[Baylisa] Interesting reactions to Cisco/Linksys goings-on

Mon Jul 9 21:20:22 PDT 2012

On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 8:39 PM, Robert Novak <rnovak at indyramp.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 8:29 PM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
>> Quoting David Wolfskill (david at catwhisker.org):
>>
>>> Someone at work [disclosure: my employer considers Cisco its biggest
>>> competitor] directed our attention to
>>> <http://boingboing.net/2012/07/03/cisco-locks-customers-out-of-t.html>.
>>>
>>> Some of that material may well be of interest to folks involved in
>>> BayLISA.
>>
>> And in conclusion, how 'bout that OpenWRT?  ;->
>
> Only the latest EA-series routers were affected by this "feature"
> rollout. And I don't see those routers on the OpenWRT (or DDWRT)
> lists.
>
> So those of you with open firmware capable Linksys gear would have
> been safe anyway, and those of you with the most recent 2-3 models,
> well, you'll be able to roll back this change and hope for Marvell
> chipset support, from what I'm reading.
>
> Curse, or blessing, little of column A, little of column B either way
> I guess. :)

Some of each, I'd agree. The automatic firmware upgrade feature and
the ability to keep the entire configuration not only backed up, but
easily pulled down to a replacement router is actually probably pretty
useful for a lot of small businesses who don't really have dedicated
people handling their networks. The EA series are aimed at small
enterprises who're too small to have someone screwing around with IOS
alll day, but wanting more than the usual SOHO routing toasters. OTOH,
even some of them likely have use for routers that aren't internet
connected, and the new firmware apparently crippled a lot of the EA's
administrative abilities when in "offline" mode.

Mostly just a PR disaster for Cisco that they rolled it out without
warning anyone or explaining it all ahead of time, creating a lot of
confusion, I'd say.