Wi-Fi Giant TP-Link's US Future Hinges on Its Claimed Split From China (bloomberg.com) 41
The ubiquitous but often overlooked Wi-Fi router lies at the heart of one of Washington's biggest national security dilemmas -- and a rift between two brothers on opposite sides of the Pacific. From a report: US investigators are probing the China ties of TP-Link, the new American incarnation of a consumer Wi-Fi behemoth, following its rapid growth and a spate of cyber attacks by Chinese state-sponsored actors targeting many router brands. The inquiry is testing whether TP-Link's corporate makeover represents enough of a divorce from China to spare it from a ban in a crucial market.
While TP-Link's recent restructuring split the company into separate US- and China-headquartered businesses, a Bloomberg News investigation found that the resulting American venture still has substantial operations in mainland China. If US officials conclude TP-Link's China connections pose an "unacceptable risk," they could use a powerful new authority to ban the company from the US. Such an outcome could also unravel plans by the owner of its US business, Jeffrey Chao, to start fresh in California following an estrangement from his older brother, who started the router business with him in Shenzhen nearly three decades ago.
In an interview -- the first Jeffrey Chao said he has ever given -- he told Bloomberg he's quitting China. He opened a new headquarters in Irvine last year and said he will invest $700 million in the US to build a factory and jumpstart research and development on highly secure routers while awaiting the green card he said he applied for in January. He has also traded his perch in a Hong Kong skyscraper for a 1980s-era split-level near his office, joined a neighborhood evangelical church, and is now eyeing a Cadillac Escalade for road trips, he said, burnishing his American credentials. "I know the current relationship between the US and China is complex," Chao said in the interview last month. "I have chosen the US."
While TP-Link's recent restructuring split the company into separate US- and China-headquartered businesses, a Bloomberg News investigation found that the resulting American venture still has substantial operations in mainland China. If US officials conclude TP-Link's China connections pose an "unacceptable risk," they could use a powerful new authority to ban the company from the US. Such an outcome could also unravel plans by the owner of its US business, Jeffrey Chao, to start fresh in California following an estrangement from his older brother, who started the router business with him in Shenzhen nearly three decades ago.
In an interview -- the first Jeffrey Chao said he has ever given -- he told Bloomberg he's quitting China. He opened a new headquarters in Irvine last year and said he will invest $700 million in the US to build a factory and jumpstart research and development on highly secure routers while awaiting the green card he said he applied for in January. He has also traded his perch in a Hong Kong skyscraper for a 1980s-era split-level near his office, joined a neighborhood evangelical church, and is now eyeing a Cadillac Escalade for road trips, he said, burnishing his American credentials. "I know the current relationship between the US and China is complex," Chao said in the interview last month. "I have chosen the US."
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I get it, foreigners are always super conniving and playing 3D chess. Racism is a helluva drug.
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Elaborate.
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And we're supposed to trust an AC?
TP-Link reputation (Score:2)
This is the manufacturer of easily-compromised crappy consumer networking gear, right?
I doubt a 'divorce' from China will make their brand any more appealing to me.
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Agreed. They don't have a particularly good track record in that regard.
Would I use one of their cheap-o unmanged ethernet switches in somewhere in a home environment for non-critical purposes? Um...sure. Wifi or anything with a management interface...nope.
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This is the manufacturer of easily-compromised crappy consumer networking gear, right?
Unless one of the agencies knows of a specific zero-day (which they might, but we will never know), TP-Link would appear to just be one more crappy consumer networking gear vendor that ends up having security vulnerabilities (not appreciably better or worse than others), not that major vendors (including security solution vendors, who really should be focused on security, including in their own products) have had a few good years either.
I have never owned a TP-Link product, and likely never will, but tha
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I have never owned a TP-Link product, and likely never will, but that is mostly because their products are not really exceptional compared to their competitors (they are neither significantly cheaper or significantly better).
Their PoE switches tend to be slightly cheaper and quite a bit more capable. 250W of PoE on all 24 ports for $225 [amazon.com]. The closest equivalent from Netgear is about $15 more, has PoE on only 16 of the ports, so you have to pay attention to what you're plugging in where, and provides only 190W across them.
To put that into context, the TP-Link can power 8 PTZ cameras instead of 6, doesn't force you to plug powered devices into specific ports, and still costs less.
Mind you, I prefer my Cisco CBS switch by far,
Re:TP-Link reputation (Score:5, Insightful)
They make great hardware... to install OpenWRT on.
Will still be made in China (Score:3)
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Even if it was "made here", the H-1Bs designing it would be imported.
That's the current government's vision for the US economy - assuming there is a vision, and they're not just monkeys throwing feces at each other on Twitter.
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To be fair, and we should aim to be fair... right?, that's every US government's policy for the last 50 years. And it's what makes the US an economic powerhouse.
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It seems like a lot of people want those pre-powerhouse days. I'm not sure that that's the right way to look at it, but I do have to question what the purpose of being a powerhouse is, if people's lives get worse at the same time.
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But what causes those people's lives to get worse?
Is it that, or something else? Is it offshoring, instead of attracting talent?
If you offshore, all tax revenue for all those employees goes to the offshored country. All local spending from those employees goes to the local economy.
If you import talent, taxes and spending are often local. Even if some money is being sent home, housing and local costs are still spent in the local community. Not to mention, working local improves the local skills of all in
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If it runs a version of Linux, does anyone care? The mistakes in the actual functionality of these devices are found quickly. The tools to decompile are so good these days not much gets past security researchers.
It is a collection of chips from a Broadcom design standard, perhaps with a CPU by Intel, memory made in Vietnam, who the hell cares where it is assembled? Slap a made in Taiwan or Vi
Buy openwrt One and Two (Score:2)
And forget about China!
Re: Buy openwrt One and Two (Score:2)
Well, he bought an Escalade and a split level, do those count? Because he ditched China...
Did they suddenly move manufacturing? (Score:3)
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Years ago, there was some company planning mobile manufacturing by building their factory in a large ship and just docking wherever the conditions were most profitable for them.
I bet they're kicking themselves for never actually following through on that.
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>"Then probably not - oh they claim to manufacture in Vietnam - enjoy that 46% tariff."
I think you mean 10% as of two days ago. You aren't keeping up. Not that it is easy to keep up with this stuff.
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I think you mean 10% as of two days ago. You aren't keeping up. Not that it is easy to keep up with this stuff.
While we're discussing numbers changing by-the-minute this seems like a good time to mention that DOGE has re-set its 2 trillion dollar goal to 150 billion by the end of the year.
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>"Then probably not - oh they claim to manufacture in Vietnam - enjoy that 46% tariff."
I think you mean 10% as of two days ago. You aren't keeping up. Not that it is easy to keep up with this stuff.
No one can claim with any confidence as to what the various tax rates will eventually end up being (for any country), nor when that rate will be mostly final. That is one reason the markets are spooked and have high volatility (the market likes certainty). We are living in interesting times.
Need for electronic transparency (Score:3, Insightful)
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No more than most, it seems. One nice thing about TP-Link hardware is that it mostly all runs the same OS, so even the cheap stuff gets some nice high end features and a decent interface. It also means that when they do patch, they tend to patch older hardware as well, more so than other vendors.
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I have a TP-Link router, as a backup for my Linksys WRT1200AC. Both run OpenWRT. I loaded the Linksys with it on about day three, I wanted to try out the stock firmware for long enough to have some kind of valid opinion, but had no intention of using it long term and only bought the router because of its advertised OpenWRT compatibility. Similarly, I only bought the TP-Link router after checking the OpenWRT Table of Hardware.
All of which is just a long way to say that I wouldn't buy any router where I was d
Questions... (Score:3)
1. How does a corporate restructure but still manufacturing in the same factory change anything?
2. If he does as he says and does manufacturing and development in the U.S. then won't they be two distinct products, and not just distinct companies? So, not TP-Link?
3. They're super low budget tech with lots of low budget bugs and they have had a few issues, as well as lots of moronic users. But, with all the bluster, the "investigations" the "inquiries", and general scrutiny, has anything nefarious actually been found?
It seems like everyone is treating back doors as a certainty. But, I haven't heard of anyone finding any actual evidence of anything nefarious.
Maybe Juniper will Linksys them.
Re:Questions... (Score:4)
Not in my experience. The TP-Link Deco units have been rock solid and actually got firmware updates for the 6+ years I've recommended them to normal users.For consumer level devices, their stuff is actually quite good. Is it pro or prosumer level, no. But its not meant to be either.
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Shame they make good consumer equipment (Score:4)
The slashdot comments against TP-Link are crazy. TP-Link makes great consumer stuff that actually gets firmware updates. I have used many of their units and they all worked flawlessly and continue to get firmware updates 5+ years after purchase. Do they have likely vulnerabilities, probably. There are some of their old models recently that had a couple issues. But so do all other consumer manufacturers! Before TPLink Deco, the netgear and Linksys routers I owned were buggy and un-stable and never got a firmware update after the first year.
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I have used many of their units and they all worked flawlessly and continue to get firmware updates 5+ years after purchase.
If they are getting firmware updates, then they haven't been working flawlessly.
Mikrotik ftw (Score:2)
I've been trying to get the boss to move our gear from TP-Link cruft over to Mikrotik routers and Ubiqiti for the wifi stuff. Moved my home gear over to Mikrotik recently and the difference in internet and intranet throughput is night and day. It *just works* I might get even better throughput on the wifi stuff with ubiquiti but Im not sure a bunch of laptops and a TV set watching netflix justifies that.
But for work, yes. We have an office and factory that by necessity cant be wired together (across a carpa
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The funny thing is, several years back I discarded all my Ubiquiti UniFi kit because of how terribly buggy the firmware was. Every update created two new problems for every problem it solved. Plus, they never seemed to have stuff in stock, and the models they did have were either behind the curve of innovation or feature-incomplete. Moving to TP-Link Omada equipment gave me more frequent firmware updates that don't create more problems than they solve, readily available hardware, and frequent product releas
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I use their wireless adapters a lot (Score:2)