The US claims foreign-made routers pose national security risks.

In December, the Federal Communications Commission banned all future drones made in foreign countries from being imported into the United States, unless or until their maker gets an exemption. Now, the FCC has done the exact same for consumer networking gear, citing “an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons.”

If you already have a Wi-Fi or wired router, you can keep on using it — and companies that have already gotten FCC radio authorization for a specific foreign-made product can continue to import that product.

But since the vast majority — if not all — consumer routers are manufactured outside the United States, the vast majority of future consumer routers are now banned. By adding all foreign-made consumer routers to its Covered List, the FCC is saying it will no longer authorize their radios, which de facto bans new devices from import into the country.

  • Imaginary_Stand4909@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 days ago

    So… can I still flash custom firmware like OPNsense and Openwrt on them? Cause I literally just posted about hardware decision a few days ago 😭

    Edit: It seems the article and actual FCC document will leave previous router models alone, but anything newer is cooked… Even the US brands like Cisco aren’t actually manufactured here because we fucking outsource evrything. I hate this government.

        • eli@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Yeah this is where I’m at. Even an old thin client with like 4 cores and 8GBs of RAM is more than enough for the majority of home users. Find one with two NICs or a small pcie slot, slap in a 4 port and you’re smooth sailing.

          I plan on building exactly this soon and throw opnsense on it