Linksys by Cisco, commonly known as Linksys, is a brand of home and small office networking products now produced by Cisco Systems, though once a separate company founded in 1995 before being acquired by Cisco in 2003. Products currently and previously sold under the Linksys brand name include broadband and wireless routers, consumer and small business grade Ethernet switching, VoIP equipment, wireless internet video camera, AV products, network storage systems, and other products. Linksys products were widely available in North America off-the-shelf from both consumer electronics stores (CompUSA and Best Buy), internet retailers, and big-box retail stores (WalMart). Linksys’ significant competition as an independent networking firm were D-Link and NetGear, the latter for a time being a brand of Cisco competitor Nortel.
In 2007, Cisco CEO John Chambers described the long-term plan to kill the independent Linksys brand: “It will all come over time into a Cisco brand. The reason we kept…