Cisco to Kill Linksys Brand Name

Mav sent in this article that opens, "In a roundtable with the European press, John Chambers confirmed the "end of life" of the Linksys name, being replaced by the new and redesigned Cisco branding." He explains, "It will all come over time into a Cisco brand. The reason we kept Linksys' brand because it was better known in the US than even Cisco was for the consumer. As you go globally there's very little advantage in that."

Name Recognition

[Gaspo]

Cisco definately does have name recognition amongst most consumers. I work retail at a location which sells a lot of networking equipment, and whenever people ask "What's this Linksys stuff?", I always respond that they're a division of Cisco. Most of the time, that gets a favorable response, and I see a good bit of Linksys hardware leave the shelf because of that fact. A good move by Cisco.

What's in a name

[Anonymous Coward]

Cisco has a good reputation in networking. Linksys, by my experience anyway, has one of the worst. If Cisco are going to badge Linksys products under the name "Cisco" they had better improve the service and quality of the linksys products. If not, when teenagers and uni students are buying networking equipment, the first experience they will have with Cisco will be a bad one and forever tarnish the brand.

Just take a look at all the complaints around the SRW2008MP ( which I recently regret purchasing ). Unless you have internet explorer, forget about trying to use WebView to configure it. It won't work with any other browser, so forget trying to use Linux of Mac or BSD or anything else. You are FORCED to have a MS Windows machine to configure it.

But I here you say, "It also comes with a serial port for configuration." Nope, that doesn't provide full capability to configure it either.

Re:So what happens now

[JimDaGeek]

Huh? Are you for real? I have owned 3 Linksys-based Cable/DSL routers. The first two I purchased were based on Linux and I found them to work very well. When the two Linux-based Linksys routers I owned started to show their age, I was able to find a nice firmware update that has allowed me, as a paying customer, to enjoy my product for longer and add some more features.

We all know that over-paid execs don't want customers ("consumers" to them) to enjoy products for any longer than need be. With that said, my latest "Linksys" cable/dsl router whivh is now Cisco branded and has a different non-Linux firmware just sucks. I have had issues with systems not getting an IP, wireless not working, slow network speeds on an 8 Mbps connection and all other crap. Switching back to an earlier Linksys model fixes things right up.

Re:Well, that could be interesting.

[Emetophobe]

I always thought the Linksys WRT54G(L/S) was a great piece of hardware. Admitedly, the default Linksys firmware was garbage. That's why there's custom firmware like DD-WRT or OpenWRT. Cisco should have bought DD-WRT or OpenWRT and used that instead of their own firmware, that would've been a good start.

More on topic, I really don't see the point of giving up a well established brand like Linksys. It already says "A Division of Cisco" with the Cisco bridge logo on both the retail box and router itself. Isn't that good enough?

Re:So what happens now

[DMUTPeregrine]

This is true. But they still sell one with the extra memory as the WRT54GL. (L for Linux.)

Re:So what happens now

[bcat24]

Actually, there are a lot more than two different versions of the WRT54G (and its sister the WRT54GS), with many different specifications. Here's a nearly complete list [linksysinfo.org]. I think it's missing a few of the newest versions, but they run the sucky VxWorks firmware, not Linux. (Some smart people have actually found a way to replace VxWorks with Linux, but the new models are so limited memory-wise that it really isn't useful.)

Also, the WRT54GL is basically a WRT54G version 4. It's the safest bet if you want a new router to run custom Linux firmware on.

Re:So what happens now

[Tony Hoyle]

But definitely not professional Cisco quality!! I think Cisco should be careful, there is the chance they are dilluting their professional brand recognition with these low-cost, low-quality consumer products.

If you'd ever used cisco stuff you'd know that they're popular not because of their quality but because of their support. IOS has persistent issues with bugs, and it's not unusual for them to release hardware that doesn't work properly (the first 87x routers for example had a buggy DSL implementation that couldn't hold sync, making them pretty useless. I had 5 swapouts on one unit alone before they admitted that none of them worked...