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Posted by moonka 22 hours ago

FCC updates covered list to include foreign-made consumer routers(www.fcc.gov)
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-420034A1.pdf

https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adds-routers-produced-forei...

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-278A1.pdf

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74787w149zo

https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/fcc-bans-foreign-made-rou...

447 points | 310 commentspage 3
daft_pink 16 hours ago|
Wouldn’t you purchase an American made router if you could?

I switched away from Omada to Ubiquiti, because of TP Link’s problems.

freedomben 19 hours ago||
So... What are the options now for American consumers? What brands are left and available?
kemotep 19 hours ago||
Does anyone even have a list of US produced routers? Like does installing OpenWRT or OPNSense or VyOS matter?

I can’t think of a complete start to finish, OS to mosfets, computer that is 100% manufactured in the United States.

tencentshill 5 hours ago|
If their "made in america" goal was anything but a sham, system76 would be getting huge government contracts right now.
kemotep 3 hours ago||
The FCC seems to count some level of assembly and packaging as qualifying as “Made in the US” so as long as it’s not a complete sham it should count.

Of course, getting a router SOC with firmware from the factory , soldering on the Ethernet ports and adding RAM and storage, installing an OS, throwing it in a case with a power supply into a box isn’t solving the problem of insecure foreign firmware but is meeting the “Made in US” demand.

So what counts and who gets exemptions will be telling.

flowerthoughts 13 hours ago||
The escalation path is probably: have some relationship to an entity that doesn't care about you -> make sure that entity becomes your enemy -> the enemy now has an incentive to see you as an enemy -> you must now be afraid of your new enemy.
Schnitz 20 hours ago||
So router prices in the US will go up a lot, great!
passive 8 hours ago||
This is terrible, perhaps the worst thing this administration has done (which is an incredibly high bar.)

Because it provides a pathway to full government control of the internet.

Content that demonizes the current administration's enemies will become easier to find. Evidence of their crimes will vanish.

When they murder someone in the street, fewer people will find out about it, and those that do will be more likely to hear the government's side of the story.

Mobile networks are already owned by the billionaires, and they've shown plenty of willingness to shape traffic for their interests.

Managing this kind of information at scale is an incredible challenge, but one that LLMs are very well suited for.

Even if you are confident the current administration doesn't have the competence or longevity to exploit this (as I mostly am,) we can easily predict future admins of either party will happily make use of these capabilities.

Bad for the US, but also very bad for the world, because it will make it much easier to manufacture consent for or hide future international crimes committed by the government.

We've excused the complete loss of traditional journalism with a reliance on the Internet instead. Not anymore.

Can savvy individuals work around it, of course. But the general public will treat them like conspiracy theorists, because all they will see is content that reinforces the administration.

The technical discussions in here sound like: "silly Caligula, his horse won't be able to sign his name to cast a vote in the Senate."

weightedreply 21 hours ago||
Will this impact the Mono Gateway[0]?

[0] https://mono.si/

dfc 20 hours ago||
It looks like it probably won't matter. The site says you can preorder a DevKit "Shipping between June and September 2025."

The fact that they haven't updated that webpage with new information since October 1st 2025 seems to indicate bad news...

RyJones 10 hours ago|||
I preordered one, I got it, and I sold it. They are active on Discord. Why did I sell it? The shortcomings of the platform made me realize I should just go with UI, despite my reservations about the company.
indrora 18 hours ago|||
The founder puts regular updates on his YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/RS2igvW3DIk

Shortly put, they're going through hardware startup woes but will probably make it out the other end just fine.

mzajc 20 hours ago||
It's hard to tell considering there is absolutely no company/ownership information on the site, but a .si (Slovenia) domain coupled with EUR being an accepted currency has me thinking they're Europe-based, and therefore foreign-made.

... at the same time, I don't think I'd send $100 to a site with no contact/ownership/company info to begin with.

tim-tday 19 hours ago||
Aren’t all routers manufactured in foreign countries? Cisco are assembled in China as far as I know.
gz5 15 hours ago||
my instinct is open source is part of the answer. the market monetizes with differentiation on the open source base, support, hardware, etc. vibrant enough market = the foss is secure (always a relative term) and continues to evolve, partially paid for by the companies who are monetizing
analog31 19 hours ago|
Ask HN: Is there a list of preferred routers for security?
m3047 1 hour ago||
Compared to hardening your network, at least visiting the ZT church once in a while, running your router on a box which You control and which implements proper segmentation, provides DNS (and "DNS firewall") and an adaptive firewall, WAF (if you run web services), isolating your wifi (anything EXCEPT running it in the box provided by the ISP)?

No.

And you have to accept living with / mitigating that e.g. that isolated wifi access point theoretically receives and will need to apply software updates. /s People seem to treat it as some kind of heresy if you simply deny such appliances internet access.

dmonitor 14 hours ago|||
I don't think the hardware matters so much as the firmware, which is solved by installing OpenWRT on anything that supports it.

If wireless security is the concern, maybe other people here know better but I don't believe anything convenient will be "secure" in the strongest sense of the word.

FuriouslyAdrift 4 hours ago|||
A Palo Alto 440 is what I would consider a baseline for 'real' security. Way too expensive and complicated for most if not all home users.

I keep recommending the free version of Sophos firewall for home users. It's still a bit of a bear to configure.

wmf 19 hours ago||
Nest
walterbell 18 hours ago||
Probably made in Vietnam, like Amazon Eero.
wmf 17 hours ago||
Where it's manufactured has nothing to do with security.
walterbell 17 hours ago||

  FCC maintains a list of equipment and services (Covered List) that have been determined to “pose an unacceptable risk to the national security.." FCC Updates Covered List to Include Foreign-Made Consumer Routers..
reverius42 15 hours ago|||
"national security" and "security" mean very, very different things in this context though.
wmf 15 hours ago|||
I disagree with the FCC. Banning "China routers" will not meaningfully increase security. Actual security has no correlation with country of manufacture.
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