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

Posted by samzenpus on 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."

16 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. Voting with wallet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Will never buy from again...

    1. Re:Voting with wallet by MightyMartian · · 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.
    2. Re:Voting with wallet by vlm · · 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
    3. Re:Voting with wallet by SJHillman · · 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.

    4. Re:Voting with wallet by cusco · · 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
    5. Re:Voting with wallet by vlm · · 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
    6. Re:Voting with wallet by pak9rabid · · 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).

    7. Re:Voting with wallet by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 5, Funny

      I run my laptop with a stationary bike.

    8. Re:Voting with wallet by Shark · · 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...
  2. Buzzword fixation? What buzzword fixation? by dkleinsc · · 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/
  3. Don't confuse malice for stupidity... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · 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...

  4. I'm just waiting for... by ad454 · · 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.

  5. It's Belkin all over again by alanw · · 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.

  6. Re:is this legal in the US ? by Jeng · · 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.

    --
    Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
  7. Re:Another lousy company by msauve · · 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
  8. End run. by Anachragnome · · 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.