connect Cloud and automatic updates was not more clear in this product release, and we are developing an updated version that will improve this process."

OK, so if I don't buy a Cisco router, do you consider that opting out . . . ?

Thank you

[Kupfernigk]

As a terminology Nazi, Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub, I am delighted that you quoted "monetize". It drives me slightly mad when people misuse it: literally, monetizing a router would mean that you could take a case of them into a bank and exchange them for dollars at some rate (since it is an economics term meaning "to use a particular thing as currency"). Given that the outcome of this is that it will be extremely hard to get people to exchange affected routers for cash, it's doubly inappropriate.

Anyway, thanks again.

Re:Thank you

[Nerdfest]

That's the word the wonderful MBAs use these days. The real meaning of course, is a small short term increase in profit, and a long term effect of turning your former customers against you. They're not concerned about that last part, as they've generally moved on to 'help' the next company.

Re:Thank you

[stewbacca]

I dunno, my OS dictionary says "to express in the terms of currency", which sounds like what it says above to me. I can express the value of a router in currency terms rather easily, actually.

Re:Thank you

[AK Marc]

I always laugh at the anti-education slant on Slashdot. So many rail against the anti-education political actions, but bring up business, and anyone who gets a masters degree in business is dumber for it. Why don't we just make education illegal if it leads to so many problems.

Re:Thank you

[Nerdfest]

It's not education, it's anti short-term "the only thing that matters is the next quarter" thinking. MBAs are not the only ones to blame., CxOs seem to be disposable these days, making some short term changes, cashing in on stocks and bonuses, and leaving a swath of lost R&D opportunities, outsourced labour, and unrealistic expectations in their wake.

Re:Thank you

[AK Marc]

It's democracy in action. When it's one man one vote, we get Bush Jr. in office, followed by Obama. When it's one dollar one vote, we get corporations. Most of the corporations are owned by regular people who voluntarily give their votes away to fund managers. If you want to know the root of the problem in the US,

Cisco is out of grace, Sony style squared.

[Anonymous Coward]

âoeIn some cases, in order to provide an optimal experience on your home network, some updates may still be automatically applied, regardless of the auto-update setting.â

Wow. that is a total killer. Cisco just confessed there device phones home even when you tell it not to.
I will never be able to trust anything Cisco again. at all.

Re:Cisco is out of grace, Sony style squared.

[nurb432]

I will never be able to trust anything Cisco again.

And you did before this? I didn't.

Re:Cisco is out of grace, Sony style squared.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it doesn't phone home. Maybe home phones it. Now, which of your 65,536 ports do you lose to have opened for that?

What did Toyota do?

[Kupfernigk]

I'm curious. The worst thing they do is phone me up and ask when I would like to book my car in for servicing.

Re:What did Toyota do?

[PRMan]

I'm pretty sure they made cars that wouldn't stop and then blamed the drivers for driver error while hiding the source code for about 5 years.

Re:What did Toyota do?

[vlm]

I'm curious. The worst thing they do is phone me up and ask when I would like to book my car in for servicing.

My guess was a couple years ago there was that big scandal where everyone who got themselves into a car crash claimed the car accelerated all on its own, because on TV the night before they saw someone get away with the same story. Once the TV newsies tired of the stories, the "incidents" stopped happening.

Re:What did Toyota do?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that no matter how far down the gas pedal is, no Toyota can overcome the brakes. That WAS driver error... and in the event that those brakes don't work, there is an emergency brake.

Re:What did Toyota do?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that no matter how far down the gas pedal is, no Toyota can overcome the brakes. That WAS driver error... and in the event that those brakes don't work, there is an emergency brake.

No, there is a parking brake. And it's nowhere near strong enough on its own to hold back a car at full throttle.

Re:What did Toyota do?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, there is a parking brake. And it's nowhere near strong enough on its own to hold back a blithering moron at full derp.

Fixed that for you. There's the brake pedal, the parking brake (it'll still slow the car down), defensive driving (that is, steering into something that'll "give", like bushes), and if all else fails, turning off the fucking car. Note that's a very very specific "if all else fails", given that would require the gas pedal in some phantom "held down" state, the brake pedal failing or the brakes being cut, the parking brake failing, AND the driver careening down a mountain highway with nowhere to pull off.

And if you tell me you've got a car where there's no way to turn the damn thing off akin to pulling out the ignition key (i.e. some keyless start bullshit without a safety cutoff), well, that's what the "blithering moron at full derp" part is there for.

Re:What did Toyota do?

[zixxt]

I'm pretty sure they made cars that wouldn't stop and then blamed the drivers for driver error while hiding the source code for about 5 years.

Which ended up being totally not true at all. Just another story the media made up to fill time in the 24 hour news cycle to scare people....

Re:What did Toyota do?

[msauve]

"careening down a mountain highway with nowhere to pull off... turn the damn thing off akin to pulling out the ignition key"

That will work out well when the federally mandated steering wheel lock kicks in.

Re:What did Toyota do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shift into neutral you non driving idiots. Its a wonder you can drive to work without killing yourself.

Re:What did Toyota do?

[cpu6502]

Starting in 1999 they developed a new engine that was fundamentally flawed. It ran too hot and died after only 10,000 to 25,000 miles due to oil sludging. Toyota responded to customer complaints by saying "It's your fault. Your warranty is void," and handing them 5000 to 7500 dollars worth of new engine replacement. This was despite the fact customers had *dealer* records showing the car had all its oil changes performed.

Sometime around 2005 the U.S. government got involved and told Toyota, "You can't just refuse to honor the warranty," and started prosecuting the company. And THAT is why I dislike Toyota. It's a really shitty, shitty thing to do to your customers to stick them with a multi-thousand dollar engine replacement and say, "It's your fault."

Re:What did Toyota do?

[TheGratefulNet]

I don't follow toyota but I did read a lot about VW (and audi) and their oil sludge in the 4cyl turbo cars. lots of blame from dealers on oil. I think even bmw had problems and blamed it on 'US oil standards' claiming they tested on euro oil and 'that was ok, so they shipped the cars'.

Re:What did Toyota do?

[OhPlz]

I doubt it could ever be proven, but I think it had far more to do with Government Motors. Those incidents happened around the time that the domestic car manufacturers were begging for federal bailouts to stay in business. That hysteria was exactly what they needed to drive a scared public away from a very popular foreign company back to the domestic brands. Eventually the federal investigations quietly blamed it on operator error, long after the damage was done.

Re:What did Toyota do?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, there is a parking brake. And it's nowhere near strong enough on its own to hold back a blithering moron at full derp.

Fixed that for you. There's the brake pedal, the parking brake (it'll still slow the car down), defensive driving (that is, steering into something that'll "give", like bushes), and if all else fails, turning off the fucking car. Note that's a very very specific "if all else fails", given that would require the gas pedal in some phantom "held down" state, the brake pedal failing or the brakes being cut, the parking brake failing, AND the driver careening down a mountain highway with nowhere to pull off.

And if you tell me you've got a car where there's no way to turn the damn thing off akin to pulling out the ignition key (i.e. some keyless start bullshit without a safety cutoff), well, that's what the "blithering moron at full derp" part is there for.

Well, I for one am glad you did not over-react to his comments.

But just for your edification, part of the problem is that a lot of new cars are "drive-by-wire", and their software prevents you from doing silly, dangerous things, like putting it in neutral or park while you are moving at speed, or even turning off the ignition while moving.

So, pray tell, if you move the lever to "N" or "P", and that does nothing, and then you turn the key to "OFF", and THAT does nothing, what is your next step? I mean, besides shitting your pants and hanging on for dear life.

Re:What did Toyota do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't you just turn the key off when the throttle's out of control?

The bleeding edge of technologypushing ads

[meta-monkey]

And why do they want to collect data? To push more ads at you. Another poster joked about a "Facebook router," that would push ads at you, and there's another story on the /. front page about Google, and their business model of providing search...so they can push ads at you.

I'm not a knee-jerk "if you're in advertising you should kill yourself!" reactionary, but damn...how is that that the bleeding edge of technology and innovation today, some of the most valuable companies in the world like Google and Facebook...they're not sending men to mars to building flying cars. The best and the brightest and "most innovative" go to work...figuring out better and better ways to sell advertising. It's kind of depressing.

Re:The bleeding edge of technologypushing ads

[cusco]

Selling advertising, or manipulating the stock and bond markets. WTF happened, that the ability to construct a probe that can visit another planet is seen as geeky and boring, while selling trinkets to people who already have a storage unit full of useless crap or scraping an extra 0.002 percent off a trade is somehow innovative and exciting?

Maybe I should just give up on the whole country and retire to Peru.

Re:The bleeding edge of technologypushing ads

[marcosdumay]

Why do everybody assumes that spying is about ads? Is your atention the only valuable thing you have on your mind?

Re:The bleeding edge of technologypushing ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Here here - well said. It seems like one of the big tradeoffs of being on the Internet.

Re:The bleeding edge of technologypushing ads

[phorm]

Well, facebook does provide a "social network" service which is valuable to some (YMMV on how valuable you consider it).

Google provides an OS for phones/tablets, map services, content-delivery services, an huge aggregate of search/etc knowledge, chat/communication, and many others that I'm probably not even aware of.

Both make their money by ad placement and data-mining. However it's not like the ads are what the public is intent on using.

"Upgrade"

[Local ID10T]

This "upgrade" that they performed for me last Tuesday, prompted me to perform an upgrade myself -I installed DD-WRT on my router.

You don't have a facebook brain implant?

[losttoy]

You must be one of those nerdy un-social types. Rest of us already have facebook brain implants.

Re:You don't have a facebook brain implant?

[gman003]

I'm using a Google+ brain implant, you insensitive clod!

Re:You don't have a facebook brain implant?

[Rastl]

I'm using a Google+ brain implant, you insensitive clod!

Kind of a drastic solution to get rid of the voices in your head but hey, if it works for you...

Well Cisco

[Sycraft-fu]

I'd like to thank you for making my next router decision easier. This time around, I had to consider a number of options, your E4200 one of them. In the end, I chose to get it. The combo of simplicity, high speed, and generally low cost made it a winner rather than trying to hack together my own or something like that.

However next time around, you are out of the running. I won't look at your products as this kind of setup is completely unacceptable to me.

So thanks for making my choices simpler. Less options can actually be much easier.

Re:Well Cisco

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Linksys_E4200

End run.

[Anachragnome]

"This is nothing but a shameless attempt to cash in on the popularity of cloud computing, and it comes at a price. The Terms and Conditions of using the Cisco Connect Cloud state that Cisco may unilaterally shut down your account if finds that you have used the service for "obscene, pornographic, or offensive purposes, to infringe another's rights, including but not limited to any intellectual property rights, or... to violate, or encourage any conduct that would violate any applicable law or regulation or give rise to civil or criminal liability.""

This is an end run by the RIAA/MPAA, with the participation of CISCO, to bring anti-piracy measures to your router. Your own router can/will now be used against you to collect evidence of infringement (and who knows what else), as well as giving CISCO full rights of enforcement. Fuck that.

In the future, I will be looking carefully for CISCO branding on products, the sole intention being that of avoidance--CISCO will not be getting any money from me again...ever.

Re:End run.

[Jeng]

Considering how paranoid most network admins are if it does end up that Cisco is spying for whomever pays them then Cisco will lose the majority of their customers and probably end up sued to hell and back.

As far as I can tell there is no upside for Cisco in this.

Re:End run.

[Anachragnome]

"As far as I can tell there is no upside for Cisco in this."

You're just not looking at things from their perspective. Would you like to? Here. This pretty much sums up today's Cisco.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/ps7045/ps6129/ps6133/ps6150/prod_qas0900aecd8041c9d4_ps6151_Products_Q_and_A_Item.html

As you might notice (it isn't that hard to read between the lines in the Q & A), they are discussing a solution to control our connections to the internet--as opposed to merely facilitating it--and do so purely in terms of monitization. Cisco no longer just sells routers, they sell the people using them. There is also stated concern for the interests of both the RIAA and the MPAA on the part of Cisco in that Q & A I linked to.

Re:End run.

[Kalriath]

Well actually you are a conspiracy theorist. The product Q&A you link to is specifically for a single device model - a Service Control device no less, specifically designed to control access to the internet. So, um, obviously it's discussing a solution to control your connection to the internet, since that's exactly what a "Cisco SCE 2000 Series Service Control Engine" is for.

Time to urge retailers to stop selling these?

[Dwedit]

Is it time to urge retailers to stop selling a router that spys on you?

Re:Time to urge retailers to stop selling these?

[Dinghy]

Is it time to urge retailers to stop selling a router that spys on you?

Retailers don't need urging, they follow the dollars. If enough people truly do stop buying these, instead of just righteously proclaiming that on the internet, then they will disappear from shelves. As long as people keep buying them, though, retailers will keep selling them.

Re:Time to urge retailers to stop selling these?

[marcosdumay]

If people stop buying, they'll stop selling.

E3000

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I can log into my E3000; I'm so happy that the net gods decided to permit me to configure my network.

Re:who?

[SQLGuru]

The shareholders.......duh.

Who runs it? The board. http://investor.cisco.com/directors.cfm

But Cisco is the top-level company....not a subsidiary.

What instead of monetize?

[tepples]

What's the correct term that means what people are intending to say when they misuse "monetize"?

Re:What instead of monetize?

[Daniel_Staal]

Rent-seek?

Re:What instead of monetize?

[Kupfernigk]

Profit from.

Re:What instead of monetize?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Sell like the cattle they are", generally.

Re:What instead of monetize?

[PingXao]

I'd like to documentate a response to this. I think "currency performant" works. I can commentate further if you'd like.

Re:What instead of monetize?

[Darinbob]

"Generate direct revenue from some aspect of a project or service that we previously overlooked or were giving away free." The problem is that this is too long and does not adequately hide the actual meaning.

Re:What instead of monetize?

[swalve]

No.

Re:What instead of monetize?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bleed the suckers dry"? ;p

Re:What instead of monetize?

[Fjandr]

Not "buzzy" enough. It has six syllables, thus is vastly beyond the capability of most consumers to understand.

End run-service call.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, that says "the service", not "the router". So don't use there service and you're good to go.

Re:End run-service call.

[Nemesisghost]

But that's just it. Unless you unplug your router from the internet EVERYTIME you need to make a change, you have to use their service. Not only that they are willing to push out changes whether you want them or not.

1 thing's certain from the sound of it

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't sell folks what they don't want.

APK

P.S.=> This is further proof the world's a bit nuts imo: Changing gears SOMEWHAT "off topic" but - look:

---

1.) CISCO doing this (sounds pretty bad).

2.) The entire "cloud" b.s. that's only geared to mainframe/dumb-terminal control & centralization which was tried before & improved on via Client-Server designs, except now, they've finally figured out HOW to get more coins out of the cheaper Client-Server model even more than just through hardware (mainframes can cost more than 'fleets' of PC's) - How? By saving on personnel (easiest cost center to control? Yes. Almost always!). From a business standpoint of view, makes sense up front (until it breaks down).

2.) Microsoft changing a user interface for no good reason (starting with the ribbons even before Windows 8's "metro" look) - I mean, come on: People are used to & grew up w/ the Win9x shell look - why change a proven thing? For phones - Keep "metro" there, sure, makes sense possibly - but not on desktop OS'!

---

I see a lot of unncessary change(s), making people change the way they've been doing things for decades - myself included. I think it's bogus, to be as forthcoming as I can about it & completely unncessary. How can you say you "empower" people, when they get a near Pavlovian dog experience from having to relearn things yet again (& I went from Program Manager to the 9x shell all thru the changes of them both for Windows GUI - this IS the dumbest & most radical yet I feel, from experience).

I also don't think that's going to work out like those doing it think it will, I would say - from experience... rarely does in "round #1", or sometimes, ever... apk

The market is crowded

[jd]

And most shoppers are uninformed, brainless or both. Otherwise, I'd build my own line of routers - beating anything on the market today would be so very easy.

Booth babes

[Anonymous Coward]

"Consumer routers, unfortunately, are neither inherently sexy nor big enough to drape a booth babe over. Even if you somehow manage the latter, it does terrible things to your wireless signal strength. "

Depends on how skinny she is.

Trash

[SuperTechnoNerd]

Open trashcan.
Throw in router.

Counterfeit goods, now this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone remember counterfeit Cisco gear working its way into the market place, including the D.O.D? Now they're implementing absurd 'cloud services' for infrastructure gear that not only locks people out of their equipment, but updates IOS without user authorization?

Whoever is running Cisco or has been running for the past 5-6 years, should not only be fired, but should have any contracts and severance packages forfeited for incompetence. If any of the Board of Directors has been on for that long as well, they should be ousted and all contracts/severance be quashed.

How a major networking company can fall from such grace, see early 2000's, is absolutely unbelievable. Cisco, where did you go wrong? (and it wasn't the purchase of Linksys, which was just a desperate plea into consumer space)

Re:Counterfeit goods, now this?

[QQBoss]

How a major networking company can fall from such grace, see early 2000's, is absolutely unbelievable. Cisco, where did you go wrong? (and it wasn't the purchase of Linksys, which was just a desperate plea into consumer space)

Did you not watch how fast (or seemingly slow, if you were on the inside) Nortel did the death spiral? The entire board of directors and upper management must have been early adopters of bath salts.

Re:Counterfeit goods, now this?

[Kalriath]

Everyone remember counterfeit Cisco gear working its way into the market place, including the D.O.D? Now they're implementing absurd 'cloud services' for infrastructure gear that not only locks people out of their equipment, but updates IOS without user authorization?

No, no they're not. Cloud services are for Linksys shit not Cisco enterprise behemoths.

Besides, updating IOS without user authorisation? They won't update it without wallet authorisation!

Roll your own.

[Anonymous Coward]

cheap x86 hardware + openbsd + ubiquity networks 802.11. Done. For anything mid or high end, Juniper.

openbsd.org
ubnt.com
ewiz.com
newegg.com
juniper.net

Won't be buying...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's great that the news came out when it did. I was planning on purchasing about 2,000+ E4200's for our company. After reading several articles I'll be researching alternative routers.

Re:Won't be buying...

[Kalriath]

It sounds like you were looking at purchasing the wrong product anyway. If you're installing that many routers you should be installing Catalyst switches not Linksys SOHO crap.

Added to my list

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony, Samsung, Cisco.

Will never buy these brands again.

Re:Added to my list

[heritage727]

I have a list like that. Same companies on it, actually. I also have a list of states I would never live in, based on their hateful and/or idiotic policies (Texas, Kansas, Indiana, etc.). My concern is that eventually there will be no place for me to live and I'll have to live there with no electronics.

In Soviet Amerika...

[knorthern knight]

...router configures you.

Is Cisco can do it, who else can?

[time961]

I mean, what a great opportunity for malware distribution, sabotage, spying, etc... Just connect to every "Linksys" router you can find and "upgrade" its firmware yourself! (change them all to DD-WRT, maybe?).

Since experience tells us that mechanisms like this are rarely, if ever, properly secured, this seems like a major security catastrophe in addition to a privacy debacle. Even if sound cryptography and digital signatures are employed to make sure the updates are valid, there may be implementation flaws in the routers, vulnerabilities in Cisco's upgrade servers, key leakage, bad protocol design, etc.

Wow.

hostapd

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy wifi hardware carefully. I learned the hard way that there is such thing as wifi hardware that "sort of works" with Linux, in that it's just fine to put in your workstation to connect to the AP, but can't be used to build an AP. Hostapd requires some kind of functionality that not all drivers have.

I have two PCI cards with two different chipsets, gathering dust because of this bullshit. Maybe these cards are cheap shit (I'll accept that criticism), but they are cheap shit that other newegg users said "works with Linux" or "has drivers in mainline kernel." Tread carefully, AP builders.

dd-wrt

[J'raxis]

Just flashed the last of my routers with dd-wrt today. Will be doing the same with the handful of routers I maintain for others over the next few days. Goodbye, Cisco crap.

Cisco is now on my permanent boycott list, right alongside Belkin.

Re:dd-wrt

[Anonymous Coward]

Who does the router evaluations?
Just draw up another selection matrix
include one called 'No external dependancies'

Then tell the Router saleperson their product is now worth 30% less, because if an earthquake hit, you would be exposed and vulnerable. Too bad - product Y now gets you money.

Raspberry challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like a job for a dual/quad ethernet raspberry setup. Is there someone that could build such a beast and make it open source?

Re:Raspberry challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

Raspberry router, now that's a very good idea. It's low-cost, fast, small and requires very little power.

oh! oh! Sue me! I wanna be sued! Over here!

[PMuse]

Now, the MPIAA can go sue Cisco for infringement whenever Cisco had control of the infringing router, knew or should have known of the infringement, and didn't act quickly enough to prevent it.

Grand Canyon?

[lpt1]

Wouldn't everyone taking a rock from the ground in the Grand Canyon result in...A "Grander" Canyon?

Try a DreamPlug as the ultimate router....

[Rambo]

15 watts max power dissipation, runs 1.2GHz ARM processor w/Debian or Ubuntu. Has dual 1GbE ports, eSATA, SDHC, (Internal 4GB microSD w/OS/kernel), 2 USB host, 512MB of RAM. Oh and it has built-in audio in/out, optical (SPDIF) audio out, Bluetooth 3.0, and Wifi B/G/N that automatically configures itself as a bridging access point. $159 here: http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-54-dreamplug-devkit.aspx

I have nothing to do with the company, just a happy customer. Using the latest Debian repos make updates a breeze and with that amount of RAM it has no problems running anything you'd every need for routing/file services/print/etc. I use one at work and have been meaning to get another for home use as my DD-WRT is getting a little long in the tooth.

How to roll back

[synapse7]

Somebody should let the people that unplugged their wan connection know.

Link

Clause-final prepositions

[tepples]

Replacing a transitive, such as misused "monetize", with an intransitive plus preposition, such as "profit from", is fine for the active voice. But in the passive voice, *"How can this be monetized?" would become "How can this be profited from?", which breaks some grammar National Socialists' "Dryden rule" against clause-final prepositions.

Further research needed

[Anonymous Coward]

neither inherently sexy nor big enough to drape a booth babe over.

I don't think the author has fully documented his article. I'll have to do further research.

Local DNS

[Compaqt]

Speaking of which, does whatever type of router you're using now support local DNS?

I've run into that problem with the ubiquitous Netgear WGR614.

It does remote DNS, so it knows, or passes on, the IP address of remote hosts (like google.com, or whatever).

It does DHCP, so it knows what every local host's name and IP is.

But it won't tell you that if you ask.

So, effectively, if you want to access hosts on the LAN by name, you can't use the router's DHCP.

Anybody know of a cheap router that also does DNS?

Re:Local DNS

[pnutjam]

Check this out: http://routerboard.com/RB951-2n

You can get them for less then $45 online and they run a customized linux kernel. These are powerfull little routers.

CISCO controlled botnet.

[iiiears]

Will your endpoint IP be sold as a tool in the war to fight cartel bot nets?

What happens when the weakness in the update system is found and exploited?

Will you know if your hardware is "clean" after reflashing?

Re:CISCO controlled botnet.

[iiiears]

U.S. governement mandates backdoors for CALEA acces in all CISCO(IOS) routers.
https://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/router-backdoors-hacked-by-chinese-part-2/926

Re:Duopoly it is not... There are many good router

[vfp_php]

What "duopoly" of router manufacturers? Everyone is talking about going for Linksys, Netgear, D-Link or Belkin, (or Asus) or having to build your own... There are many other GREAT router manufacturers out there that don't make the dumbed-down interfaces that Linksys etc are known for... Some of my favorites: Ubiquiti Mikrotik Engenius Just by a piece of CPE and configure it to your needs... You'll find that their Wi-Fi radio is about 20x more powerful than the average Linksys (400mw instead of 20mw), and you have more adjustments available than on a typical consumer router. Plus, they don't crash.

Some respect

[zyzko]

I dislike what Cisco had done on this case, really, really bad,

But geek-rage has gone over the top here, people are calling a Cisco employee a "dumb whore" on their Facebook page, how mature is that?

Rolling back the Cisco Connect Cloud firmware

[dicktater]

Freeing your router from Cisco\u2019s anti-porn, pro-copyright cloud service - Ars Technica
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/freeing-your-router-from-ciscos-anti-porn-pro-copyright-cloud-service/

How to roll back the Cisco Cloud Connect Firmware Update
http://www.ghacks.net/2012/07/05/how-to-roll-back-the-cisco-cloud-connect-firmware-update/

Rolling back the Cisco Connect Cloud firmware to the Classic EA Series router web interface - Cisco Knowledgebase Article ID: 25856
http://tinyurl.com/7km4sgt

WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

My jaw dropped when I read this. Who the FRAK do they think they are?!

Someone needs to punch their CEO in the throat. I'm not even joking.