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Comment by jakehansen | Hacker News Reader

> Your Wi-Fi router or switches only working when a license is active (even your LAN)?

We live in that world today. Most enterprise networking equipment operates with the licensing model.

Your home router has always been on the "subscription plan". Once your vendor abandons the hardware and ceases updates, do you really want an opaque, un-inspectable black box with access to your whole network, while the CVEs pile up and you have no patch or upgrade options left?

Your IOTs are all on subscription plan. All it takes is a defunct company, yank from the App Store, or unpatched CVEs and you'll need to physically uninstall that puppy, whether it's your dishwasher, fridge, thermostat, or lawn sprinklers. Have fun.

> Your IOTs are all on subscription plan.

Only if they require some internet connection.

IOT, internet of things. It’s kind of right there in the name…

> Internet of things has been considered a misnomer because devices do not need to be connected to the public internet, they only need to be connected to a network, and be individually addressable.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_things

There's more than one internet.

> Your home router has always been on the "subscription plan". Once your vendor abandons the hardware and ceases updates, do you really want an opaque, un-inspectable black box with access to your whole network, while the CVEs pile up and you have no patch or upgrade options left?

OpenWRT says hi. https://openwrt.org/toh/start

Having used DD-WRT for a while, the fact that there is a searchable device list is a nice touch.

IF that is correct, and I've had my suspicions about some network connected devices, then its sold under false pretences because its buying a product that you think you own but actually dont and it makes this deceitful. Saying that I know of a car manufacturer that will brick your engine a short while after a dealer service in a bid to give it an upgrade, I've had that done to me, by a certain German company, unless some other spooky entity has more oversight and access to things than they care to let on to.

I'm not sure why you have "IF". Different software has long been a different cost option on enterprise network kit.

If you are buying an enterprise switch you know exactly what you're getting

(In reality it features you don't buy on Juniper seem to still work, just print nags to the log file. Arista from what I can see are fully featured anyway. I'm talking basic routing features like BGP rather than some cloud based librenms the sales guy keeps trying to flog)

We have been explicitly told that a DNA Advantage 3 Year License will continue to work after the 3 year license though. All companies are moving to a per-year charge though, as it keeps the money rolling in.

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