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

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

Posted by samzenpus on Monday July 2, 2012 @07:20AM from the good-idea-bad-idea dept.

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."

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Voting with wallet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-02 07:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

Will never buy from again...
1. Re:Voting with wallet by i+kan+reed · 2012-07-02 07:29 · Score: 2
  
  Well, as long as you buy from the remaining duopoly of router manufacturers.
2. Re:Voting with wallet by MightyMartian · 2012-07-02 07:33 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
3. Re:Voting with wallet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-02 07:37 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  (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.
4. Re:Voting with wallet by icebike · 2012-07-02 07:44 · Score: 2
  
  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.
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
5. Re:Voting with wallet by SJHillman · 2012-07-02 07:44 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  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)
6. Re:Voting with wallet by vlm · 2012-07-02 07:44 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  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.
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
7. Re:Voting with wallet by vlm · 2012-07-02 07:49 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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.
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
8. Re:Voting with wallet by SJHillman · 2012-07-02 07:50 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
9. Re:Voting with wallet by MightyMartian · 2012-07-02 07:56 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  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.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
10. Re:Voting with wallet by cusco · 2012-07-02 07:58 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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.
  
  --
  "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
11. Re:Voting with wallet by vlm · 2012-07-02 07:59 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
12. Re:Voting with wallet by rhook · 2012-07-02 08:03 · Score: 2
  
  ThinkPad W Series power adapters can pull 170watts.
  http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product-and-parts/detail.page?&LegacyDocID=MIGR-76762
13. Re:Voting with wallet by BagOBones · 2012-07-02 08:06 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Dd-wrt and tomato-USB firmware builds run on several buffalo and asus brand routers.
  Buffalo even ships dd-wrt on select units.
  
  --
  EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
14. Re:Voting with wallet by pak9rabid · 2012-07-02 08:07 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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).
15. Re:Voting with wallet by icebike · 2012-07-02 08:08 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
16. Re:Voting with wallet by gman003 · 2012-07-02 08:11 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  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.
17. Re:Voting with wallet by icebike · 2012-07-02 08:12 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
18. Re:Voting with wallet by icebike · 2012-07-02 08:15 · Score: 2
  
  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.
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
19. Re:Voting with wallet by MickyTheIdiot · 2012-07-02 08:21 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I run my laptop with a stationary bike.
20. Re:Voting with wallet by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2012-07-02 08:22 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  "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...
21. Re:Voting with wallet by Bert64 · 2012-07-02 08:40 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  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).
  
  --
  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
22. Re:Voting with wallet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-02 08:44 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  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.
23. Re:Voting with wallet by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2012-07-02 08:44 · Score: 2
  
  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?
24. Re:Voting with wallet by FireFury03 · 2012-07-02 08:55 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  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.
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
25. Re:Voting with wallet by LocalH · 2012-07-02 08:59 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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?
  
  --
  FC Closer
26. Re:Voting with wallet by synapse7 · 2012-07-02 09:04 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  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
27. Re:Voting with wallet by WhiteWolf666 · 2012-07-02 09:11 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  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.
  
  --
  WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
28. Re:Voting with wallet by pak9rabid · 2012-07-02 09:23 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  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.
29. Re:Voting with wallet by Shark · 2012-07-02 09:28 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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.
  
  --
  Mind the frickin' laser...
30. Re:Voting with wallet by tburkhol · 2012-07-02 09:31 · Score: 2
  
  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.
31. Re:Voting with wallet by jamesh · 2012-07-02 10:11 · Score: 2
  
  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.
32. Re:Voting with wallet by hawguy · 2012-07-02 11:33 · Score: 2
  
  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)
33. Re:Voting with wallet by lessthan · 2012-07-02 11:38 · Score: 2
  
  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.
  
  --
  Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
34. Re:Voting with wallet by Afecks · 2012-07-02 12:52 · Score: 2
  
  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.
35. Re:Voting with wallet by Grishnakh · 2012-07-02 13:42 · Score: 2
  
  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.
36. Re:Voting with wallet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-02 14:51 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Yes, but did you try MyCleanPC?
37. Re:Voting with wallet by clarkn0va · 2012-07-02 15:28 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  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.
  
  --
  I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
38. Re:Voting with wallet by arglebargle_xiv · 2012-07-02 18:31 · Score: 2
  
  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.
39. Re:Voting with wallet by Kalriath · 2012-07-02 18:35 · Score: 2
  
  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!"
  
  --
  For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
40. Re:Voting with wallet by BeardedChimp · 2012-07-02 21:07 · Score: 2
  
  Also make sure that the linux drivers can put the usb card into master mode, a considerable amount can't be.
Buzzword fixation? What buzzword fixation? by dkleinsc · 2012-07-02 07:28 · Score: 5, Funny

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.

--
I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
1. Re:Buzzword fixation? What buzzword fixation? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-02 07:29 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Don't you worry about Planet Express, let me worry about Blank.
2. Re:Buzzword fixation? What buzzword fixation? by MozeeToby · 2012-07-02 07:46 · Score: 2
  
  And if you prefer engineering buzzwords, there's always this.
3. Re:Buzzword fixation? What buzzword fixation? by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2012-07-02 07:54 · Score: 2
  
  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!
  
  --
  
  "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Don't confuse malice for stupidity... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2012-07-02 07:30 · Score: 5, Interesting

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...
1. Re:Don't confuse malice for stupidity... by Penguinisto · 2012-07-02 07:40 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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...
  
  --
  Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I'm just waiting for... by ad454 · 2012-07-02 07:32 · Score: 5, Funny

... 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.
Another lousy company by cpu6502 · 2012-07-02 07:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

"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, orâ¦ 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

--
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
1. Re:Another lousy company by cpu6502 · 2012-07-02 07:42 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  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.
  
  --
  My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
2. Re:Another lousy company by msauve · 2012-07-02 08:02 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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.
  
  --
  "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
3. Re:Another lousy company by tomhath · 2012-07-02 08:02 · Score: 2
  
  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...
4. Re:Another lousy company by L4t3r4lu5 · 2012-07-02 21:11 · Score: 2
  
  You forgot the 1% Rule;
  
  The rules don't apply to the 1%.
  
  --
  Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Next Step is to PS3 Them... by h2okies · 2012-07-02 07:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

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

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Beware the Lollipop of Mediocrity, Lick it once and you suck forever.
1. Re:Next Step is to PS3 Them... by h2okies · 2012-07-02 07:42 · Score: 2
  
  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....
  
  --
  Beware the Lollipop of Mediocrity, Lick it once and you suck forever.
EA, not E by PianoComp81 · 2012-07-02 07:41 · Score: 3, Informative

The version numbers are the EA-prefixed ones, not the solely E-prefixed ones.
It's Belkin all over again by alanw · 2012-07-02 07:42 · Score: 5, Interesting

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:is this legal in the US ? by Jeng · 2012-07-02 07:43 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Cisco's statement, straight from the horse's ass by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2012-07-02 07:46 · Score: 4, Insightful

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 . . . ?

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Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Thank you by Kupfernigk · 2012-07-02 07:46 · Score: 2

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.

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From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
1. Re:Thank you by Nerdfest · 2012-07-02 07:59 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
The bleeding edge of technologypushing ads by meta-monkey · 2012-07-02 07:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
1. Re:The bleeding edge of technologypushing ads by cusco · 2012-07-02 08:18 · Score: 2
  
  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.
  
  --
  "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
"Upgrade" by Local+ID10T · 2012-07-02 07:57 · Score: 4, Informative

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

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"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Well Cisco by Sycraft-fu · 2012-07-02 08:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

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:What did Toyota do? by vlm · 2012-07-02 08:09 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

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"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
End run. by Anachragnome · 2012-07-02 08:11 · Score: 5, Insightful

"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.
1. Re:End run. by Jeng · 2012-07-02 08:50 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  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.
  
  --
  Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
2. Re:End run. by Anachragnome · 2012-07-02 12:58 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  "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:You don't have a facebook brain implant? by gman003 · 2012-07-02 08:12 · Score: 4, Funny

I'm using a Google+ brain implant, you insensitive clod!
Re:You don't have a facebook brain implant? by Rastl · 2012-07-02 08:38 · Score: 4, Funny

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...
Re:What instead of monetize? by Daniel_Staal · 2012-07-02 08:40 · Score: 2

Rent-seek?

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'Sensible' is a curse word.
Re:What did Toyota do? by msauve · 2012-07-02 09:41 · Score: 2

"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.

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"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Re:What instead of monetize? by Darinbob · 2012-07-02 10:27 · Score: 3, Insightful

"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.
Is Cisco can do it, who else can? by time961 · 2012-07-02 10:57 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.
dd-wrt by J'raxis · 2012-07-02 12:07 · Score: 2

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.

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Liberty in your lifetime
Grand Canyon? by lpt1 · 2012-07-02 14:33 · Score: 2

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