I located the previous Linksys firmware for a brand new (last week!)
EA4500, dropped the internet connection and connected to the EA4500 with
IE and downgraded the firmware back to before this whole "cloud" fiasco.
Once downgraded, I disabled automatic upgrades. You have to drop the
Internet connection in order to then be able to access the new "offline"
firmware (a heavily crippled version of the original firmware). They will
make no further updates on the original firmware either.

For Cisco to force this is one thing, but there were HUNDREDS of folks
posting on forums scattered about that had their routers auto upgrade to
the new firmware/service overnight *AND* lost all their setups. They just
arrived at work to find nothing working. The Cisco "cloud" web app has
only a fraction of the features/functions, so, anything beyond basic game
port forwarding is now non-existent. What kid did they put in charge of
creating and rolling out that web app such that no one seems to have even
bothered (and/or probably didn't give a crap) as to what this "upgrade"
was going to do to all the *businesses* that utilized these low-cost
routers for something more than Xbox and Facebook? They should have at
least mirrored the entire feature set in the cloud app and have provided
for a way for these settings to auto-transfer from the NVRAM up to the
cloud when you "registered". They provided for NONE of this! 

No doubt they now view it as a home consumer only product line, and wanted
to force Genie back in the bottle. On top of that, if you read the TOS for
the new cloud service, they state clearly that they have the right to mine
YOUR data in and out through the router to look for "things" (whatever
they desire)! No doubt, like with Facebook, it is to then bombard you with
targeted electronic and paper advertisements, etc. The terms state that
one thing would be to determine "problems" within your network for you.
But, why not look for "bad behavior" too? It is something else to be sure.

The mindset of a company that would be so presumptuous with this product
line should be questioned when it comes to their mainstay product lines as
well (at least from now on).

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Drew from Zhrodague
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2012 8:58 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [nlug] Re: [libre issue] has cisco cross an ethical line in
software?

On 7/4/12 10:02 PM, Raymond Beaudoin wrote:
> There's been a lot of hype today but it sounded like they were going 
> to remove the requirement, however if you take a look at the 
> screenshots generated today it is *heavily* neutered if you don't sign 
> up. /me starts rummaging for DD-WRT

        Big fan of DD-WRT. In fact, one of my last jobs had purchased an
extremely expensive WiMax system from Cisco (One of Cisco's acquisitions),
and the Cisco tech and I were unable to get it to work at all. It would
connect, but not pass any data. Drove me nuts.

        DD-WRT on a couple of Goodwill Special WRT-54g units allowed us to
stream our data properly, even in an overly-saturated WiFi environment. 
Huge fan.

        Cisco has always pissed me off, but not as much as their web-based
GUIs, which absolutely REQUIRED having Internet Explorer installed to run
their Java management thingy. Drove me nuts.

-- 

Drew from Zhrodague
lolcat divinator
[email protected]


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