I mean, isn't it quite reasonable to not update something post-EOL ?
(router EOL of 5 years seems a bit short though)
Imagine you have to throw out your car after 5 years because the manufacturer stopped updating the software. We are getting there.
5 years is not nice. A large, established company like Cisco, selling devices in an established and very slowly evolving market like routers to companies, should be offering much longer support periods.
Apple supports iPhones for 7 years which I still think is not enough. I think routers for small businesses should be supported for at least double that.
There is physically nothing wrong with these routers. They are perfectly capable doing their job from every possible angle. This is just generating garbage so that Cisco can sell more new hardware that is performing basically the same job.
That's 7 years from launch, not 7 years from end of sale.
Not defending Cisco here, but looking up the RV110W I can find documents for it dating back to 2011, so that's 11 years of support.
For the RV130 I can find an administrators guide that was revised in Aug 2014, so at least 8 years there. probably more given that it's a revision.
Using your argument, you could stop all support right after the devices stopped being sold.
So it was being sold for 15 years and the software has been in support for 15 years and it is old so we stop selling it and supporting it at the same time.
Now hope you are not the person who bought it on the last day...
However, this isn't killing the entire router. Just the VPN functionality. If you don't use that, there's no need to get rid of the router. Just make sure the VPN is disabled, as per the article.
If you do use the VPN, then you should either replace the router or implement the VPN differently. Second-hand, that router is still good for anyone that doesn't need a VPN.
When tech is moving fast, I can understand a short warranty, but I don't think routers are in that category. (Wifi routers are, but I've yet to have a Wifi router that could handle my residential usage of it anyhow. They always end up having problems. I've moved to having an access point separately from a router so at least it doesn't kill the whole network when it gets stupid.)
One of the main reasons to buy these SMB routers over consumer grade devices is usable VPN support. A lot of those small companies use their routers only for Internet access in their offices plus router-based VPN for remote employee, support or admin access to intranet. In a lot of cases it is essentially the reason to choose these devices over anything else.
After all, it's not exactly environmentally friendly for working hardware to get ditched just because of some software turns it useless.
The EOL sucks, but that's what people kinda signed up for with Cisco.
Don't know for how long these routers have been around, but for one of them I found a overview document dated 2011.
Should be same for devices. If not, they should at least carry a "best before date" like food, so you know at time of purchase how long you can expect to get updates.
EOL isn't real, it's made up. Broken or not powerful enough anymore is real. The town crier could decide to blow a trumpet and proclaim "EOL" a week after the last one is sold.
If i had an old product, there's also some point where i'd say "I wont be updating this anymore", as to phase it out. Expecting something to receive active support forever is unreasonable.
> there's also some point where I'd say "I wont be updating this anymore", as to phase it out.
You don't get to phase out my stuff. If you're not going to update it anymore, you've broken our support relationship, so you should also be breaking the hardware and software locks that prevent me from getting support from another source.
But then small businesses like to cheap out and gamble on a device that has a short time of support left and complain when it ends.
This is not a surprise, except if you chose to put on a blindfold yourself. And if you think EOL of 5 years is too short, don’t buy a device with an advertised EOL of 5 years.