Foxconn buys Belkin for $866M • Hacker News Board

Re: Foxconn buys Belkin for $866M

#91

Post by ptaipale » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 12:27 PM UTC

ieo2929 wrote: post #20

cctt23 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ubiquiti ftw After a brief romance with VyOS and RPi based APs, Ubiquiti came along and swept me off my feet Currently using their gear throughout a 300-ish person office. Easy to setup, no issues that weren’t our fault in the first place. Great kit for startup and growing type situations

Indeed. I've had more failures than I can tolerate with Belkin, Linksys, D-Link, Zyxel, TP-Link, Asus, ZTE, Huawei. They all tire up eventually - even if they work initially, the equipment runs hot and fails in a few months.

Some of them obey the Law of Plastic Box: a device in a plastic box does one thing but not more than that. A Huawei router is OK if I just do routing, no WLAN, and put a TP-Link box as a WLAN beside it. Etc.

The only exceptions I have had in consumer-priced equipment is Ubiquity, which is great, and a small Finnish company called Telewell (which make cheap plastic things in China but strangely has never failed for me). The UI with Telewell is still the typical consumer-grade Web UI.

Re: Foxconn buys Belkin for $866M

#92

Post by peebtkxs » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 1:09 PM UTC

Was it Foxconn that was blocked from acquiring an American company earlier this month? Is this acquisition a order of magnitude smaller?

Is it strange that this wasn’t blocked as well?

Re: Foxconn buys Belkin for $866M

#93

Post by jermaustin1 » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 1:38 PM UTC

mygo wrote: post #45

duxup wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

they discontinued flip video because after the acquisition they didn’t really understand the consumer and then GoPro came and they got wreckt

I still use my flip. It's my favorite little camcorder.

My wife uses it every day at her internship where she has to record her patients for class and supervision. She isn't allowed to use a network connected device to do the recording for HIPAA compliance.

Re: Foxconn buys Belkin for $866M

#94

Post by kobayashi » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

peebtkxs wrote: post #92

Was it Foxconn that was blocked from acquiring an American company earlier this month? Is this acquisition a order of magnitude smaller? Is it strange that this wasn’t blocked as well?

I think you're referring to Broadcom trying to acquire Qualcomm. Very different situation. This is a good breakdown of why that was blocked: https://stratechery.com/2018/qualcomm-national-security-and-...

Re: Foxconn buys Belkin for $866M

#95

Post by JustFinishedBSG » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #90

walrus01 wrote: post #16

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.

What do you recommend for a simple home network with a few computers and mobile devices?

Ubiquiti or Mikrotik

"prosummer" brands

Re: Foxconn buys Belkin for $866M

#96

Post by che_shirecat » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 2:05 PM UTC

Dirlewanger wrote: post #89

spiderPig wrote: post #5

It is a little disconcerting that Foxconn (subject to deep Chinese government overreach) will now own Linksys

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.

Qualcomm/Broadcom was mostly just political grandstanding

Re: Foxconn buys Belkin for $866M

#97

Post by artimaeis » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #69

walrus01 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want good quality third party chargers and USB cables - buy Anker

If Anker is so great, why don't they have TÜV/CCC/UL certified power supplies?

http://database.ul.com/cgi-bin/XYV/template/LISEXT/1FRAME/sh...

Sorry for the hideous URL, but Anker absolutey does have UL certified power supplies. To my knowledge they're CCC compliant as I believe they're sold in China and as far as I cant tell, that's a requirement. TÜV I'm not so sure about, but I was under the impression they were more of an 3rd-party way to get CE certified (which Anker products already are).

I get being cautious about power supplies - but Anker is legitimate.

Re: Foxconn buys Belkin for $866M

#98

Post by beagle3 » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 2:20 PM UTC

draugadrotten wrote: post #64

fro0116 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any recommendations for alternatives?

Asus+Merlin firmware is what I am running now. Stable, with enough features included out of the box. Compared to the bundled horror from the TelCo I get nearly 3x wifi performance on -ac. In the ski lodge, OpenWRT and a $20 TP-Link have uptime measured in years by now. OpenWRT is awesome.

Uptime in years mean you have no security - there has been a couple of horrible WPA2 faults fixed in the last year.

Re: Foxconn buys Belkin for $866M

#99

Post by technofiend » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

gonzo wrote: post #26

duxup wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Not the first time they entered and then abandoned the consumer space. Once upon a time, they made NICs.

Once upon a time they made damn good NICs.

Re: Foxconn buys Belkin for $866M

#100

Post by thrillgore » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 2:28 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #16

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 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.

D-Link gear is hot garbage.