CES 2019: Linksys Adds Mesh To An Oldie and Subscription Security To Velop

[SNB News]

Linksys announced its first new products since it was bought by Foxconn last March.

The MR8300 MAX STREAM AC2200 Tri-Band Mesh WiFi Router appears to be its EA8300 with new firmware that will form a mesh network with a single Velop Mesh node. It lists for $199.99 and will be shipping shortly.

The only other Linksys announcement was of its Linksys Shield "premium" subscription software service for "Velop Tri-Band" users. The terse announcement did not indicate any free trial periods and listed a Parental Control (content filtering) subscription at $4.99/mo. or $49.99/yr., available February 2019 and a Network Security subscription for $1.99/mo., $19.99/yr., available "later in 2019".

Linksys is the only major consumer networking product company that has not announced its Wi-Fi 6/802.11ax product plans.

Belkin also announced new Wemo light switches with "native" Apple HomeKit compatibility. They will ship "spring/summer" of this year and list for $39.99 (single-pole) and $49.99 (3-way).

 

[olegtf]

... there is an issue with ownership, router itself constantly references "belkin" at each and every opportunity. Another problem with EA8300 - it does have undocumented part which with appropriate permissions allow monitoring of the traffic on the network, collection of the data and pipe this information to some kind of "data center" outside of US.
Strictly technical question - is it possible to reflash MR firmware on top of EA? If anyone tried already?

 

[L&LD]

... there is an issue with ownership, router itself constantly references "belkin" at each and every opportunity. Another problem with EA8300 - it does have undocumented part which with appropriate permissions allow monitoring of the traffic on the network, collection of the data and pipe this information to some kind of "data center" outside of US.
Strictly technical question - is it possible to reflash MR firmware on top of EA? If anyone tried already?

Illegal to do so. No further conversation about this allowed (as per forum rules).

 

[olegtf]

Illegal to do so. No further conversation about this allowed (as per forum rules).[/QUOT

What illegal? R U lost your mind? Seriously? Get yourself copy of FCC rulebook and RTFM. On the substance of the question - it does work, but absence of blue-tooth functionality makes it useless and pointless, MR firmware is de facto previous version of EA firmware with addition of BT, next update will kick you back to the latest EA.

 

[L&LD]

I apologize if I misunderstood. I took "Strictly technical question - is it possible to reflash MR firmware on top of EA?" as is it possible to reflash RMerlin firmware on top of EA.