> You probably know Belkin for its various lines of accessories, peripherals, and assorted consumer electronics; Linksys, surely the most recognizable router brand, is a subsidiary.
Apparently Cisco sold Linksys to Belkin in 2013. That's news to me.
Cisco had money burning a hole in their pocket and bought a some consumer stuff and then had no idea what to do with it ... so they sold most of it off, or simply discontinued it (like flip video).
The only good Belkin product I have ever seen is their 12 outlet power strip. As a network engineer everything they make with an Ethernet/wifi interface is complete shit. But this is not really news, D-Link, Netgear, many of their competitors are also junk.
I did not have any issues with their router. But that's not what I remember Belkin for:
I was in conversation with their customer service on the phone and it disconnected. Frustrated, cause it meant I had to call them back and there was no guarantee that I would get the same agent again, I gave up calling them. However, in 5 minutes, I got a call back from them - the same agent called me back and did manage to resolve my issue.
This was in India and prior to that, such service was unheard of (and not many still have that even today).
The device did not give me much trouble so I don't completely agree with the above.
That's kind of the curse of the consumer market. When it comes to that kind of appliance, consumers care about sticker price above all. It's a brutal race to the bottom.
I worked at Meraki, and institutionally we were deathly scared of dealing with that market; we were perfectly happy to stay in the enterprise market, where buyers were actually willing to pay for quality.
Well, the only Thunderbolt 2 to HDMI adapter I've used that actually worked well (and I tried 2 others .. they're expensive too, I must have spent ~$150 in the process) was the Belkin ones. The others didn't, for whatever reason, work when both Thunderbolt 2 ports were in use and the internal display was also turned on (on my '14 MBP).
Other dongles for example randomly lost one of the color channels, had noisy output, occasionally flickered black or didn't work when waking up from sleep.
I actually got good mileage out of Netgear stuff, but two years ago I changed it out with an ASUS Router (AC66U) and I've been happy. They originally weren't aggressive with security flaws, but they've righted the ship on that.
The worst router I’ve ever seen was a D-Link. I was in a position where I had to provide support for it, and in the end I gave up and bought them an ASUS with my own money. It ended up being worth it, just in terms of time and aggravation saved. The software and firmware on the D-Link were garbage, and so was the actual build.
Almost all are factory employees assembling iPhones and the like. Not sure if I would consider that IT employment like a lot of the others on that list (Amazon's is also inflated quite a bit with warehouse and retail/grocery staff).
Foxconn is Taiwanese like Asus, Acer, Gigabyte, MSI, MediaTek, D-Link, and HTC. Both Asus and D-Link are major router makers as well.
Also fun fact, nearly all routers use the same chips from Boardcom. The majority of differences between routers is just firmware and packaging, the guts are all the same.
Right? I know it's not completely analogous, but the federal government blocks a US company (Qualcomm) from buying another American company (Broadcom) over concerns about the Chinese somehow (which I still don't fully understand), but allows a Taiwanese company to buy an American network hardware division? I guess the government doesn't give a shit about consumer products.
Just today I contacted Belkin live support for a usb-c gigabit Ethernet adapter that stopped working 1 month in. They are shipping me a replacement.
My previous experience was with a router that would occasionally fail under load (e.g., torrents), requiring a restart. They sent a replacement for that, too, but I never found a use for an unreliable router.
Neat. Belkin was pretty crap about 7 years or so ago but they raised their game I find in the last couple years. They are pretty solid with decent prices now.
I think there is a pretty good market for smart home accessories, various wifi enabled devices like powerstrips, lights, cameras, locks, alarm systems, etc. With Belkin's Walmart distribution network and their low costs, I think it may be something they could target well.
foxconn makes routers for all the vendors I think, e.g. dlink.netgear,belkin...now Belkin might push its competitors away from Foxconn's assembly lines
Did they ever make meaningful contributions? I recall when they first revived the WRT branding, they promised open-source support for the Marvell chipsets they were now using, but it took an extremely long time for any code to show up, and it was far from being in a state to upstream. I haven't paid close attention since then, but I don't recall running across any mention that Linksys was directly helping improve the open-source Marvell drivers.
> best known for manufacturing practically everything in the world
Huh? I thought they manufacture iPhone chips and that's it. Now they buy peripherals because iphone itself won't make enough profit growth anymore to give top management the multi-million-dollar bonuses they are used to.
[+] [-] luhn|8 years ago|reply
Apparently Cisco sold Linksys to Belkin in 2013. That's news to me.
[+] [-] duxup|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walrus01|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] callmekatootie|8 years ago|reply
I was in conversation with their customer service on the phone and it disconnected. Frustrated, cause it meant I had to call them back and there was no guarantee that I would get the same agent again, I gave up calling them. However, in 5 minutes, I got a call back from them - the same agent called me back and did manage to resolve my issue.
This was in India and prior to that, such service was unheard of (and not many still have that even today).
The device did not give me much trouble so I don't completely agree with the above.
[+] [-] azernik|8 years ago|reply
I worked at Meraki, and institutionally we were deathly scared of dealing with that market; we were perfectly happy to stay in the enterprise market, where buyers were actually willing to pay for quality.
[+] [-] duxup|8 years ago|reply
I don't know if they bought someone who knew what they were doing with power strips or what, but .... i'm still using them.
[+] [-] aetherspawn|8 years ago|reply
Other dongles for example randomly lost one of the color channels, had noisy output, occasionally flickered black or didn't work when waking up from sleep.
[+] [-] thrillgore|8 years ago|reply
D-Link gear is hot garbage.
[+] [-] fro0116|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jontro|8 years ago|reply
We also used the previous version for older macbooks with thunderbolt and never had a problem with them.
[+] [-] pc86|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cctt23|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siruncledrew|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonknee|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksec|8 years ago|reply
May be those numbers are Full time employees?
*And in case you are wondering if it is those foxconn robots taking jobs. No it is not. Not in any significant number.
[+] [-] quickthrower2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r00fus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spiderPig|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhouston|8 years ago|reply
Also fun fact, nearly all routers use the same chips from Boardcom. The majority of differences between routers is just firmware and packaging, the guts are all the same.
[+] [-] downrightmike|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dirlewanger|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zitterbewegung|8 years ago|reply
But, doesn't Foxconn already manufacture a bunch of American products?
[+] [-] kbutler|8 years ago|reply
My previous experience was with a router that would occasionally fail under load (e.g., torrents), requiring a restart. They sent a replacement for that, too, but I never found a use for an unreliable router.
[+] [-] bhouston|8 years ago|reply
I think there is a pretty good market for smart home accessories, various wifi enabled devices like powerstrips, lights, cameras, locks, alarm systems, etc. With Belkin's Walmart distribution network and their low costs, I think it may be something they could target well.
[+] [-] canthonytucci|8 years ago|reply
* an outlet multipler/usb charging thing - died
* lighting cables of various lengths - all died
maybe I have bad luck, but it seems to me like they are still making garbage.
[+] [-] peebtkxs|8 years ago|reply
Is it strange that this wasn’t blocked as well?
[+] [-] kobayashi|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] saipardhu|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] erikb|8 years ago|reply
Huh? I thought they manufacture iPhone chips and that's it. Now they buy peripherals because iphone itself won't make enough profit growth anymore to give top management the multi-million-dollar bonuses they are used to.