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Posted by moonka 1 day 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...

https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/03/24/fcc-just-banned-the-imp...

465 points | 401 commentspage 5
flowerthoughts 16 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.
jauntywundrkind 4 hours ago||
This would be so much less of a pain if decent wifi pcie cards were available.

It's all a bunch of very expensive kind of dodgy Compex cards, used for industrial or prototype purposes. Be prepared to spend $300+ for a single 4x4 MIMO card. And then you want to go dual band right?

Thankfully the MediaTek offerings are somewhat available and much much much cheaper, but reports are that driver quality is just absymal.

Meanwhile the openwrt table of hardware for wifi 6 and wifi 7 is a bare trickle already, and inceasingly not consumer routers but SBC. Thanks for the FCC messing things up brutally already, back in 2015, with requirements to make sure users couldn't possibly do anything out of spec, requiring these systems to be locked down. They almost banned open source outright, but in practice it feels like the requirements are high enough that they practically did. https://toh.openwrt.org/?features=wifi_be https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/tp-li...

Frelling FCC! What dastardly deeds done against civilization! We would be so much more secure & protected, the bar would be so much higher if open source / openwrt was allowed to compete. You messed everything up already!!

mystraline 4 hours ago||
This is just the trump administration blocking companies unless they pay the danegeld.

Thats what this is all about: government level blackmail.

Schnitz 23 hours ago||
So router prices in the US will go up a lot, great!
weightedreply 1 day ago||
Will this impact the Mono Gateway[0]?

[0] https://mono.si/

dfc 23 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 13 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 21 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 23 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 22 hours ago||
Aren’t all routers manufactured in foreign countries? Cisco are assembled in China as far as I know.
mindwork 5 hours ago||
Let me use my UniFi
varispeed 4 hours ago|
I bought their Dream Router 7 and this is pure junk. Slow. Poor signal (you have to sit by the router to get full signal. Go to the other room and you get drop outs).
analog31 22 hours ago||
Ask HN: Is there a list of preferred routers for security?
m3047 4 hours 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 17 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 7 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 22 hours ago||
Nest
walterbell 21 hours ago||
Probably made in Vietnam, like Amazon Eero.
wmf 20 hours ago||
Where it's manufactured has nothing to do with security.
walterbell 20 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 18 hours ago|||
"national security" and "security" mean very, very different things in this context though.
wmf 18 hours ago|||
I disagree with the FCC. Banning "China routers" will not meaningfully increase security. Actual security has no correlation with country of manufacture.
gz5 18 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
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