WhereIsAtlas · Networking

Linksys

The router company that made Wi-Fi a household word — and gave hackers the WRT54G

Acquired — Bought by Cisco in 2003, spun to Belkin in 2013, now a Foxconn-owned consumer brand.

Linksys was founded in Irvine, California in 1988 by Victor and Janie Tsao, a Taiwanese-born couple who had met while working in Silicon Valley. They started by making hubs and adapters for the growing home and small-business networking market, then rode the internet boom — by the mid-1990s the 'Linksys' name was on millions of Ethernet cards and network gear sold through retailers like CompUSA.

The company's defining moment came in 2002 with the WRT54G, a $60 wireless broadband router. Unusually for consumer gear, it ran a version of Linux, and within months of release hobbyists had cracked it open. That one device became the foundation of the OpenWrt and DD-Wrt firmware movements, turning a cheap router into a platform for everything from captive portals to mesh networks — a piece of consumer hardware that quietly built a culture.

Cisco bought the company in 2003 for about $500 million, betting home networking would be central to its future. It wasn't quite. After a decade Cisco sold the brand to Belkin in 2013; Belkin was in turn acquired by Foxconn in 2018. Today Linksys survives as a consumer networking brand under the Foxconn umbrella — a household name that lost its independence but never really went away.

Quick facts

Founded
1988, by Victor & Janie Tsao
Signature product
WRT54G router (2002)
Sold to Cisco
2003 (≈ $500M)
Sold to Belkin
2013
Owned by
Foxconn (since 2018)

Sources

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