Apparently for fear they may be spying on you, or something like that. The old routers are still OK. Any new router will have to gain approval after testing. This may impact some of you guys who are thinking of buying a router or gateway.

 

Tomorrow , March 25, is Amazon's annual Spring Sale. 

I had a problem with my work router this morning that cleared up of its own accord. I assume that it had temporarily taken itself offline so that it could transmit the recorded data back to HQ for intelligence purposes.

Is that why my router has a big eye on it looking back and forth?  Reminds me of a Cylon! 😱

Well, that was certainly interesting.

I've seen a few of these videos (but not watched any) that had some form of "router BAN" in the title. It's less of a ban than a requirement for new routers to go through an FCC certification process. I'm sure every existing router has been through certification, but probably less stringent than the new regulations. It appears that part of this is to get companies to move manufacturing to the US. 

Something I didn't know was that routers are apparently constantly getting firmware upgrades in the background. Some years ago I remember logging into the router and performing upgrades manually. Haven't even thought about that lately.

So it would seem that there is a "phantom network" of all installed routers that would give AI a foothold in taking over. I saw something like that in a video once. Imagine a distributed processing network for AI hidden in everyone's routers that no one knows about or even thinks about.

Have you ever hit a bandwidth cap and didn't know why?

Sleep well tonight.

<sigh>

Hook

Yes, current stupidity of US government is beyond words … again with ZERO evidence just like ban of DJI drones, but hey we can open carry foreign made guns and rank #1 in mass school shooting … feeling great again.

Edited March 25Mar 25 by SayAgain

20 minutes ago, SayAgain said:

we can open carry foreign made guns

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH THESE PEOPLE?

We should be buying American!  😄 

(Except for Uzis. Uzis are pretty cool.)

Hook

2 hours ago, LHookins said:

Something I didn't know was that routers are apparently constantly getting firmware upgrades in the background.

 

And your smart TV. And any TV boxes, wearable devices, etc,

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

And your smart TV. And any TV boxes, wearable devices, etc,

I'm not sure how smart my TV is. I never watch it. Since the remote disappeared (I suspect my hyperactive little brown dog) my wife doesn't either. I haven't let on how happy this makes me. 🙂

I don't have a smart phone. My wife does. This worries me. We lost the land line when copper thieves hit the wires. They're working on the road and I've heard rumors that they're putting in fiber, so we might get a house phone back eventually.

I DO have a smart thermostat. Automatically changes between heat and cool. Connects to the Internet to get the outside temperature and humidity. I can connect remotely to change the settings. The company keeps asking my permission to let them change settings but I adamantly refuse. I don't THINK it has a microphone; there are no voice commands.

I work from a desktop that does not have a camera or microphone.

I have no wearable devices, and neither does my wife. Little Brown Dog has a plain collar with no electronics. The cats may be spying on me, but as far as I know have no remote connections. I could be wrong.

Hook

3 minutes ago, LHookins said:

I don't have a smart phone. My wife does. This worries me. We lost the land line when copper thieves hit the wires. They're working on the road and I've heard rumors that they're putting in fiber, so we might get a house phone back eventually.

 

How are you connecting to the internet? Don't tell me it's Starlink? 😁

33 minutes ago, LHookins said:

The cats may be spying on me, but as far as I know have no remote connections. I could be wrong.

It's always the cats. Close your bedroom door.

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

How are you connecting to the internet? Don't tell me it's Starlink? 😁

In the past I've had 56K dialup, fixed wireless (great but the company went out of business), two different satellite connections (not Starlink, one obviously fly-by-night and the other fair but with a 25 gig per month bandwidth cap) and am currently on a cellular connection. The company put an antenna less than a mile from my house and I was on the phone with them the same day I heard about it, about a week after the antenna went up. Absolutely first rate service.

I had access to another cellular service for almost a year, but the antenna was a long ways off with lots of trees in the way. One neighbor had it and said they had no problems. I wasn't optimistic.

Hook