On Jul 5, 2012, at 12:42, Jon Lewis wrote:
Routers are sometimes used on networks that don't have internet connectivity [by design]. This seems amazingly short-sighted for a company that's been around selling routing gear as long as cisco.
Not to defend Cisco's idiotic decision, but in this case the devices in question are extremely unlikely to be used in such a situation as they are consumer/SOHO products. The vast, overwhelming majority of these will be installed as the primary and/or only piece of network hardware other than the modem. I'd imagine that anyone who knows enough to care about a non-connected situation was never considering these devices in the first place. Frankly for the Joe Sixpack market I can't argue against the autoupdate idea itself, as outdated consumer routers probably account for a large percentage of the exploitable Linux systems out there, but the "cloud" tie in and privacy issues are clearly not well thought out.