This seems to be more and more prevalent even in other areas like washing machines, microwaves and even cars. I don't get old parts. Even the service technicians throw up their hands and say "Just buy a newer model".
And when it’s $300-400 for a computer board, you might as well get a whole new machine.
The only way I’ve found to counteract that is to look for commercial or commercial-based units that share parts for years or more. But this can be harder for some classes of equipment ( commercial ovens are NOT at all like residential - they’re usually not insulated) but it can be a start.
But that's nobodies fault, as long as companies are required to release any protocols or specs for interop. You can't sensibly force companies to turn back the clock forever or stay in a business they don't want to be in. You can sensibly force companies to fully describe the products that they sell unless they are willing to continue to maintain them.
If they're required to release the specs of parts that they won't replace, Chinese factories would flood ebay with any of them that they think they can move 50K units of.
I agree that their support is the best of the smartphone vendors, but I would also welcome legislation that opens up hardware for arbitrary software at EOL.
When Apple decides it's done updating the 6S, I should be able to run Android or Linux on it. But they've locked down the hardware so it can only run iOS.
You are literally paying them for being closed source.
Stop rewarding these corporations for screwing you over and they will cease to screw you over. Either they will change their ways or go out of business if enough people feel the way you do. And, regardless, you would have solved these sorts of problems for yourself long before that happens.
It's been a very long time since Cisco was the only game in town for enterprise networking. Companies like Broadcom have released powerful ASICs that allows practically anybody to build a high performance routers and switches.
hyperscalers got into building their own switches a decade ago. whitelabel silicon and software _IS_ available, but the entrenchement is still huge as noone ever got fired for buying cisco.
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/switches/catalyst-6500...
If you mean the time between the first day of manufacturing and the end of software patching, it will be higher, but it’s definitely not 25, years. The 6503 (not the 6503-E) went end of hw support in 2012 [1], patching must have stopped a couple of years prior to this, but it’s so old I can’t find the EoL notice for this…
Finally if you mean “time between first day of manufacturing and end of patching”, then the the RV110W has at least 7 years. I can find article listing it in 2011 already [2], end of patching was 2018 [3].
I completely agree on the idea of pushing for open sourcing hardware and firmware when a device becomes end of support, but we also need to get the facts straight.
Headlines like “cisco won’t patch legacy VPN routers” are simply disingenuous and pure clickbait. But they do make me smile =) so it’s not all bad.
[0] https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/c...
[1] https://www.curvature.com/resources/tech-guides/cisco-6500-e...
[2] https://www.cnet.com/videos/cisco-rv110w-wireless-n-vpn-fire...
[3] https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/routers/sm...
That's not true at all. Divulging data without offering license terms does nothing to hurt your ability to enforce intellectual property rights. The people using that data just do so knowing they're technically breaking the law. Patents are not trademarks.
And in a way, the patent system is exactly about "opening up" technology. After all the idea of a patent is "you tell everyone how to build it, in return nobody is allowed to use that knowledge commercially for X years unless you allow it. This aligns great with "give us the tools to modify the software of hardware you find commercially unattractive".
I've read a lot of modern patents, and not one of them was written to convey useful information. They're all dense legal writing, and as vague as the author can get away with.
Most medium/big companies have patent attorneys whose entire job is writing patents. They don't care about the patents having any useful details to make it a useful reference. Usually the attorneys aren't subject experts on the patent topic, and couldn't make it accurate even if they tried.
Modern patents are a game where you file a whole bunch and then wait for somebody to step on one by accident with a parallel invention. Then you sue them unless they have enough patents to also sue you.
Patents don't promote innovation at all, at least not any more. If anything, they're a tax on our industry and they stifle small players - exactly the sort of person who they're supposed to help.
For patents to be useful they need to be writing in the language of experts in the field -not lawyers. And the law needs to make it best for my employer to make me search for and read potentially relevant patents before doing anything. That is infringing after making an effort to avoid a patent (that the courts decide is not enough effort) is better than infringing without knowing.