In March 2026, the FCC designated all consumer routers manufactured outside the United States as a national security risk, banning new foreign-made models from sale.¹ Eero, NetGear, and Google Nest are all affected, not just Chinese manufacturers, because they all produce hardware overseas.

The reasoning in the FCC’s National Security Determination is specific. Three Chinese nation-state operations, Volt Typhoon, Flax Typhoon, and Salt Typhoon, used compromised consumer routers to build botnets targeting US critical infrastructure: communications, energy, transportation, and water systems. The FBI and DOJ shut down one of these botnets in 2024. The ban follows directly from those incidents.²

Consumer routers frustrated me for years before I understood why. It wasn’t the hardware; my ASUS RT-AC5300 was perfectly capable for most tasks. It was the assumption baked into every consumer device: that I didn’t need to see what was happening on my own network.

At some point, I wanted my router to do something it wouldn’t do. I don’t even remember what it was now. I tried open-source firmware, which worked for a while, until I hit another wall. Underpowered CPUs, limited RAM, confusing web interfaces, and the general lack of configurability.