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buzer 12 hours ago

> all consumer-grade routers produced in foreign countries

Are there even consumer-grade routers that are produced in the USA...?

amluto 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But we can still buy old models:

> As outlined below, today’s action does not impact a consumer’s continued use of routers they previously acquired. Nor does it prevent retailers from continuing to sell, import, or market router models approved previously through the FCC’s equipment authorization process. By operation of the FCC’s Covered List rules, the restrictions imposed today apply to new device models.

I’m sure plenty of US factories are capable of importing boxes that look like routers but are actually just switches (because the router firmware is missing) and re-flashing them here…

userbinator 9 hours ago | parent [-]

I suspect "evergreen" model numbering/naming will become even more common in the future.

kbumsik 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Right? Even enterprise routers, e.g. Cisco, are not produced in USA.

stefan_ 28 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Qualcomm is a US company right? I've worked on a few WiFi router devices and their chips are pretty popular in that segment. But WiFi is not a priority for Qualcomm (in fact they actively sabotage it for their more profitable 5G segment), and software is even less of a priority. So you had "parsing 802.11 TLVs in the kernel with obvious stack overflows" quality code drops.

(Which is why it's a bit ironic I saw the Google Fiber guy post on X about how they always had TPM^TM "security" in their routers; thats cool, but the drivers you used still made them "general purpose computing over the air" devices)

dmonitor 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can theoretically use any computer as a router. I've used a Raspberry Pi as a router through a single NIC with VLANs.

walterbell 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> consumer-grade routers that are produced in the USA

Starlink?

alphabettsy 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I believe they make satellite components not consumer hardware in the US

mryall an hour ago | parent [-]

The linked BBC article above says the Starlink terminals are made in Texas.

Mistletoe 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Time for the made in USA tin can and a string.

daemonologist 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Hey, let's not undersell America's high-tech manufacturing capability. We could easily produce morse code keys and copper wire, for a price of course.

array_key_first 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Assembled in the US, the tin comes from Indonesia.

9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
[deleted]
cozzyd 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Are there any consumer-grade routers that aren't produced in Taiwan?

jordand 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Even MikroTik routers have a supply chain scattered around the world

longislandguido 11 hours ago | parent [-]

But most are still made in Latvia.

1over137 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Which is still foreign from the USA's perspective. Remember, this new rule is not just against China, but against all foreign-made.

palmotea 4 hours ago | parent [-]

But the fact that a company can manufacture consumer(ish) routers in Latvia means it's very practical that another company could manufacture consumer routers in the US.

Usually the argument is that X can't be made in the US because China's so good at it that the US could never compete, so we shouldn't even try. But if a company with 367 employees in a country with the population of a medium-size metro area can do it, it proves that argument is bunk.

lmm 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> But the fact that a company can manufacture consumer(ish) routers in Latvia means it's very practical that another company could manufacture consumer routers in the US.

Assembling them in Latvia, or the US, from internationally sourced components isn't a solution to anything.

> Usually the argument is that X can't be made in the US because China's so good at it that the US could never compete, so we shouldn't even try. But if a company with 367 employees in a country with the population of a medium-size metro area can do it, it proves that argument is bunk.

Unless Latvia is a much better environment for this kind of industry than the US is.