How did Netgear do it? Nobody’s saying.

The United States’ foreign router ban didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and today may not change that.

The FCC has just granted Netgear a conditional approval to import its future consumer routers, cable modems, and cable gateways into the US through October 1st, 2027 — even though the company builds those devices in Asia and has not announced any plan to bring manufacturing to the United States.

Neither the FCC’s announcement nor Netgear’s announcement explain why Netgear was granted the temporary exemption. The FCC only states that the Pentagon has now made “a specific determination” that “such devices do not pose risks to U.S. national security.”

  • cobysev@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    1 day ago

    I just got an email from NETGEAR about this. (Yes, they insisted on capitalizing every letter of their brand name)

    Which was concerning, because I haven’t bought a NETGEAR product in well over a decade and a half and am adamant about blocking ads and junk mail. How did I get on a mailing list for their company?

    Personally, seeing a message like this immediately tells me they’re no longer a brand I can trust. I’m gonna keep using my old routers as long as I can.

    Interestingly enough, my ISP forced me to upgrade my modem to theirs last year, claiming that I can’t use a commercial modem because none are made that interface with their company’s technology. Once I installed their modem, my VPN refused to connect over WiFi to the new modem. And several of my WiFi devices just refused to connect in general, including security cameras around my house.

    Thankfully, I have an old WiFi router that I use internally in my network and my VPN still works with that. So I’m basically routing all my Internet traffic through an old router, which is set up as a bridge and physically connected to my new modem. It’s the only way I can get reliable, stable, secure Internet in my home. Here’s hoping the old router lasts for a very long time.

    • Burninator05@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      1 day ago

      I had a coworker move into a new house recently and had several WTF moments. The ISP is provided through the HOA, the house is wired for ethernet but a tech had to come out to enable a port, and they are limited in the number of wifi connected devices.

      Honestly, the first one would have been enough for me to not buy the house and the second and third ones would make me find a new ISP.

      • kungen@feddit.nu
        1·
        1 day ago

        The first part isn’t that unusual, and then it leads to the second part being provisioning the CPE (weird to not do it remote, but they probably get some kickbacks from the HOA). And then the last part sounds like user-error/bad business practices (because how’s an ISP supposed to limit the number of devices when everything goes through my own router?)

        But I agree, that’s not very nice and I wouldn’t want to live there either.