Netgear is the first company to receive conditional approval to sell its routers in the US following a recent FCC ban.
  • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20 minutes

    My NetGear router still has a uselessly incomplete implementation of VLANs after 5+ years of updates, I was ready to replace it out of frustration. Gen 6 wireless is getting old hat anyway

  • 4grams@awful.systemsEnglish
    2 hours

    boy, I wonder what palantir backdoors they definitely won’t have.

    • TransNeko@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13 hours

      It could be worse… we could be living the alternate watchdogs legion timeline… where Albion wins.

  • Cherry@piefed.socialEnglish
    14 hours

    And looks like netgear is off my list of trustworthiness. Used them for 20 years. Best get looking for a new one.

  • sakphul@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    13 hours

    Still need to wait for more details on what Netgear agreed on with the FCC to get the conditional approval. Otherwise it is hard to evaluate if this is a good or bad thing.

  • halcyoncmdr@piefed.socialEnglish
    20 hours

    So you now can be absolutely certain that Netgear is actively and openly giving fascist authoritarians what they want.

    At least before you could be fairly certain it was just the secretive three letter guys that roughly knew what they were doing at least. Now it’s even the blatant dumb fucks in charge.

  • nbailey@lemmy.caEnglish
    17 hours

    The cool thing is that you can make basically any combination of parts into a router if you install Linux or BSD on it. Not terribly helpful for end user consumers that will get shafted by this, but at the end of the day it’s just a small computer.

    Otherwise, smuggle some “foreign routers” in from Mexico or Canada like it’s the prohibition era?

  • stumu415@lemmy.zipEnglish
    19 hours

    Definitely will have no backdoor or monitoring installed as default.

  • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
    20 hours

    It’s not clear what makes Netgear’s currently foreign-made routers safer than, say, an Amazon Eero 7 or a Google Nest WiFi Pro.

    This is all evidence that it’s not really about safety. It’s a clumsy attempt to strongarm tech companies into setting up factories in the USA. It may also be an attempt to create an environment in which it’s easier to install US government backdoors on every home router.

    • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4 hours

      It’s a clumsy attempt to strongarm tech companies into setting up factories in the USA

      Evidently not since Netgear has zero factories in the USA and plans to bring zero factories to the USA in the future.

      It may also be an attempt to create an environment in which it’s easier to install US government backdoors on every home router.

      It’s this one.

      • MintyFresh@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3 hours

        As well as a clumsy attempt to thwart foreign back doors. Unless they’ve paid for them. Or are Israel.

    • msage@programming.devEnglish
      14 hours

      But how hilarious it is that Google and Amazon, already bending the knee to the emperor, did not get a pass.

  • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19 hours

    TrendNet is far superior and based on Torrence anyway. Netgear and Linksys are junk anyway. Get yourself an open hardware platform, or something that can run OpenWRT. Skip the corporate manufacturers who all kind of suck.

  • yardratianSoma@lemmy.caEnglish
    17 hours

    Not surprising . . . . .and this still does nothing to help domestic network device production in the US, since Netgear outsources their manufacturing to Taiwan.

    • sunbeam60@feddit.ukEnglish
      13 hours

      The very same trade negotiations where all other countries have basically taken the stance that “we’ll just grin and bear it and wait for three years until he’s gone”. The EU is currently accepting 15% tariffs on their goods and mandating no tariffs in return.

  • Em Adespoton@lemmy.caEnglish
    20 hours

    Er, there’s at least 5 consumer router manufacturers that meet the new requirements. Interestingly, one of them is TP-Link.